Pro Tip: Speed Up Level Loading...

Author

Message

Mage

17

Years of Service

User Offline

Joined: 3rd Feb 2007

Location: Canada

Posted: 4th Sep 2012 23:08

Link

Here's a small tip that can give you a big boost on game load times:

Let's say you have a game where there's a load screen, and some sort of indicator for progress, like a progress bar. Maybe you have 10,000 items to load and you can literally process about 100 a second, or whatever.

If you update the screen after each item, you are limited by frame rate. So if you are running around 30, 60, whatever fps, you can at best load that many items a second.

The trick is to update the screen based on time, not after each load, so you can really put things into high gear. The easiest way is to have the program simply skip updating the screen if too little time passed since the last screen update.

Example:

+ Code Snippet

`Put this at the beginning of your code...
Global LoadScreenTimer as integer

Function Update_Load_Screen()   
    `Throttle Screen Updates to prevent slower load times.
    If abs(LoadScreenTimer - Timer()) < 1000 Then ExitFunction
    LoadScreenTimer = Timer()

    `Do Load Screen Update Business Here...
    Sync
EndFunction

I did this and on a large level immediately cut 40% of the load time. Just 3 lines of code added, removed that much time.

TLDR: Don't let frame rate limit level loading speeds.

Back to top

Profile PM

Sergey K

20

Years of Service

User Offline

Joined: 4th Jan 2004

Location:

Posted: 4th Sep 2012 23:45

Link

no. i belive to make load faster if you are in loop mode, you better use "sync rate 0" on top. AND FASTSYNC command instead of SYNC.

sync rate 0
do
//your progress while loading..
fastsync
loop

Advanced Updater for your games!

Back to top

Profile PM Website

Mage

17

Years of Service

User Offline

Joined: 3rd Feb 2007

Location: Canada

Posted: 5th Sep 2012 00:40 Edited at: 5th Sep 2012 00:44

Link

Quote: "no. i belive to make load faster if you are in loop mode, you better use "sync rate 0" on top. AND FASTSYNC command instead of SYNC.

sync rate 0
do
//your progress while loading..
fastsync
loop"

You have a good idea using Sync Rate 0 and fastsync. However you are wrong on the general idea.

Off Topic: I should also warn you that I noticed a while back that fastsync wasn't updating the sound system properly. The listener positions i think. So you might need to throw a regular sync in there and save fastsync for secondary cameras. Not sure if this was changed. See Link: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=177326&b=1

Anyway the reason is this... you have that loop and each time you load an item and you update the screen. The screen can only update so fast. So it slows everything down. You have to load an item, then draw the screen to show it got loaded. So the item might take 1ms to load and the screen could take 10ms to draw. So effectively each item takes 11ms instead of 1 ms. That becomes a huge difference when you have thousands of items to load. That loop can only go as fast as your frame rate allows. So if your frame rate is only 70 fps then that's at best 70 items a second.

However, if you update the screen instead based on how long it's been since the last update... you might be able to load 10,000 items real quick between screen updates. This is easy to do just skip updates until enough time passed.

This all assumes you're actually using a proper loading screen instead of making the gamer wait with zero feedback.

Back to top

Profile PM

TheComet

16

Years of Service

User Offline

Joined: 18th Oct 2007

Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.

Posted: 5th Sep 2012 21:33

Link

sync rate 0 and fastsync won't cut it. Check this out:

rem setup screen
sync on
sync rate 0
backdrop on

gosub _Test_No_Objects
gosub _Test_1_Object
gosub _Test_100_Objects

repeat
	set cursor 0,0
	print "Test Complete"
	print "Press any key to end"
	sync
until scancode()

end

_Test_No_Objects:

time = timer()

repeat
		
		rem print information
		set cursor 0,0
		print "Test: fastsync without objects"
		print "=============================="
		print "Loops per second: ";prtLoops
		print
		print "Press <return> to continue to next test"
		
		rem update statistics
		if timer() - time > 1000
			time = timer()
			prtLoops = loopCounter
			loopCounter = 0
		endif
		
		rem count loop
		inc loopCounter
		
		rem sync or fastsync here
		fastsync
		
	until returnkey()
	repeat:until returnkey()=0
	
return

_Test_1_Object:
	
	rem make a cube
	make object cube 1 , 1
	
	time = timer()

repeat
		
		rem print information
		set cursor 0,0
		print "Test: fastsync with 1 object"
		print "=============================="
		print "Loops per second: ";prtLoops
		print
		print "Press <return> to continue to next test"
		
		rem update statistics
		if timer() - time > 1000
			time = timer()
			prtLoops = loopCounter
			loopCounter = 0
		endif
		
		rem count loop
		inc loopCounter
		
		rem sync or fastsync here
		fastsync
		
	until returnkey()
	repeat:until returnkey()=0
	
return

_Test_100_Objects:
	
	rem make 99 more cubes
	for n = 2 to 100
		make object cube n , 10
	next n
	
	time = timer()

repeat
		
		rem print information
		set cursor 0,0
		print "Test: fastsync with 100 objects"
		print "==============================="
		print "Loops per second: ";prtLoops
		print
		print "Press <return> to continue to next test"
		
		rem update statistics
		if timer() - time > 1000
			time = timer()
			prtLoops = loopCounter
			loopCounter = 0
		endif
		
		rem count loop
		inc loopCounter
		
		rem sync or fastsync here
		fastsync
		
	until returnkey()
	repeat:until returnkey()=0
	
return

+ Code Snippet

rem setup screen
sync on
sync rate 0
backdrop on

gosub _Test_No_Objects
gosub _Test_1_Object
gosub _Test_100_Objects

repeat
	set cursor 0,0
	print "Test Complete"
	print "Press any key to end"
	sync
until scancode()

end

_Test_No_Objects:

	time = timer()

	repeat
		
		rem print information
		set cursor 0,0
		print "Test: fastsync without objects"
		print "=============================="
		print "Loops per second: ";prtLoops
		print
		print "Press <return> to continue to next test"
		
		rem update statistics
		if timer() - time > 1000
			time = timer()
			prtLoops = loopCounter
			loopCounter = 0
		endif
		
		rem count loop
		inc loopCounter
		
		rem sync or fastsync here
		fastsync
		
	until returnkey()
	repeat:until returnkey()=0
	
return

_Test_1_Object:
	
	rem make a cube
	make object cube 1 , 1
	
	time = timer()

	repeat
		
		rem print information
		set cursor 0,0
		print "Test: fastsync with 1 object"
		print "=============================="
		print "Loops per second: ";prtLoops
		print
		print "Press <return> to continue to next test"
		
		rem update statistics
		if timer() - time > 1000
			time = timer()
			prtLoops = loopCounter
			loopCounter = 0
		endif
		
		rem count loop
		inc loopCounter
		
		rem sync or fastsync here
		fastsync
		
	until returnkey()
	repeat:until returnkey()=0
	
return

_Test_100_Objects:
	
	rem make 99 more cubes
	for n = 2 to 100
		make object cube n , 10
	next n
	
	time = timer()

	repeat
		
		rem print information
		set cursor 0,0
		print "Test: fastsync with 100 objects"
		print "==============================="
		print "Loops per second: ";prtLoops
		print
		print "Press <return> to continue to next test"
		
		rem update statistics
		if timer() - time > 1000
			time = timer()
			prtLoops = loopCounter
			loopCounter = 0
		endif
		
		rem count loop
		inc loopCounter
		
		rem sync or fastsync here
		fastsync
		
	until returnkey()
	repeat:until returnkey()=0
	
return

TheComet

"if you don't understand recursion than you probably don't understand recursion." ~Jerico2day

Back to top

Profile PM Email Website

Sorry your browser is not supported!

DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Pro Tip: Speed Up Level Loading...