Question on viewer/preview flashes

Lunadome

Hi all. I've noticed the game flickers/flashes when you preview to play it whether that be on the PC or on a phone using the viewer app.

I had a quick look online and found it was due to the high score type actor displaying the attribute of the score and it was a case of sending the layer to the back to stop it flickering (which did indeed work)

However when I then put an actor underneath that score (imagine a graphic in this case just a red block) the red block starts flashing/flickering when one of the display text changes (e.g score increase)

Any insight into this issue?

Cheers

tatiang

Does this happen whenever you have a Display Text behavior by itself (not in a rule or timer) and the Display Text is not in the back-most layer?

tatiang

What happens when you preview this project file (no flickering/flashing on my Mac)?

Lunadome

@tatiang That project file is fine. I also added an integer attribute that increases by 1 every second on that file and there's still no flickering.

Could it be due to the amount of actors on screen?

Lunadome

Think I've fixed the issue myself.

Turns out originally I had 3 actors with 0 alpha each with there own display text function. This seemed to flicker on preview.

However now I have just 1 actor with 3 display text functions set to the right coordinates relative to scene and no flickering.

Don't know why it fixed it but it did. Thanks again for the quick response regardless.

tatiang

Three separate actors shouldn't cause a problem but glad you found a workaround.

tatiang

For example, there's no flickering with these five actors on my Mac.

Lunadome

Yeah I'm not entirely sure what causes the flicker. That example works fine.

On my game I'm working on now my new way works with no flicker ONLY if the display text actor is on the top most layer.

When I add a new actor onto the scene then it goes back to flickering again but only what is placed behind the displayed text unless I move the display text actor back to the top layer.

tatiang

Hmm, I've never had this happen but perhaps it's a PC-only issue? If you like, you can post a download link to your project file and I can see if there's something obvious causing it (assuming it flickers on a Mac).

Lunadome

Sorry for the delayed response, I haven't had a chance to work on anything for few days. I've attached the project file. If you notice (well on mine anyway) the whole game flickers/flashes when previewed however if you move the layer "Counters" to the top (I had it in a separate layer folder before) then the flicker stops.

tatiang

It doesn't flicker/flash at all on a Mac. Sounds like this is a question for GameSalad Support. You can contact them by clicking on the blue chat icon at the bottom-right of the forums page.

Lunadome

Must be a PC issue, I've done as you've said and messaged them directly. Thank you for testing it on Mac

pHghost

It doesn't flicker on Mac preview, but will flicker on Viewer and most importantly, in actual game builds!

This is a really strange bug, it was bothering me tremendously some moths back, but I figured out a workaround. The flickering happens only to actors without a texture. So, what I do is import a small 8x8px white image to drop onto potential actors that would otherwise be texture-less. And that's it, fixed!

Toque

@pHghost said:
It doesn't flicker on Mac preview, but will flicker on Viewer and most importantly, in actual game builds!

This is a really strange bug, it was bothering me tremendously some moths back, but I figured out a workaround. The flickering happens only to actors without a texture. So, what I do is import a small 8x8px white image to drop onto potential actors that would otherwise be texture-less. And that's it, fixed!

Yes. I have noticed the flickering as well on actors without an image.

Twayne2

I have this too. Related to display text or something.