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 Geek2Nurse    |
Is there a way to break out of these loops, or you you just have to let them loop to completion? For example, if I just want to know if there are X number of a particular sort of agent, but don't care how many more than that there actually are, do I have to let the loop finish once it's found that many, or can I tell it to stop and move on to the next line of code? --- Optimist: the glass is half full. Pessimist: the glass is half empty. Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. |
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 Moe |
Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there's no simple way to have it stop mid enum/etch/esse. There *are* ways around it, but nothing practical to implement. Although enums and such should be used sparingly, they don't, in isolated uses, cause much of a hit in performance, so there's no reason to not let them run. Just make the command inside the enum/etch/esee stop counting after a certain number.
The loop runs it's course, but it doesn't record what you don't need to know, and for every agent it calls after the X requirement is satisfied, it basically does nothing, which is performance friendly. |
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Geek2Nurse |
Okay, thanks! While we're on performance, what about the mira command? I'm guessing it's probably cheaper performance-wise to have mirrored sprite sets in the image files rather than mirroring on the fly, but I don't know for sure. Any idea? --- Optimist: the glass is half full. Pessimist: the glass is half empty. Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. |
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 Liam |
You're completely right, it's much cheaper to do it in the file than to use MIRA (which can get pretty expensive, as can TINT.) - Liam / K'aeloree Spellhold Studios, a Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion Modding Community |
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Geek2Nurse |
Thanks, Liam! It's good to know I didn't waste all that time in PhotoShop tinkering with the starflowers!  --- Optimist: the glass is half full. Pessimist: the glass is half empty. Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. |
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 Horstj |
What about something like this:
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Liam |
STOP exits the script entirely, so it wouldn't work in this instance because VAxx variables only exist within a particular instance of a script (and thus by exiting said script any data saved to any VAxx variable is deleted). In addition, you probably don't want to exit out of the script, because chances are you'll actually be in the middle of something important if you're running something like this.  - Liam / K'aeloree Spellhold Studios, a Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion Modding Community |
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 Prodigal Sock Ghosthande |
AFAIK, mirrored objects don't show up in cameras anyways? So that's another concern about using them, especially for worlds like C2toDS that use cameras a lot...  |
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Moe |
You know I heard the same thing about Mira'd objects... So I just did a really quick test in DS using the default remote floating cameras, I MIRA'd the toy robot and then put the camera near him, then went to the Comms room and he showed up just fine. Also tested on a yarn fruit. You can't alpha them, but you can tint them, and they always show up on camera. Any thoughts on this test? In case anyone's wondering, I think the reason MIRA'd sprites hit performance, is because when you MIRA an object, the engine copy's it's sprites and puts them in RAM, flipped. Same with TINT'ed objects. In my opinion, this doesn't make a difference performance-wise if you need every frame in your sprite file flipped anyway, because you might as well just MIRA it, because you'd double the file-size anyway by replicating all it's sprites flipped. The only problem you have is that the engine has to take a [micro]second to shunt the flipped sprites to RAM. But that's hardly noticeable. I'm not positive this is how it works, but it's probably something similar. Anyone have any thoughts? |
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 AquaShee |
The biggest performance hit when using tinted objects comes from the increased amount of unique sprites that have to be rendered. It's a lot easier for the engine to render the same sprite a hundred times (even if they're all in a different part of their animation, I'm pretty sure the engine turns sprite files into a virtual 'sprite sheet' using the numbers supplied with the new: command) than it is to render a hundred different sprites. And since a lot of tinted objects also like to have random variations in their tint it can add up quickly. I'm not sure if the engine even groups identical sprites with identical tints together. I remember Ghosthande's portal-shooting thingamajig not showing up in its own portals when MIRA'd, I'd also heard the MIRA-not-on-cam thing and blamed it on that, but the CAOS docs don't reference it anywhere. Maybe it was a pre-DS thing? I'm not sure if MIRA'd objects get their own gallery though. I think they're literally mirrored, as in telling the engine to just start drawing the pixels in reverse order. It would be the quickest and least resource-intensive solution to mirror a sprite. The same technique wouldn't work for tinting so they get their own new sprite file which gets saved with the world. So tinted objects also increase save size. We should do a stress-test; actually. Render a 1000+ bouncy animated balls in a new DS world, check the framerate, and repeat the process for all variations of tints, mira and alpha. The Community Scribble: make (y)our own metaroom! |
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Moe |
I can vouch for TINTed objects being horrific on performance. My Christmas 09 pack uses tints, and if you open too many presents at once, the shreds will kill the FPS. lol Only on creation though. Must be the engine loading tinted sprite sheets. |
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 Patient Pirate ylukyun Manager |
Do pigmented creatures' sprites work in a similar way to those of tinted objects? |
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AquaShee |
Yup, pretty much. If you explore the folders where your worlds are saved a bit, you'll stumble upon sprite files with tinted Norn sprites. Every world has these though, so the slowdown of these is not really a bother. The Community Scribble: make (y)our own metaroom! |
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 mfb |
AquaShee wrote: Whoa, seriously? That explains where some of my worlds were getting size bloat from :x I guess it's better than chewing CPU to tint them in real time but dang! Shee Tea Shop |
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