Aurel's Forum Posts

  • South Africa here

    I'm amazed by how much talented devs I'm meeting coming from South Africa lately. "Desktop Dungeon" and "Broforce" are only some examples.

    (also, I'm based in France, but you've already guessed that, thanks to my still in beta English).

    Thank you very much — for the super fast test!

    Now... WANNA PLAY WITH THE NEW TOY, WANNA PLAY WITH THE NEW TOY!!! : ))

    (I'm done with stupid pictures, sorry about that. Won't happen until the next awesome C2 update)

    Penelope is set to be released on Steam mid-january... you just saved my dev life!!!

    RIGHT ON TIME !!! <3 <3 <3

  • You can use lerp() to set volume from zero to current with boolean to pause.

    Holy sh, thanks for that. It never crossed my mind, so simple!

  • All these threads about jerkiness and destroy/desactivate are really helpful.

    Thanks a lot for the explanations, I'll try to change a few things and see how it goes : )

  • That's pretty interesting!

    I'd be very curious on how this method can be applied on a full game with tons of particules, trails, and projectiles, with different settings on each.

    It sounds like our games could get a perf boost, but at the same time, It sounds like a *hell* of a work to make everything this way too...

    I get how to apply this on simple things like rain, but how would you apply this to a firework explosion where each bullet has its own angle for example?

  • For sqiddster and for people making GPU demanding games: I'm trying something very simple to adress the missing collisions problems.

    ( I'm assuming your game has large collision bars/triggers)

    • Saving the important elements position on a regular basis in a local variable
    • If the important elements overlap a dummy outside the normal area, replace the element to the previous position.

    Seems to work ok for now. Need more test to be sure everything is fine, but maybe that could help some of you?

  • Bumping this to add even more *puppy dog eyes* than —

    Look, that's a whole army of super cute beggars here! (* v *)

  • Maybe shader use also has an impact?

    That, and all the other things only found in a real game like object creation + access to textures files, scrolling / camera zoom, Z ordering, blending modes, spritefonts updates, etc?

  • What's the GPU hardware that is affected and not affected? Maybe it's specific to particular models/vendors.

    Thant a lot for reading this and trying to understand the problem, much appreciated : )

    I've now done the sqiddster test on 4 different laptops, all are giving nearly the same results with different brands (ATI, NVidia or integrated graphic cards). Also, I'm working on the game for one year and a half now, with more than 200 playtesters, and i've seen the game running on many, many computers. If the game fails to run at 60fps, it never runs with a "smooth" frameskip like the one we can see with the CPU throttling. Again, most of the time, as soon as the game reaches 45fps, it's very choppy and no more enjoyable.

    Both Airscape and Penelope use WebGL, aren't these two tests relevant to you? (no bad intentions behind this question, that's a real one)

    I'm more than ok to run new tests on different computers, but I really think we'll get the same results: on non-gaming computers, if the game is heavy on the GPU, the frameskip process doesn't work that great.

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  • Alright, full results. Featuring a serious methodology this time.

    - All events related to timescale have been deleted (100% sure!)

    • I made the same actions in the same level in the game. This is not a very demanding part of the game, this was made on the very first race.
    • I tested on a strong gaming PC, and on a regular laptop. Both have a dedicated graphic card and can play recent 2D or 3D games, the first one with all graphic settings to max, the second one with all settings to medium/low. (I can provide the full specs if needed)

    - the regular laptop has only one graphic card, so there's no matter of dual drivers.

    • Both computers can run the game at 60fps if no artifical lag applied, even if the classic laptop can make the game drop to 55fps from time to time.

    A >>>>>> "The Next Penelope" on the powerful computer, featuring a killer graphic card:

    CPU Lag: (no problemo)

    dt: 0.036 | FPS: 31
dt: 0.037 | FPS: 31
dt: 0.036 | FPS: 31
dt: 0.03799 | FPS: 31
dt: 0.03499 | FPS: 31
dt: 0.03499 | FPS: 27
dt: 0.035 | FPS: 27
dt: 0.06599 | FPS: 27
dt: 0.03499 | FPS: 27
dt: 0.037 | FPS: 27
dt: 0.03399 | FPS: 27
dt: 0.03499 | FPS: 27
[/code:16jwcij8]

GPU Lag: (no problemo)
[code:16jwcij8]
dt: 0.03399 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.033 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.02199 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.03 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.03099 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.034 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.02799 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.03 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.033 | FPS: 33
dt: 0.03399 | FPS: 33
[/code:16jwcij8]

[b]B >>>>>> "The Next Penelope" on the classic laptop, featuring a standard graphic card:[/b]

CPU Lag: (no problemo)
[code:16jwcij8]dt: 0.03099 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.03299 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.03399 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.039 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.04699 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.037 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.038 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.03899 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.04599 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.037 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.038 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.03299 | FPS: 30
[/code:16jwcij8]

GPU Lag: Problemo!
[code:16jwcij8]
dt: 0.03399 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.03399 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.059 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.02799 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.014 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.01799 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.014 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.03299 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.018 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.06499 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.033 | FPS: 30
[/code:16jwcij8]

Full logs and full specs available if needed.

  • I'm pretty sure I disabled this thing before running the test. If something is shady, that could be a slowdown special effect triggered without me noticing it.

    I'll run the test again with absolutely all events related to timescale disabled, so we can be sure the results are clean.

    EDIT: oh, and I'll try on 2 very different PC, too. Maybe the hardware could have an impact on the test.

  • Yes, the game has a varying timescale for slowdown effects.

    That said, I made sure to not trigger one of these slowdown effects during this test. Maybe it has been triggered for a few frames and I couldn't notice it?

    I can desactivate this effect and run the test again if it seems unreal to you. Or even give my sources to Ashley if needed, no problem.

    But even without the stats, you can see very clearly how the game plays very well at "real" 30FPS, and how the game is ugly during GPU lags.

  • So, here are the results with the test made by sqiddster attached to Penelope. I'm amazed how much you can feel the difference!

    GPU log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2sgic4qi399t2 ... 0.txt?dl=0

    30 FPS with GPU lag: the game is not enjoyable at all.

    dt: 0.03299 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.05099 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.013 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.03099 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.036 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.02799 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.033 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.03599 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.035 | FPS: 30
dt: 0.089 | FPS: 28
dt: 0.02199 | FPS: 28
dt: 0.01 | FPS: 28
[/code:2rpxni1i]

CPU log: [url=https://www.dropbox.com/s/z61jrzfgn08cvj6/dtLogCPU30.txt?dl=0]https://www.dropbox.com/s/z61jrzfgn08cv ... 0.txt?dl=0[/url]
30 FPS with [b]CPU lag: as expected, the game is fully playable.[/b]

[code:2rpxni1i]dt: 0.036 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.03599 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.04 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.03499 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.036 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.03799 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.038 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.03499 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.036 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.03599 | FPS: 29
dt: 0.04 | FPS: 28
[/code:2rpxni1i]

  • — Oh, thanks! That's very kind of you.

    Sadly, I'm not sure I'll be given the rights to access to the forums, though.

    I'm still negociating with the Nintendo support, but they are very strict about who goes where.

    Newsgroups people and forum people don't have the right to talk in the same place for some (understandable) reasons of them.