About unlimited framerate mode.

Is it bad to release a game using unlimited framerate mode? If so, can someone tell me why?

I find that in unlimited framerate mode your controller/keyboard input is registered quicker, the game is slightly faster, and the whole thing just seems more responsive. I don't notice any decrease in display quality or skipping or anything either. So long as I use timedelta well then it should be fine, right?

Is it bad to release a game using unlimited framerate mode? If so, can someone tell me why?

I find that in unlimited framerate mode your controller/keyboard input is registered quicker, the game is slightly faster, and the whole thing just seems more responsive. I don't notice any decrease in display quality or skipping or anything either. So long as I use timedelta well then it should be fine, right?

Im not an expert but i have read the following-

Framerate mode: Controls how the game framerate runs:

V-Synced: The screen updates in sync with the monitor's refresh        rate. The best quality and smoothest display. Games should all use this option. See TimeDelta for related issues.

Unlimited: The screen updates as fast as possible with no waiting. Intended for testing your game's performance.

Fixed: Use the FPS property to manually specify a framerate. This will not be V-Synced so your game will exhibit tearing and poorer quality display.

In unlimited framerate mode the cpu sends all orders to the gpu as soon as all calculations are done. This can produce side effects like tearing and your game is dependent on a fast pc with a fast graphics card.

While you may experience more responsiveness of your game, another player with lower specs will not. So every player will experience something else. You could of course define some minimum system requirements (preferably the ones of your developer system) to make sure, no one is disadvanteged.

In v-synced mode the cpu does its calculations and then waits for the vertical refresh of the monitor before sending the orders. This way no side effects will occur and all players will experience the same game speed/responsiveness down to the weakest system that is able to produce the v-synced fps (e.g. 60 fps on most LED/LCD monitors). Only when the system isn't able to keep up with v-synced, it will suffer disadvantages of slower responsiveness. That's what unlimited framerate is good for. To see how much headroom there is. It gives you a measurement of how much slower a pc might be to still be able to play the same way as you experienced it in v-synced mode.

Overall: If you don't care about the disadvantages and the side effects for slower PCs, you might as well use the unlimited framerate mode.

Actualy, V-sync has some disadvantages too. On different PCs, game may acts differently, most critical exemple is variation of jump height in platformer depending on user's monitor freshrate

Actualy, V-sync has some disadvantages too. On different PCs, game may acts differently, most critical exemple is variation of jump height in platformer depending on user's monitor freshrate

But that's a problem with the platform behavior, not with the technical aspects of v-synced or unlimited framerate mode.

I didn't work much with the platform behavior, but if the jump height depends on the monitor's refresh rate in v-synced mode, then how much more must this be influenced in unlimited mode! One player manages 1000 fps and jumps 100 pixels high, the other manages 100 fps and jumps only 10 pixels high?

It's not only platform behavior, other motion-based behaviors suffers from this disadvantage too.

It's more noticeable with lower FPS instead higher though. So unlimited mode not really affects jump height too much.

( Actually, I just checked it right now, and I don't know if it was semi-fixed, but looks like fps dependency somehow reduced now. I think year ago it was more critical)

I think I'm using FIXED in my game, its similar to Unlimited in that theres almost no input lag - everything is more responsive. Theres a bit of tearing, but if the player wants less they can bump up the FPS of the game I figure in an option (theres a set FPS action thing for fixed).

Since theres no option to turn off v-sync during runtime, I think the only option for action/fast paced games based games like platformers/etc is to use Fixed framerate so theres less input lag.

I think the only time you should use v-sync is if its a turn based, or a game where precise quick movements isn't a key part of it.

I dunno, aspal. I just tried a simple game (you move a simple snake sprite around using the 8dir plugin) with fixed framerate... I think it tore/lagged slightly if I did so much as turn the thing too quickly. I can understand your reasoning there, but I'd prefer using V-synced for my own games.

Professionally speaking (and let it be known that I'm no professional!), you want to keep the input delay at less than half a second (called the "half-second rule" for obvious reasons). This might not apply to, say, music sequencers (in which case the latency should be about 4 times lower than in a regular game), but if one framerate mode violates this rule, you should try switching it to the other.