Hi, Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. Many different things to try out. I'll probably start by eliminating all my checks and see how that goes first.
Irv > On Mar 1, 2022, at 3:02 PM, Irv Kalb <i...@furrypants.com> wrote: > > I am developing a game but I'm running into some cases where the game slows > down too much. A few details ... > > The game lives in a world whose size is much larger than what the user can > see in the window. (For now, the world is 3000 x 3000, but the window is 640 > x 640 - I could decide to change these later). There is a central player who > is controlled by arrow keys. When the user presses a key or keys to move in > a direction, the player is an animation that looks like its walking, but > always stays in the center of the screen - the view in the window scrolls in > the opposite direction. There are "enemies" that live in this world, new > ones are generated all the time, and each moves semi-randomly in every frame. > There are also a number of additional elements that must be drawn every > frame (e.g., walls in a maze and more). > > The game is complicated by the fact that the world wraps around both > horizontally and vertically. If you move off the top, you show up at the > bottom, go off the left and you appear on the right, etc. In my current > version, in every frame I iterate through all drawable elements, and go > through some coordinate checking code to determine if the element is visible > within the window. This code is more complicated than a simple > "colliderect()" because I have to account for the potential wrapping in all > directions. If the element is within the viewable screen area, I draw it > (blit), otherwise, I don't do the draw. I thought this would be a great > optimization. But, I'm finding that as the number of enemies grows, the > overall game slows down. I'm sure this has to do with the fact that in every > frame I check their movement (they cannot go through walls), move each to a > new location, and then decide whether to draw them or not. > > I'm wondering if my code to check if an element is within the viewable area, > is actually doing more work than not bothering to check at all. My question > is really about the efficiency of a call to blit in pygame when the thing > being drawn is outside the viewable area. I actually have done some minor > tests, and the game seems to work a little better without doing the checking, > but I want to get opinions from anyone who might really know. > > I will probably wind up limiting the number of enemies, but it would be good > to know about how efficiently pygame deals with potentially drawing outside > the window. > > Thanks in advance, > > Irv > > >
