Custom Font DEMO - now more CPU friendly!

firemaplegames

Hey All,

I just rebuilt my custom score font demo:

http://gamesalad.com/game/play/31065

The other one was hitting the CPU pretty hard. It used to work by having a Constrain Attribute for each digit, as well as 10 Rules per digit to set the image.

I rebuilt it to set the image using concatenation as opposed to having 10 separate Rules. It still needs a Constrain Attribute to work. In the demo I have a 5-digit score, and on my 3GS, the frames rarely drop below 60 - even if I tap like mad.

At the very least, I just eliminated 50 Rules that were getting checked every time.

Your mileage may vary of course, but it seems pretty solid to me.

I haven't changed the other custom font demos yet, so if you're using them, please apply this method to those.

Thanks!
Joe

quantumsheep

Thanks dude - will hopefully check it out on the weekend.

The saving of FPS is always welcome!

Cheers!

QS

rdcube

Thanks FMG...fps do look/respond better.

netdzynr

Hey FMG, forgive the novice question, but how does one download a demo file, as opposed to running the demo in Safari? Thanks in advance.

netdzynr

Oh, never mind, I found it under the Shared Projects tab in the GameSalad app. Thanks.

firemaplegames

yeah, the way to download shared projects is a little weird.

When you download the file, you'll get a .game file.

You have to change the .game extension to .zip

Then double-click on the .zip to extract the .gameproj file.

The way you did it is the way I would do it, just open it right up through gamesalad creator, under the Shared Projects tab.

netdzynr

Ah, I just now found the Download Project button on the demo pages. For some reason, the GS folks seem to put controls in places I never find them :-) It took me eons to realize that the magnifying glass at the topright of their Web pages could be used for searching the forums!

BTW, the score demo looks great, especially for those of us mathematically challenged. :-)

Thanks again.

JamesZeppelin

Thanks so much. This will be nice

also I've never done any of that stuff with the whole zip thing

I just open up gs and hit shard projects as oppsed to rcent or new. type th name or a word from the name in the little seach box.

Also a great way to browse demos if you hit templates only.

Opens right up in the editor.

JamesZeppelin

Just added it to my game and it worked perfectly.

On my iPod and 3gs there was no hit at all

I mean maybe if you had a read out or something but I certainly couldn't notice anything

althogh maybe it was your high score formula that was crashing everyones browser..... Jk

anyways thanks this is very nice and so easy to add in

firemaplegames

Cool!

Yeah, combining things like that is called concatenation. It's a pretty basic programming technique.

I've asked (begged?) for them to add that ability everywhere, especially to the Change Scene behavior.

i.e:

Change Scene
"Scene "..(game.currentScene+1)

or

Change Scene
"Scene "..random(1,50)

It would make my life soooo much easier. And allow me to chop out literally 600 Rules from each of my games.

firemaplegames

We'll see. It also opens the doors for syntax errors, and for accessing things that don't exist.

The way they currently have it where you need to select everything from drop downs avoids these issues for new programmers...

But I would rather have possible syntax errors than carpal tunnel syndrome!

adado

I second FMG's thoughts on concatenation techniques are necessary.

Combine them with arrays and you open up all sorts of dynamic content and without the input headache as FMG mentions.

<hint, hint DEVs>

SDMG

thank you FMG !!! looks great!!