Can Gamesalad produce smooth consistant graphics at high rate of speed.

machinegunkelly

Hey guys,

I've been working on a platformer where the actor is constrained to move at the speed (linear volicity X =700 )

The thing is, this speed NEVER changes, and I've noticed glitchy movement in my platforms.....

Now the platforms are static, but as you move they don't appear to move under your actor smoothly at all.

I'd call it "laggy" or glitchy" even though my actor seems to move SUPER SMOOTH

I'm at a loss here, I've removed and started over my whole game file to be sure it wasn't some strange logic bug, and now I'm certain it's just gamesalad quirk.....

I'm not even sure what my question is, but I really want to fix this bug any tips that could possibly help me fix this, or things I should watch for that may be slowing the processing down for these specific actors would be great :P

JustMe74

You've noticed these "glitches" in a real build, or in the viewer and/or preview mode in GS?

machinegunkelly

Both unfortunately :P

It's WAY better on iOS but still the occasional glitch in movement on android... Well we're considering not releasing it.

JustMe74

I only have a Kindle Fire to test on, and I've noticed that the performance in even the most basic games is terrible. Try disabling sound effects and music; that should help a lot on your Android build.

On iOS try to avoid using timers as much as possible.

machinegunkelly

yeah, I've got all the sounds pulled out already, I've rebuilt the game from scratch in the last few weeks,and trying to be as minimal with anything that'll slow the game down for now, that's the irritating point, is I know that from here, as I add sounds, and final graphics, it's likely only going to get worse

J_PAN

usually, when there is a whole lot of code, it just lags the game a lot, so try to create rules that minimize the length of rule, but use it wisely

3itg

Does it produce the same issue if you slow down the actor?
try reducing your actors speed by 50% or more, just to test.
If this produces better results, you could use an optical illusion to make it feel "Fast".
(This is kind of a shot in the dark since i dont know anything about your project so this may not work, or be less than ideal but...)
Add a scrolling effect to your background as well, and put your half speed actor on top of it, you can play with this to get the desired visual effect. If this helps the lag, now just modify the enemies as well so they move the appropriate speed vs. the player actor.
The walls, platforms and other objects could also have a little motion added to them to help work around the issue you are experiencing.
Dunno if this helps, but I hope it does.

J_PAN

I agree with @3itg

EatingMyHat

What do you use to move your actors?
Do you use timers?

There are many games with moving platforms so you should be able to do it with GS - we just need to figure out what causes this issue for you.

Can you post a video of the 'laggy' movement?

rhinokey

i hope this is possible my current project involves a lot of actors moving -800 on the slow end, and it will get faster from there. i havent tried on device yet because i have no dev license yet.

machinegunkelly

@3itg

I've just tried to slow it down, seems a "little" better, but there is still a frame rate drop at times, I guess that's where I see this "glitch" or jitter...

I've tried the half speed trick, reduced my car to half speed, which appeared to be jitter free, then I added the speed to my platforms ( half speed in the opposite direction of my car ) and the jitter is back...

I'll see if I can take a video of it, but it's touch hard as it only happens on my phone ( android ) works smooth on iOS

machinegunkelly

@EatingMyHat

My character is being moved via constraining Self.Motion.Linear.X to a variable which I've named TopSpeed, which is changed or controlled via difficulty levels.

easy-500
medium-600
hard-750

machinegunkelly

There is a picture of my logic for the car... pretty much all the logic that could be causing this bug, I should mention that the camera is offset from the "car position" setting at the top of the logic....

Fal01

Do you have friction on your actor? maybe this could be slowing down you platform.

machinegunkelly

@fal01 - Nope, all those attributes were cleared early on
Fixed rotation checked,
The rest are all 0 bounciness, friction, etc

machinegunkelly

Really a sad thing too, it plays just flawlessly on iOS

EatingMyHat

Really a sad thing too, it plays just flawlessly on iOS

Not sure what you mean by that... maybe I missed something, is the lag only on the viewer, creator or Android?

machinegunkelly

@EatingmyHat

the lag shows only on the android phone, whether viewer, or fully built apk.

3itg

Maybe there is a problem, and some other things are compounding the issue.
(Trying to move images very quickly while playing sounds while calculating the game logic while your phone is using wifi and listening to a satellite in space to see if you are getting a phone call)
Try turning off Wifi.
Try using the task manager to clear your ram and close unneeded programs before play testing.
(I don't think the android viewer has very much overhead, but I would also publish an apk and test directly on a device each time.)
Are there sounds in the game?
If there are, trying turning off all those rules and retest.

If you think sounds are the problem:
I had a similar problem that was making my game jittery and/or crash, thats how I determined sound effects were the problem.
How I fixed it was by going to my project, right click, select "view package contents" and go to the sounds folder.
Copy and paste all your sound effects from there to another folder outside your game project. (I also separated them by type, i.e. sfx and music)
I converted all sound effects to ".ogg" at the "lower" quality setting. at http://media.io/
I converted my game music to .mp3 @22050 Hz, 48kbps stereo using this website:
http://audio.online-convert.com/convert-to-mp3

After that my sound issues in android were gone.

MotherHoose

@machinegunkelly love your car and coding example!

1. try a controlActor … small and Visible unchecked
for sounds and things such as the spawn for the end of scene actor

2. 30 FBS is very high for cartoonStyle images
… even higher than most videos/movies for photographicImages
…25-26 is good range

3. an Animation with just one image
… is telling the computer to redraw the same image 30 times every second
--this is redundant
… have the Otherwise: section changeAttribute: self.Image To: that image

IMO the animation should be a stand-alone behavior
… even when not moving … think the idling animation effect would be nice

==
in delineating what you want your carActor to do:

-constrain game.CarPosition
-controlCamera
-animate
-collide with groundSensors

-when collided with groundSensors
……change MLV X To: game.topSpeed
……& when mouse button is down
……-Interpolate: MLV Y To: 800
…-Otherwise: change MLV Y To: -2500

that is:
- 4 behaviors
- 1 Rule
… with 1 behavior for MLV X
… with a nested rule for mouseDown
… with Otherwise: for MLV Y -2500
and no additional attributes needed

==
Ultimately, for movement that follows a path which has variant Y positions
it is worthwhile to download/open @ORBZ … waypoints demo

rather than multiple groundSensors
… set a path of waypoints for the actor to move to/along
much easier/efficient coding
much smoother/realistic visual effect
… and you can add barrierSensors …collides with … for jumps/etc.

MH