by fzammetti » Sep 10, 2003 @ 3:19pm
anonymous: It slows down right from the start. The first title screen, which is just a bltfast of a single 240x320 image (done every frame), is down around 27FPS, as opposed to the 40FPS it's supposed to run at, and does run at, on my E-125.
I also notice that the frame rate fluctuates quite a bit between 25FPS and 30FPS. It's not as steady as I would expect it to be, even within that range. And I'm talking about just sitting and looking at the title screen, not doing anything. Why wouldn't it at least be a stable FPS there, even if it was a low FPS?
I guess the good thing is that it does stay in that range regardless of what's going on in the game, for the most part. One or two parts drop it down to 23 or 24, but it generally stays within that 25-30 range.
egarayblas: There's really not much in the way of eye candy to remove, pretty much everything that's in there is integral to the game. It's already optimized in the sense that I'm not updating every frame things that never change. In actuality, each frame is always redrawing a 200x200 section of the screen, other parts of the screen only change with user interaction. The frame rate isn't effected by that user interaction to any noticeable degree either because it runs at the same speed whether I'm just watching it or actually playing.
StarFury: I may take you up on that offer, just to see what another device pulls off. I just can't stop thinking that it's ridiculous that an E-125 blows the doors off a brand-new device. It's absolutely nuts!
I'm just going to have to implement the time-based method warmi described, I don't see any other option. I mean, these devices effectively bave a theoretical maximum frame rate of 50FPS in effect (20ms for the memory->backbuffer blit) and that's if you were doing nothing at all each frame. So, could I optimize my game a bit and get the frame rate up? Almost certainly yes. Am I going to be able to get it to run at the 40FPS it's designed for? Almost certainly no. So, I'm left with the inescapable fact that a 3 or 4-year old device runs the game better and I have to do a bunch of extra coding I didn't plan for.
Bleh either way.
...and so I said to Mr. Gates: "$640 billion should be enough for anyone!"