FreeOrion V0.2 is looking good!!!

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leiavoia · #31 Post by **leiavoia** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 8:11 pm

No it's not innefficient, it's just that it is (probably) set up for frame-independent movement and animation. The program will draw as many frames as possible by your computer. That means that your CPU should be throttled all the way up to 100% at all times. If your CPU can't handle that, i blame your cooling system, not the program! This is common for many games with this type of game loop.

It should be noted that for some games like TBS games with mostly static screen content, another approach is to only redraw when required. That can reduce cpu load by a huge amount.

All games can also cap frame rates and sleep() when the computer is capable of running faster than it needs to to produce a decent look and feel.

Rob · #32 Post by **Rob** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 8:40 pm

leiavoia wrote: All games can also cap frame rates and sleep() when the computer is capable of running faster than it needs to to produce a decent look and feel.

Please integrate such things. It is a waste of CPU resources to run with full power all the time. I dont need 300 frames per second. I use to play TBS games and my CPU is not used to be at 100% all the time. I have a passive cooling, cause it is totaly silent, I hate the neverending sound of the fan... and I will not buy a water cooling just to play Free Orion...

And I belive I am not the only one with problems of this kind. Some will use it with lap tops and they will have the Energy level of their accumulators going down rapidly, cause CPU is at 100% all the time.

leiavoia · #33 Post by **leiavoia** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 10:39 pm

Rob, normally i would balk at such a demand, but given the type of game, i would agree with you. A 60fps or even a 30fps cap would be plenty fine. But i'm not the one doing development.

Perhaps it could be throttled during combat and animation sequences?

Rob · #34 Post by **Rob** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 6:03 am

A speed cap? It would be very nice. Hope this is not going to be hard to implement...
I like the game. It looks fine. Interface is also fine. So I dont want to miss it...

Your brother from Fatal Universe

noelte · #35 Post by **noelte** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 7:34 am

there is aready a speed cap set to 60FPS. We could easyly make it available to be set pe rcommand line or config file. To be honest it's not the whole story, but it's an beginning.

Rob · #36 Post by **Rob** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 6:13 pm

Excellent!

guiguibaah · #37 Post by **guiguibaah** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 11:38 pm

... Just don't make it as bloated and buggy as Civ3 play-the-world multiplayer is / was. Boy did I get shystered twice by infogrames.

Marijn · #38 Post by **Marijn** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 12:36 pm

Is anything ever animated on the screen in FO? If not, there no reason to do 'frames per second' at all, just redraw when you get new input. If there is, offer an option to turn off the animations. I think that a turn based game like this should run properly on anything over 100 mhz (maybe without all the graphical niceties). Of course, performance isn't too much of an issue in such an early state, but it should be kept in mind.

miu · #39 Post by **miu** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 12:49 pm

Marjin: By how it is planned: Anything animated on screen? Yes - very much, with lots of transparencies and realtime 3D. So I hope you have decent graph-card

utilae · #40 Post by **utilae** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 7:26 am

Marijn wrote:Is anything ever animated on the screen in FO? If not, there no reason to do 'frames per second'

Capping the frames per second also prevents the game from running at lightning speed (things move tooo fast to control or even see) on fast computers, which would make the game unplayable.

noelte · #41 Post by **noelte** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 7:38 am

utilae wrote:Capping the frames per second also prevents the game from running at lightning speed (things move tooo fast to control or even see) on fast computers, which would make the game unplayable.

No. FPS has no effect on speed.

utilae · #42 Post by **utilae** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 8:49 am

I must have been thinking of something else, lol.

Impaler · #43 Post by **Impaler** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 9:22 am

I know the effect your talking about Utilae, I get it when playing Panzer General (great game by the way). I think its the calculations per second that are causing that to happen so we should include some manor or preventing that was well so in 20 years FO isn't having the same problem when we play it on our Pentium 9 TerraHertz computers!

#44 Post by **Geoff the Medio** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 9:48 am

This is not an issue for FO. Modern games doing animation and the like base what you see during graphics frame X on the time of frame X, not the number of frames that have occured. Older computer games didn't have easily usable timers or extra processor speed to spend figuring out what the exact simulation time was, so just updated as fast as they could, which included the physics/simulation/ai/graphics.

Think of the clock display on your computer... it doesn't matter what your monitor refresh rate is or how fast your processor is... it still displays the correct time... which changes at the correct rate.

Yoghurt · #45 Post by **Yoghurt** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 11:24 am

Besides that, FO is open source, unlike PG, so people get modify it if the need arises.

FreeOrion V0.2 is looking good!!!

please