Particles vs. Performance

Spoony

I was just considering plug-in design and the NOVA particle and ionization system. I was considering the performace issues of having lots of particles, pure particle projectiles and lots of ionization and other on-the-fly screen effects. I could do a test but I figured others had probably already figured out the performance to effect ratio. If not, I guess I'll have to do the tests...

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The Evil Spoonman - I Am Everywhere, I Know All
Albatross!!!
"Life is to important to be taken seriously."
"If there was such thing as normal, even the plauge would avoid it." - The Evil Spoonman

Mazca

Particles have never caused significant slowdown for me, and my computer isn't particularly fast. I've made very particle-intensive weapons in the past, and no problems.

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(url="http://"http://www.mazca.com/")Mazca(/url) , Moderator, (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go&urgaylol;=yes")EV Developer's Corner(/url)
Do you know how to solder? Do you fear death? - oasamostexianu, on repairing a monitor.

mrxak

Same here. Particles seem generally harmless.

Bomb

Quote

Originally posted by Evil_Spoonman:
**I was just considering plug-in design and the NOVA particle and ionization system. I was considering the performace issues of having lots of particles, pure particle projectiles and lots of ionization and other on-the-fly screen effects. I could do a test but I figured others had probably already figured out the performance to effect ratio. If not, I guess I'll have to do the tests...

**

Well, I would say- BLAMMO

Whoops. Moderator overload. I'll have to try posting later..

No, actually, in terms of mac users, most decent CPUs can run EVN with in game effects galore- the only problems I've heard about thus far are on mac emulators- but when EVN comes out for the PC that won't be much an issue. So go nuts with 'em.

_bomb

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I think that you don't see many love stories in EV simply because the engine isn't quite geared towards that. What are you going to do, keep meeting your significant other in a bar (or, with Nova, the Outfitter, Shipyard, or Trade Center) and have questions like "Will you go out on a date with me?" | Yes/No | "Great, pick me up on <DST> in a month and we'll have dinner."?
-EVula

(This message has been edited by Bomb (edited 05-23-2003).)

mrxak

Moderator overload is right. Now we just need blackhole and maybe even EVula to respond...

Masamune

As much as I hate to break up the moderator party, I just want to add what I've found out about performance. As far as in-game effects go, no problem, as has been mentioned before. The only thing I've found that really kills Nova is large sprites, particularly stellars for some reason. Animation, even for large objects, doesn't seen to slow it down, especially compared to the effect of size.

I found this out from experience, of course. Pysgnosis Adherent has created some absolutely stunning stellar object graphics for Sephil Saga. Huge too (the sun is 1152x1152, I believe)- but some of them seem to make Nova hiccup, and that's on a 700mhz iBook. Crosses fingers hopefully we can keep them.

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~Charlie

Weepul 884

The real performance killer is having lots of sizeable transparent sprites going. For example, I've successfully made a flamethrower weapon, using the FAE Large explosion sprite, but when I tried making the sprite the EMP Torp explosion (mwahaha :D) it took a noticeable (but not bad) performance hit on my dual 1.25 GHz G4. In the past, I've made a weapon that generated lots of Hellhound missile explosions and it caused my older 450 MHz G4 start chugging severely.

Large sprites, too, can cause major performance hits, like Masamune said.

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SpacePirate

You also cannot forget the beams...

Having lightning beams especially. Make a lightning beam with a count of four or so, width of 2, and with a noticeable amount of amplitude. Give it to random ships in the system, provoke a fight, and watch the system lag...

As for particles, no problem at all, although it takes some playing around to get particularly long particle trails to look good, though.

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Eat blazing electric death!
(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/infernostudios/ept/")Unofficial EV and EVO Ports(/url): FC1 and Beta 2

Bomb

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
**Moderator overload is right. Now we just need blackhole and maybe even EVula to respond...

**

Moderator E x P l O s I o N

_bomb

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I think that you don't see many love stories in EV simply because the engine isn't quite geared towards that. What are you going to do, keep meeting your significant other in a bar (or, with Nova, the Outfitter, Shipyard, or Trade Center) and have questions like "Will you go out on a date with me?" | Yes/No | "Great, pick me up on <DST> in a month and we'll have dinner."?
-EVula

Mazca

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
**Moderator overload is right. Now we just need blackhole and maybe even EVula to respond...

**

Hmm, for a minute there me and mrxak had identical post counts, too. Worrying.

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(url="http://"http://www.mazca.com/")Mazca(/url) , Moderator, (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go&urgaylol;=yes")EV Developer's Corner(/url)
Do you know how to solder? Do you fear death? - oasamostexianu, on repairing a monitor.

mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by Mazca:
**Hmm, for a minute there me and mrxak had identical post counts, too. Worrying.

**

I beat you to 3000 though, by 3 or 4 whole posts.

Firebird

Yeah, there isn't much to keep track of with particles -- location, speed, and color. They didn't hurt performance too much in my Asteroids clone I'm writing in Java. I'd imagine that in Nova, which runs much more quickly, they'd be as insignificant as everyone's been saying they are.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)
Visit Cymltaneous Solutions: (url="http://"http://cs.paching.com/")http://cs.paching.com/(/url)
(hosted by (url="http://"http://www.evula.org")evula.org(/url))

General Cade Smart

Quote

Originally posted by Bomb:
**Moderator E x P l O s I o N

_bomb

**

I tried to figure out what EPOIN from the bold letters means, but couldnt as there is no such word. Bomb, could you explain?

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I am eager to try to ansver mission questions

Mantaray

Quote

Originally posted by General Cade Smart:
**I tried to figure out what EPOIN from the bold letters means, but couldnt as there is no such word. Bomb, could you explain?

**

bomb is just capitalizing every other letter in "explosion," I don't think he meant anything by the EPOIN acronym he created.

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May those who love us, love us, and may those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He doesn't turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles, so we'll know them by their limping.
(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/monster/")Monster Studios(/url) - (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/monster/studio/c.html")Caribbean(/url)

Spoony

Alright, thanx for the moderator explosion , I imagine I'll tossing a lot of particle into my next plug. And I'll be making it A LOT, like 7000 per weapon, we'll see how that kills performance.

Who knows, I might just make a plug called system choker that will simply destroy any computer you try to play it on (even weeps daul 1.25 )

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The Evil Spoonman - I Am Everywhere, I Know All
Albatross!!!
"Life is to important to be taken seriously."
"If there was such thing as normal, even the plauge would avoid it." - The Evil Spoonman

Ernimtir

Well, this seems to be pretty much resolved, but here's my two cents. My 333mhz G3 appears to have a limit of around 1024 particles. After about that many, any further weapons or explosions with particles simply don't generate any particles. Now, since my mac is on the low end of the requirements, you may simply decide to forget about me and my ancient computer. All the major developers allready have...

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Caution: Be careful when attemping communication with an Ernimtir under the influence of himself.
(url="http://"http://gramathy.blogspot.com/")Das Güd Blog(/url)

mburch

Particles should cause very little reduction in performance, but there is a maximum number of particles that can be active at any given time.

mcb

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"If it's not on fire, it's a software problem."

Spoony

Quote

Originally posted by Ernimtir:
**Well, this seems to be pretty much resolved, but here's my two cents. My 333mhz G3 appears to have a limit of around 1024 particles. After about that many, any further weapons or explosions with particles simply don't generate any particles. Now, since my mac is on the low end of the requirements, you may simply decide to forget about me and my ancient computer. All the major developers allready have...

**

... G4's and heavily modofied G3's. Actually, my low end testing machine for NOVA plugs is a 9600/350 with 196Mb of RAM, an 800x600 monitor, two 4Gb disks, a 24X CD-ROM, a Radeon 7000 PCI, and a 350Mhz PowerPC Pre-G3 Processor. (It's a friends, my 9600 is decked. I don't think NOVA is supposed to be able to run on Pre-G3 machines, but obviously it's just a reccomendation not a requirement. But you should see the High end, just go to the Apple store and tell them you want to test some software on their high end machine, if you have the right signatures they will let you. I test on a Daul 1.42Ghz with 2Gb of RAM if need by...

What is that particle maximum? Somewhere in the several thousands I should think, is there anyway to increase that maximum or is it computer dependent?

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The Evil Spoonman - I Am Everywhere, I Know All
Albatross!!!
"Life is to important to be taken seriously."
"If there was such thing as normal, even the plauge would avoid it." - The Evil Spoonman

Bomb

Quote

Originally posted by Mantaray:
**bomb is just capitalizing every other letter in "explosion," I don't think he meant anything by the EPOIN acronym he created.

**

Actually, it stands for "Evil Puts On Its Necktie"

errr, yeah. Anyway. Someone should add a "moderator explosion" weapon in their plug-in- put us all in as pers resources, and then if there are too many of us in one system- BLAM.

_bomb

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I think that you don't see many love stories in EV simply because the engine isn't quite geared towards that. What are you going to do, keep meeting your significant other in a bar (or, with Nova, the Outfitter, Shipyard, or Trade Center) and have questions like "Will you go out on a date with me?" | Yes/No | "Great, pick me up on <DST> in a month and we'll have dinner."?
-EVula

And don't you listen to these nitwits. Nova's a great game and don't let anyone tell ya otherwise. Better or worse than EVO? Who gives an african monkey's nads?