special effects button to increase performance
Moderators: Moleman, Kwijibo, Luna
- tekkamanblade
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2008 5:51 am
- Location: preaching on a street corner near you
special effects button to increase performance
PREAMBLE
since space lasers cannot damage npcs, does starport really need to draw the bullets or even do the firing calculations at all? i was thinking about that and the thrusters and explosions turning on and off all the time when i realized something.
the calculations determining whether or not i have the power to spare drawing background motion, thrusters, and other "special effects" actually takes up even more precious processing power!
IDEA
so my idea is a button in options menu that turns those animations (and the calculations to determine whether or not to draw them) on or off once and for all.
HOW IT WORKS
if you have the button turned off, you never see "special effects" including the fancy explosions, thrusters, background movement, and lasers firing on npcs. in addition, no background calculations are left running to determine whether or not the effects should be turned on or off every 5 seconds.
as for leaving it on... should you see the special effects no mater what, eliminating all need for the special effects toggler background calculations entirely? OR should it work exactly as it does now, turning them off if it feels you need the frames. i guess a third option on the button could be "as now" and eliminate our need to make that choice, but i'd personally prefer to have off mean off and on mean on and just ditch the togglers all together.
CONCLUSION
i only mention it because i NEED to squeeze out every single frame per second i can spare. currently if i get in visual range of an npc attacking my laser wall my frame rate goes to zero and starport locks up.
i know that toonces isn't the only one to blame here, and im not even thinking that. my shitty network and computer are my real problem, but i figured maybe enough of you had similar shitty systems. (either that or super bad donkey systems that mysteriously turn off crucial thrusters/explosions anyway preventing you from accurately determining whether your last nuke hit or not.)
since space lasers cannot damage npcs, does starport really need to draw the bullets or even do the firing calculations at all? i was thinking about that and the thrusters and explosions turning on and off all the time when i realized something.
the calculations determining whether or not i have the power to spare drawing background motion, thrusters, and other "special effects" actually takes up even more precious processing power!
IDEA
so my idea is a button in options menu that turns those animations (and the calculations to determine whether or not to draw them) on or off once and for all.
HOW IT WORKS
if you have the button turned off, you never see "special effects" including the fancy explosions, thrusters, background movement, and lasers firing on npcs. in addition, no background calculations are left running to determine whether or not the effects should be turned on or off every 5 seconds.
as for leaving it on... should you see the special effects no mater what, eliminating all need for the special effects toggler background calculations entirely? OR should it work exactly as it does now, turning them off if it feels you need the frames. i guess a third option on the button could be "as now" and eliminate our need to make that choice, but i'd personally prefer to have off mean off and on mean on and just ditch the togglers all together.
CONCLUSION
i only mention it because i NEED to squeeze out every single frame per second i can spare. currently if i get in visual range of an npc attacking my laser wall my frame rate goes to zero and starport locks up.
i know that toonces isn't the only one to blame here, and im not even thinking that. my shitty network and computer are my real problem, but i figured maybe enough of you had similar shitty systems. (either that or super bad donkey systems that mysteriously turn off crucial thrusters/explosions anyway preventing you from accurately determining whether your last nuke hit or not.)
- tekkamanblade
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2008 5:51 am
- Location: preaching on a street corner near you
its intentional NOT a glitch, and actually isn't such a bad thing. i just feel that it should apply to a wider range of effects (like lasers firing on npcs and potentially unneeded coding in the background that you never see or realize is there).
toonces gets bitched at more than you'd guess, lots of posts get locked and deleted from forums before we can check back in. plus there's the in-game /idea /bug and 3 or 4 support emails full of crybaby crap he has to deal with daily.
he already knows about our various performance issues, and ptt is really trying hard to help us solve them. this idea just helps them know how we need to be helped, since they are too busy between their real lives and attempting to muster calm and polite responses to trash talk from idiots like me to actually play their own game and come up with great ideas like this.
toonces gets bitched at more than you'd guess, lots of posts get locked and deleted from forums before we can check back in. plus there's the in-game /idea /bug and 3 or 4 support emails full of crybaby crap he has to deal with daily.
he already knows about our various performance issues, and ptt is really trying hard to help us solve them. this idea just helps them know how we need to be helped, since they are too busy between their real lives and attempting to muster calm and polite responses to trash talk from idiots like me to actually play their own game and come up with great ideas like this.
i like this idea too. I never realized that certain effects were shut off intentionally...i always thought it was a glitch with my computer.
It certainly works, and i think that a button would be nice. Although, if a computer is lagging with the effects turned on, they should still automatically turn off, to keep players from gaining advantage from their lag.
It certainly works, and i think that a button would be nice. Although, if a computer is lagging with the effects turned on, they should still automatically turn off, to keep players from gaining advantage from their lag.
This shouldn't even be necessary...games that have hundreds of lasers firing in three dimensions have been around for years (anyone ever play FreeSpace 2? 1999 now...). If your FPS drops too low to play just because you wandered too close to some 2D lasers, there's something wrong with the program, especially since it didn't used to do this to many people.
KG
KG
- tekkamanblade
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2008 5:51 am
- Location: preaching on a street corner near you
toast wrote:i like this idea too. I never realized that certain effects were shut off intentionally...i always thought it was a glitch with my computer.
It certainly works, and i think that a button would be nice. Although, if a computer is lagging with the effects turned on, they should still automatically turn off, to keep players from gaining advantage from their lag.
viewtopic.php?p=176397&highlight=#176397CaffeinatedCoder wrote:If you're lagging graphically (IE it takes you longer to update your screen) its also taking you longer to send packets. IE more lag. We stop drawing thrusters and other things in the hopes to speed up your framerate and lower your lag.
Its not really a bug, more of a feature
/pwnt