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[Toady One]

The title screen is horribly slow???  That's weird, since nothing should really be going on there.  It just prints a single bitmap and some text.  Is this only since frame-skipping?  Or before that?  I just removed all of the frame-skipping from everything but game play, and added an option to tone it down or get rid of it while you are playing.

I also put some more bells and whistles in -- I think it's most of what I'll have as far as graphics lag.  That means stars, a sun (these 2 things "orbit" the planet as they do in real life), day/night corresponding to the sun, and smoothly colored ground textures (fading from gray rock to brown rock/dirt to grass to beach to water).  All of the features are or will be optional by the next release, so there shouldn't be a slow down associated with them.  The stars/sun are the same based on the universe seed, so you'll be able to use them to navigate (if it comes to that).

[Darkon]

Here are some observations.

Speed:
------
Some of my old computer specifications first:
450 Mhz P3
128 MB RAM
3dfx Voodoo3 16MB

The game runs at 1.5 fps at any screen before actual gameplay. It used to be somewhat slow even before you changed the title screen and creation, but now it is down to that. It reacts to any commands at that rate also.

The gameplay performance is at:
Standing still:
6300 triangles
52 fps with
12 skipped frames
(I believe actual framerate is something else)

Moving:
6000-7000 triangles
52 fps
15 skipped frames
(actual framerate is around 5 fps)

Before frame skipping I think it was at 7 fps and before speed enchancements it was at 5 fps.

Other things:
-------------
I don't get any textures at all. Just albinoes with occasional gray swords that I noticed.

The mouse cursor goes invisible when I enter fullscreen.

Hope this helps.

[Toady One]

I put up a version yesterday that allows you to turn all of the features (including frame skipping) off, so we can get to the root of the problems easier.  Any data gleaned from this is appreciated.

Darkon, does your card go up to 24 bits or 32 bits for color modes?  I'd hope to consolidate your and Demon's texture problems into one headache  To get the actual frame rate, you just take the FPS and divide by (# of frames skipped + 1)...  I have it the way it is now so that FPS doesn't jump all over the place based on how many frames were skipped.  Basically, it counts frames that were skipped as being displayed to keep things uniform.

So the critters are all white?  What about the ground?  (in the new version it depends on altitude, unless you turn off the "colored ground" option, in which case it will be white, but textured -- if things are working).

I hope I can figure these things out.  If somebody having speed problems tries the new version (36d) let me know how the title screen works now, since I got rid of frame-skipping there.  If it is still slow, then it can only be two things

1) the bleeding calcs
2) the drawing of the image

Neither are all that involved.  It's very strange that there's a slow down at all.  I'll keep looking at it.

[Toady One]

I found something on the web about Voodoo cards not accepting really long textures, which is how I stored my creatures textures (like Voodoo goes up to 256x256, and the critter textures are something like 32x512).  That might be why they aren't displaying.  I'll cut them up differently and see if that changes things -- I'll need to do it anyway, eventually, for some other reasons.

[Darkon]

The card does support 32 bit mode and I tried. No change in creature textures and my mouse still hides in fullscreen when I try.
It did have a funny effect on game colors when I changed from 16 to 32 bit while playing, but it eased after next time I ran the game.

The ground is properly textured and changes color according to altitude. Stars did show up and the day turned to night nicely.

The oh so wonderful trickle of blood is now just slower to trickle down. No noticeable change to performance.

Game speed is the same.I get about 6 fps at 6300 triangles.

[Toady One]

All right -- so maybe it is just the voodoo texture width limitation, if only creatures are being affected.  That should be easy to fix.

I also found a few articles on the web about OpenGL and drawing bitmaps -- apparently things like drawing a simple bitmap (like the title screen) become incredibly bloated in GL.  There were some suggestions about optimizing performance on this, and we'll see if there is a change after I follow them.

I have a few ideas about the mouse disappearing, but since it doesn't disappear here, it will be hard to test  I'll put in a guess and put up a new release (maybe tonight, depending on how long taxes take), and try some other fixes for the problems many people have been having.

[Toady One]

I put up Yet Another Version that might do something for the title screen.  I followed some procedures that I found on the web, anyway.  Let me know if that helps at all.

I also tried to force the mouse to display in fullscreen mode, but I have no idea if it will do anything for computers having those problems.

The texture display errors are a bit more involved, so I'll take a stab at those in a little while.  It's getting late tonight (relative to the time I have to get up tomorrow).

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Darkon]

No speed changes to the title screen and the cursor still doesn't care to show itself on fullscreen.

Noticed one thing when I was slaughtering some evil leprechauns with my behemoth. One little bugger hit my toe and I immediately fell down. It happened again on another game so I guess there might be something wrong there. Then again it might be so that behemoths are just barely capable of keeping their primary stance.

[Toady One]

All right.  I've been reading some more and I think I've got the title screen figured out -- basically, on "older" video cards (meaning just a few years) the OpenGL function for drawing bitmaps is not supported (meaning it is slow).  The recommendation is to put the bitmap on a polygon and display that instead!  This is totally f*cking stupid -- normally you don't even need a 3D accelerator to display a BITMAP.  MOREOVER, on the Voodoo cards, as I mentioned before, there is a 256 width/height limit on the texture size, which is smaller than the title screen!

What this means is that to display the title screen, I need to break it up into NINE SQUARE POLYGONS and display those instead.  That's just ridiculous, but I'll try it soon.  I'll also make a configuration file to turn this on and off -- it might be worse on other cards, especially in that the textures might be slightly distorted compared to the bitmap.

When was the last time you (Darkon) downloaded video drivers for your card?  Is it possible that the bitmap routine is now supported?  Basically, when the routine is unsupported it goes 40 times slower than when it is supported.

I wonder if I can bypass OpenGl and just do a direct screen write.  That would be the fastest thing to do here.

The thing I tried for the mouse was really simple-minded.  I'll do some web surfer later.  Same for Demon's texture problems.

I've been noticing a lot of trouble with stances lately -- in particular, many creatures can't even maintain them (regardless of battle damage).  I think it might have to do with some changes I made to make appendage sizes more variable.

[Toady One]

The Official OpenGL FAQ says that OpenGL's 2D graphics aren't supported by any video card around the year 2000 or before, because video card companies didn't think it was important.  I think most modern cards support OpenGL's 2D functions now.  All of these hassles because the hardware manufacturers were lazy or cheap.

I'm having trouble cutting things up into polygons -- you can't change polygon textures directly so far as I know, which means the bleeding/cutable screen would need to be scrapped if I change from 2D to 3D.

I put upYet Another Very Similar Version That Won't Help that includes another suggested tweak (this time by the OpenGL people themselves).

It really might come down to having two different title screens.  Note also many portions of the interface are drawn using OpenGL's 2D routines, because, as a sensible person, I assumed drawing a bitmap would be faster than drawing a textured polygon.  When I make the alternate title screen, I'll also make the same config file option change all of the 2D functions into their 3D equivalents.  People who aren't suffering from these problems shouldn't notice any changes, because nothing will be changed.

This might lead to an increased FPS all around on "older" cards.  According to opengl.org, for this issue an "older" card is anything that cost less than $500 in early 2000.  Twisted.

[Darkon]

I had drivers around year 2000 and fiddled with 3 other drivers and none did help that I noticed. I settled for one that is dated at 16.07.2001 for now.

Those e and f versions didn't have any effect on anything that I noticed.

I don't mind much about slow title screen. Textures missing on creatures is bit more nastier. Especially when you're surrounded by few big monsters and all you see is white around.

Come to think of it the graphics come second to the actual game. If I need better visuals I'll just go upgrade my comp.

[Toady One]

The actual game is more important, of course -- I started getting worried about the title screen when Demon said he couldn't enter a seed because it was too slow.  That's a problem.  I'll try to fix your creature textures tonight.

Demon, I'll need the specs on your video card before I can fix your texture problems -- I'm not sure what's causing them.  There are so many differences between individual brands it's just plain aggravating.

If things go as planned, after tonight I'll be able to return to the regular schedule instead of fussing over graphics.  There are a few more things I'm going to put in tonight as well, speed-wise.

Then it's back to creature growths and save/load.

[Demon]

Okay, I've dug up the info about this computer...  All I can figure out is that its an 'Intel Direct AGP'...  Sorry if that dosent help, but its the only thing I can see in the system panel that might be useful.  The printed computer documentation is too user friendly to be of any help!    

[Toady One]

Wow.  It must have been scrapping the pixel dithering

So the major concerns for tonight graphics-wise are the textures?  All right.

How do people figure out what kind of video cards they have?  I can right click on the desktop and pull up the screen settings (where you change resolution), and click on Advanced.  Then there are some tabs related to my video card.

[Toady One]

I added the configuration file and hopefully fixed some of those stance problems.  With the config file, the game takes a step toward being more roguelike.  Even the original Rogue had one.  You could set up the name of a fruit, like this:

menu=on
score=rogue.s
save=rogue.sav
screen=fast
fruit=slime mold
drive=C

My config file is more complicated than that already  You can set the game to start in fullscreen, or with a new trimmed down title screen (added that too), and you can set most of the other options as well.

I'll try and get those texture problems tomorrow.  Then I'm back on track.  Finally...