Jerky Scrolling - tried everything

[AndyH]

Hmmmm, if you've tried the "Display Mode" as Direct3D (9 preferably or 8) under the runtime application properties and this does not help I am not sure what else I can suggest.

Your example is running with Standard display mode btw. My laptop is pretty high spec and in Fusion 2.5 it runs smoothly, in MMF2.0 it does jerk around a bit. However changing the display mode in MMF2.0 to Direct3D9 or even Directx+VRAM and it runs consistently smooth on both MMF and Fusion. Standard display mode is compatible with more or less anything, although I've never found a problem on XP and up with DirectX or DirectX+VRAM but smoothness can vary from system to system. Since the HWA (3D accelerated mode for 2D graphics) was introduced several years ago I have always found Direct3D9 to have worked really well and generally don't see scrolling problems.

The machine independent speed option will drop frames if MMF cannot keep up with the frame rate you set so this will increase the chances of jumps in the animation and scrolling. Best avoid that if you want to try to get a steady frame rate.

Could the displays you are running into problems on not using a refresh rate of 60Hz perhaps? Try changing the frame rate to 500 with vsync on and see how that works out? It will try to lock your frame rate to that of the display (usually 60Hz) but could run faster if the display is using a higher frequency or if vsync is being ignored. At least you'd know.

Oh, looking at your events you are using a fastloop to move your object 1 pixel at a time, 8 times a game loop. MMF does not update the screen during a fastloop, in fact it will update only after all events from top to bottom have been processed. Therefore you can achieve the same effect (and faster) by just using an Always condition with Set X position of object = X position of object + 8.

[Ziplock]

The only display mode options i have are Standard, DX, or DX+vram. I've tried DirectX+Vram and it doesn't fix it. Forgive the ignorance, but I don't have a "Direct3D9" option.

I got rid of the fastloop and that fixed the sample, but is the problem seriously systemic of fastloops? How can I get rid of the bugs that come with not using fastloops if the screen is going to tear when I use fastloops?

[AndyH]

Aha, I think we are on to something! What build number are you on? It sounds like you might be on a very old version if you can't see other Display types. Clickteam have released many improvements since the original MMF.

To find out your build number, when you start MMF the little window that appears while loading under Version 2.0 shows the Build number. Also can view this from the Help-About menu.

You have your MMF registered on the forum so you should be able to access the owners lounge: http://community.clickteam.com/threads/84303-Download-links You can download the latest beta updater or the last stable release (slightly older). You should be fine with the beta as it has been out for a while. Install this which should bring your build number up to 258.2 and a load of new features including the Direct3D accelerated mode!


Fastloops - they are really useful, keep using them You just have to understand them and when they can be used to solve a problem. You can cause slow downs if you are spending too much time in fastloops, but this (on Windows) is generally in the hundreds or thousands of loops, 8 loops per frame shouldn't have much of an impact. In your example you didn't need to use the fastloop for that purpose, although it did exactly what you wanted, it is quicker to just add 8. ** you might want to do it with a fastloop if you were also checking for precise collisions with each move but that would be a specific case.

[casleziro]

when telling mmf2 to follow an object, make sure you move the object you want to follow before the camera, and the camera before the actual scrolling event, so that the scrolling event is always the last event in the order. this way mmf2 doesn't try to focus on the object until it is at an absolute position, and it shouldn't cause any stuttering:

player movement first
camera movement (seeking a position, in your case the player + camera variance) second
finally, tell mmf2 to follow the camera.

[Asterisix]

I implemented the window example posted earlier and it cleared up my full screen tearing issue without doing any more and I thank you for that. I am using version 2.5 BuildR281.1

[Ziplock]

I installed the 258 build and Direct3D 9 fixed everything on every system. This solved about 2 months worth of headaches. Are there any windows systems that it might not work on? Will it work with Wine?

I am now taking into account the order of my events, so thanks for the info there, casleziro.