Thanks Rene! Comments below. On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:27:18 +1000, "Rene Dudfield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > Hi, > > I like your improvements. The game is looking better, and sounding > better :)
Thanks! Been a lot of work. > > However it takes *ages* to load. Have you considered packing all of > your images into a couple of big images? I see you already do that > for the explosion animations, and the rotated ships. That would make > the game load a lot quicker. So pack the filmstrips into larger sheets? Didn't think of that, but it's worth a try. > > Maybe have a little timer animation on the loading screen to show > loading progress, so I know something is still happening. If you > could show a progress bar, or % loaded that would be even better. That is something I definitely need to do. > > I think it might have been because I had a machine with only 512MB of > ram. amd athlon 2100+, geforce ti4200 64MB vid ram. After I finished > the game windows told me it was increasing the amount of virtual > memory I used. Frankly, I'm surprised it ran at all on that machine. > > So maybe you could only load the animations, and images you need on > each level? That would reduce the memory requirements. Good idea. Will start on that next. > > Do you use dirty rects for updating the screen? The game seems to > slow down during some animations. I think it may have to do with > swapping memory to disk. So maybe fixing the memory usage would fix > the slow downs too... not sure. Yes, I'm using dirty rects. > > Have you considered limiting the frame rate to say 30fps? That way it > might look smoother overall. I'll look into that as well. > > I liked your new story, and the thrusters. I plan an evil twist at the end, but it's still developing :) > > Good work... keep it up. You're almost there :) Thanks for the encouragement. It means a lot. Dave
