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DarkBASIC Discussion / Weird: Flickering images on HUD problem

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Hangar18
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 03:07 Edited at: 29th Aug 2007 03:10
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Hi All, just encountered the following flickering problem and was wondering if anyone else has come accross something similar. My Hud is a large plain textured with a PSP image, onto which I glue various other textured HUD plains (e.g. a shield text, shield bar, a scanner etc). Now the problem is this is: when my ship moves a certain distance from the universe origin, the bottom part of some of these "glued" images starts flickering. I just dont get it. The flickering seems to be linked to the following:

1. The distance from the origin of my universe (e.g. once my ship's x or y coord gets beyond +-256)
2. My ships orientation - after the flickering of some images starts, once my ship turns left or right, the flickering leaves one image but starts in another.

And for the images affected, it is only ever the very bottom part of the image(not the whole image). E.g: if the image looks like

xxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxx
yyyyy

then only the yyyy's flicker and in fact only a very thin bottom part of the yyyys flicker.

Can anyone let me know why this might be happening? I'm not doing anythign fancy in the code once the ship gets to certain points and so I cant see that being the reason.

Cheers.
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Libervurto
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 03:17
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That sounds like a syncing problem, the screen can't keep up. Try pasting all the HUD images to an off screen bitmap and then grabbing the image from it and using that. Might help, but I promise nothing

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Latch
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 06:48
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When you say gluing, what do you mean? Are you gluing the planes to the ship as limbs or are you LOCKING the planes to the camera?

Enjoy your day.
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Hangar18
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 07:04
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I'm gluing the plains to the main HUD plain i.e. the main HUD plain is a big rectangle at the bottom of the screen. The other plains (e.g. laser energy bar, scanners etc) are glued to it, so that I only have to update the position of the main HUD plain each loop and not the 10 or so other other HUD icons.
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 15:00 Edited at: 29th Aug 2007 15:02
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There's a LOCK OBJECT ON command that does all of this for you. It locks the object to the screen. Your HUD will always remain in the same position without you bothering to update its position.

The flickering could be caused by the objects overlapping, and the redrawing routine doesn't know which one to draw first, so they flicker. Making each object into a limb of the HUD will cause all of the objects to be drawn at the same time, and eliminate the flicker. If that's what is causing the problem.

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Libervurto
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 15:47
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Why is your HUD 3D?
That'll be slowing it down.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 16:38 Edited at: 29th Aug 2007 16:42
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Quote: "Why is your HUD 3D?
That'll be slowing it down."


A HUD is usually 3D plains. They are very fast because they don't use hardly any polygons. This is a 3D game afterall. You wouldn't want to mix 3D and 2D together, that would be slow.

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Dark Dragon
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 16:54
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Quote: "You wouldn't want to mix 3D and 2D together, that would be slow."

yup.
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Libervurto
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 20:53
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@Pincho
Really? Didn't know that, thanks.

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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 21:10
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Me neither...

Acording to Grandma, I am now enemy of the evil republic, who captured Paris Hilton and couldn't manage it.
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TDK
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 22:35
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Why not make the HUD a 2D image which pasted over the 3D view?

TDK_Man

* TDK's Game Programming Forums - Open To All - DB & Team Request Boards *

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Libervurto
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 22:50
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That's what I suggested but apparently that slows it down.

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TDK
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 23:21
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I can't see why. I've not had any problems with that method before.

The last time I used the method was in a driving game where I had the dashboard of a Seat Cordoba.

Hmmm... I wonder where that got to. I'll have to see if I can dig it out. Haven't seen it for years...

TDK_Man

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TDK
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 23:35
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Well, that was amusing!

I found it and hadn't realised how bad it was...

Untouched since written back in 2003, here's an example of a 3D program with a 2D HUD. There's no flickering.

http://www.computechtenerife.com/alpine.zip

F1 switches from tracking cam to cockpit.
F10 to start the race.

Unfortunately, I never finished it.

Hangar18:

Have you tried doing it like this with images instead of plains - building up the image on a hidden screen. Just leave the areas of the image black where you want the 3D image to show through and paste the image using a 1 for the transparency flag.

TDK_Man

* TDK's Game Programming Forums - Open To All - DB & Team Request Boards *

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Libervurto
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Posted: 29th Aug 2007 23:51 Edited at: 30th Aug 2007 00:01
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Quote: "Have you tried doing it like this with images instead of plains - building up the image on a hidden screen. Just leave the areas of the image black where you want the 3D image to show through and paste the image using a 1 for the transparency flag."

Now that's just exactly what I said.

I'll check out your driving game TDK
I only managed a 5 minute lap, I got lost 3 times lol
Nice course but not very good to be honest

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TDK
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Posted: 30th Aug 2007 00:26
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Quote: "Now that's just exactly what I said"


I know, but he never answered the question!

TDK_Man

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 30th Aug 2007 01:18
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Quote: "Why not make the HUD a 2D image which pasted over the 3D view? The last time I used the method was in a driving game where I had the dashboard of a Seat Cordoba.
"


I've never seen anyone do this before. I always thought it would cause problems.

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Hangar18
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Posted: 31st Aug 2007 00:21
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Thanks all! Some great ideas I can play around with - I'm sure the fix lies in at least one of them.
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Hangar18
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Posted: 3rd Sep 2007 01:17
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Well I think I've found an answer and discovered something really quite interesting about DB and image sizes in the process. My understanding of images was that creating them as factors of 2 is supposed to be optimal when it comes to texturing. E.g. image pixel sizes of say 256x256 or 128x128 is better than 200x200 or 100x100 because DB works best with factors of 2 (e.g. 256=2^8). All my images were done in PSP using factors of 2 but it seems this is the very thing causing the flickering!! By chance I changed one of my images from being a 256x256 to 300x300 and guess what? - no more flickering. Weird I know, but it seems to be true.
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Libervurto
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Posted: 3rd Sep 2007 03:19
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I have a feeling it will come back lol

In programming, nothing exists
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