offscreenkill bug?

[MatMan]

I've recently added something that needs the use of entities with the offscreenkill to be set high (whole stage, Iv set it to about 160000).

With about 5+ entities (with high offscreenkill) on the screen I have a huge fps drop.

I have also tried those same entities without the offscreenkill and I get no fps drop.

Is there a possible fix for this because it really eats up alot of fps?

[utunnels]

Perhaps it was just your imagination or something unrelated.

Can't find anything strange on offscreenkill.

[MatMan]

I'm pretty sure its this.

I landed up writing a decoration spawner, so it lands up spawning grass, trees etc. The decorations is a obstacle no bbox's and only has idle thats on repeat after a delay of 120.

When I remove the offscreenkill from those entities then there is no slow down.

O well, it might just be my pc. I'll do an upload of the game soonish and see if anyone else is getting the problem.

[utunnels]

Or the fps counter is not accurate, it tends to just for example, from 200 to 160.

Sometimes a small change will cause a huge different, but there's no visible slowdown.

BTW, maybe the entities themselves have scaling? Or leave large shadows?

Anything related to transforms (like gfxshadow, rotate, scale, etc) will cause fps drop, depends on how many and how big your objects are.

[MatMan]

Unfortunately Im not talking about the fps counter, I'm talking about there is a major frame drop visually and reactively. As in it gets to the point where if you holding in right then the character will be here then 50 pixels to the right the next frame.

Most of the decorations are tiny. The size of flowers and there is only one dead tree (which i also removed) smaller than the average character.

There are also no transforms of any kind. No scripts.

[utunnels]

That is strange.

Maybe you can try draw entity counters on screen to see if there's a spam of spawn. Currently there's no max entities limit, so it is possible there's a bug in the spawn script but the engine doesn't crash.

[MatMan]

Checked for that aswell.

Got log entries everywhere and the generator script is clean (and very basic) and is limited to the stage's total width.

[utunnels]

Just in case, how did you set offscreenkill? Using script or in entity txt?

[MatMan]

in the entity text.

(Sorry, but i didn't bring anything today, will have to bring it on monday)

[utunnels]

No problem.

I'm just wondering, since I can't seem to reproduce this issue on any mods at hand.

[MatMan]

Hi UT.

I've done a upload of MixMasters which has the decoration system implemented.

If you can plese take a look at it and let me know if it causes a slow down on your machine.

The default decoration has been set pretty spaced (need to unpak and edit the level.c file) out but even with so few entities it causes a huge slow down on my machine.


EDIT......
The MixMasters I uploaded is missing a file in the pak (single image), so its not working. (Will try upload it tomorrow)
Sorry
Re-uploaded

[utunnels]

Well I think you need to optimize memory usage. My PC almost has problem running it.
I have only 1GB ram, but your mod costs more than half of it and thus it takes ages to load.

So currently it is really hard to tell if the slow down if caused by that. I tried the first level, it almost froze at the beginning and first several enemis, but went smoother after that.

Besides I notice it even takes a long time to unload everything on exit, man.

BTW, if you want to free an array which was used to store strings, you need to NULL the elements before calling free. Though it only causes a small memory usage boost.

[MatMan]

I got 2gb (usually have about 1.3gb free when i start it), so  memory isn't a problem for me but my cpu has to run at 25% of its capacity cause the bloody thing over heats otherwise (needs a fan replacement and that ain't cheep). If i set it to 100% then the game runs fine (till the machine shuts down). Its just that the offscreen takes a huge chunk of cpu when its used.

Code: [Select]

Besides I notice it even takes a long time to unload everything on exit, man.Yeah, thats why I just taskbar and end the process 

Code: [Select]

BTW, if you want to free an array which was used to store strings, you need to NULL the elements before calling free. Though it only causes a small memory usage boost.Oh, didn't know that, thanx.

Edit.....
By the way, set the game to Old School Friendly (will become the default setting) mode as this will only load 3-5 characters per stage, so the loads times have been drastically shortened on start up.

Ps, You should try playing MixMasters on a SSD drive. Man, there no wait time on load.