Many of you have had problems with your framerate, and, through my experience, I have found many solutions for common framerate problems. I will share those with all of you in hopes that you may benefit from them:
-Avoid using any matrices. They are potentially slow, especially large ones. If at all possible, use a texture plain.
-Hide all objects that are not on the screen. However, do not hide them if they are already hidden. For example:
if object in screen(objectnum)=1
if object visible(objectnum)=0 then show object objectnum
else
if object visible(objectnum)=1 then hide object objectnum
endif
-Use as small of texture as possible, without sacrificing too much detail.
-Use the least number of objects as possible. That is one large slowdown in DB Classic is large numbers of objects on screen at once.
-Don't use the "color object" command. It is quite slow, and a solid color texture applied is much faster.
-Use the least amount of screen text and 2d graphics as possible.
-Avoid using "get image" in the main loop. It is quite slow.
-Be careful when making your models. Delete all polygons that are never seen. For example, if your game view is always from above, and your objects are never turned upside down, delete all polygons that are on the bottom of your objects.
-Avoid using the spheres, cylinders, and cones built into DB. They are sort of high-poly. Creating your own in a 3D modeler and loading them in is potentialy faster.
-Delete all of your unused bitmaps, images, and objects that are not being used. This will free up memory, and make your program run faster.
-Avoid sprites with 3D. Using textured plains locked to the camera are a much better ways of making displays.
I hope these help. I will post more when I think of them.
Good Luck.
Xander - Bolt Software
Why do the antagonists always have to look so cool?
