Warning : Slow moving objects

Please test the following code : http://www.indiepath.com/tim/main.rar

It's a small demo of BlitzMax being forced to used the DirectX software renderer. If you have a machine (probably a laptop) that does not have 3D support then please let me know if this works.

I warn you that it's really slow - for the moment :)

Tim.

Microsoft have stated themselves it is only to test the correct output of your dx code, which it seems to be doing a lot better than their opengl software implementation. But somehow it is even slower?

What key do you hit to exit???

@Skid, The docs I read suggest that the Reference driver should be used for debug purposes and that RGB, MMX and even RAMP (8Bit) can be used in a live environment.

I find this faster than the OpenGL implementation by far and that's even with the Latest nVidia drivers being forced to do software render.

I've plugged this in to my dirty rects code, that still needs optimising, and it runs very well indeed. In fact drawing pixmaps using the software render is exactly the same speed as when using hardware (but that's probably becuase Pixmaps are a software implementation).

Totally unusable on my fastest pc. Probably about 0.01 frames a second. Hold down esc to quit.

That's kind of what the title of this thread suggests.

To be honest I thought it was another slight on the max2d driver.

I'm getting a good 20-30fps in my game using SDL. It uses a hell of a lot of alpha blending. This is on an S3 card with a P2-400mhz. When you check out my merging dirty rect code (think metaballs for rects) you'll be all geeked out.

I actually really love messing about with all this 2D stuff. It takes me back to blitz on the amiga, and pulling all sorts of stunts to get it smooth. For me, I have the trusty P2-400, so its like a fixed hardware platform.

After messing with SDL for a while, I gotta say its worth getting SDL semi-officially running with Blitzmax as a backup driver esp. linux

Hi rob, I'd be interested to see the performance of SDL when doing the same as the code above.

1) Tiling and scrolling a full background
2) Overlaying an alphablended sprite, approx 50% of screen.
3) Dynamic scaling and additive blending of alphablended sprite.

The reason I am approaching this from the DirectX software angle is because I can use all pre-existing command sets, I get all the DX7 functionality and sw/hw implementation of OGL on the MAC is not an issue so I don't need to worry about it.

Yes I'll have to wrap most of the commands to deal with the dirtyrects code but hey, that's simple stuff.

So do you guys really think it's worth supporting the software only market even though some of the big portal games are 3D card only?

There is no additive blending in sdl. In fact the only blending is alpha blending.

The SW opengl on mac is very slow indeed from what I hear...

Man, why is it so slow? Is it running on Vista technology?

Ok, now faster moving objects with dynamic alpha, lightblending etc etc etc...

I get a constant 160FPS on a p4 2.8Ghz - it's software do the card is irrelevant. Occasionally it drops to about 120 when I make everything move at once.

Please post your FPS here (press "S" to see the rects in action)

Link : http://indiepath.com/tim/dr3.rar

both, main.rar and dr3.rar only pop up and then exit without any error message. IBM Thinkpad without 3D hardware, win98, dx7.

Immediate shut down on p2-400 with S3 card.

It is also 20-80fps on my dual core x1900xt rig.

I need one of those shitty GFX card to test on.

I'll sell you one for £100

don't bother guys, it's lame. you were both telling me a few weeks to get on with my game will I fiddled with various small framework issues ...

But of course!

With the dr3 example I get 24-85 FPS (very unpredictable, the numbers are all over the place) on my Athlon 2800+

The first example at the top of the thread only gives 1 frame every 2-3 seconds or so on the same machine.

don't bother guys, it's lame. you were both telling me a few weeks to get on with my game will I fiddled with various small framework issues ...

Multitasking my dear watson. And besides I don't feel like doing and *REAL* work this week.

lol, me neither but I got to!

I purchased a shite 2D GFX card and got this example working. I was staggered by the result 350-400 FPS! Now that's what I call music.

I've also been playing with this example http://www.indiepath.com/tim/fireworks.rar and I get 50-100fps with 500-1000 particles. This example does not use dirty rects or have any optimisations. (btw it's faster on non-3d cards)

Now can SDL do 1000 alphablended/lighblended particles at 100FPS?

I don't know, I'm pushing 3,000 fps myself

Pushing 3,000 FPS with what? You mentioned earlier in this thread that SDL was running at 20-30 FPS in your game?!?

I managed to optimise stuff. Thats no blending though and just the background block blitted - yes I stretched the truth an amazing amount :)

:)

Actually does my example actually work on your test machine?

Yep, and well enough: 50-300fps :) Haven't tried it with my other cards (I have loads of trash cards guaranteed to break stuff).

Cool, please try it with the other cards and then I'll post an optimised version that uses my dirty rects implementation.