491 replies to this topic

[hauntfreaks]

Shoopity.... here is the other screen Udmd is crashing.... I checked and I have all the updated files... I can trace it back to whenever the match feature started working, is when it started crashing on my setup... is this isolated to just me?? anyone else??

 

[freneticamnesic]

It is more pronounced the slower the pc is, it seems it is happening with you too. I get minimum 45 fps with 3.2ghz desktop and around 10 fps with 2.2ghz. Outside of animations it is around 90 to 60 respectively. This doesn't happen at all with that Captain Future table I mentioned.

 

Ah well, I'll just won't play this table. Maybe the problem will be discovered in the future. Happy to be of help either way.

 

I'm sorry you're having problems. You're not the only person to report poor performance on the table. At this time, I do not know the cause of it. Obviously there's a lot going on with the animations and the table graphics and lighting so I guess I'm not surprised that there are issues for some people. As for what you can do to try and play it, make sure you have ambient occlusion turned off, turn off any antialiasing as well... these two are the biggest performance hits.

[Kaan]

 

It is more pronounced the slower the pc is, it seems it is happening with you too. I get minimum 45 fps with 3.2ghz desktop and around 10 fps with 2.2ghz. Outside of animations it is around 90 to 60 respectively. This doesn't happen at all with that Captain Future table I mentioned.

 

Ah well, I'll just won't play this table. Maybe the problem will be discovered in the future. Happy to be of help either way.

 

I'm sorry you're having problems. You're not the only person to report poor performance on the table. At this time, I do not know the cause of it. Obviously there's a lot going on with the animations and the table graphics and lighting so I guess I'm not surprised that there are issues for some people. As for what you can do to try and play it, make sure you have ambient occlusion turned off, turn off any antialiasing as well... these two are the biggest performance hits.

 

 

I've tried them all. I looked at task manager for cpu usages and both vp and dmd were around 35% at both cores, cpu wasn't maxed. Strange thing is, the low fps(4-5) remains even if after I shutdown ultradmd after starting a game.

 

Wish I could be more of help, but I'm quite certain it is not because my pc's cpu and gpu are maxed but something else. Could of course still be my pcs configuration, desktop and laptop are both running windows 10, core 2 duo and pre dx11 nvidia gpus.

Edited by Kaan, 15 August 2015 - 09:59 PM.

[STAT]

Do you have a Chance at another with Win 7 ?

Edited by STAT, 15 August 2015 - 10:14 PM.

[Kaan]

Unfortunately no.

[Kaan]

I can't drop this issue I thought, as I don't have the fps problem with the vp9 version, the script of the vpx version may have been the cause. I just straight copied vp9 script to vpx, of course it doesn't work directly. Anyway, after I disabled enough stuff to get the table to load I saw that the fps situation was exactly the same. This was quite a hacky attempt I made, no idea if it's of any help.  

[Shoopity]

If you really want to test stuff, and you say it's always happening with UltraDMD, try commenting out the guts of the following (don't comment the sub itself, just everything between the Sub and End Sub lines:

Sub videoSFX

Sub VideoQ

Sub VideoCombo

Sub VideoEOB

Sub Video

 

Let's see if commenting out the guts of those routines still causes your table to slow down.

[Kaan]

Ok, I did as you told. "Sub VideoEOB" didn't exist on vpx version of the table so I couldn't comment that out but the rest was there. Anyway, right after I start the table and the atract gif is playing I only get single digit fps, but after starting a game I get around 60 fps which is about the same I get without running any script at all. I did get the slowdown after playing a bit and when the dmd showed 25000 and in another game 50000 after I did something, not sure what.

 

It seems to me that the slowdown happens after the game asks something for dmd to do, and goes away as soon as dmd goes back to doing it's own thing.

[Shoopity]

I always hate finger pointing so I am in no way simply shifting the blame, but I'm leaning more towards it being something with UDMD.  I'm not totally convinced though since you say the VP9 version plays just fine, which points to something about the table and/or VPX.  The main reason I believe it to be more something with UDMD (or even possibly UDMD in combination with VPX and not specifically AMH), the table plays just fine when the UDMD isn't animating; that to me points to either UDMD, or maybe the way the table calls UDMD (which would mean it is the table).

 

I took a look at Captain Future since you said there were no hitches and it didn't convince me much because in the case of that table, you're comparing Granny Smith apples to Macintosh apples.  I might be being too picky and there isn't a difference, but I noticed the CF table doesn't pass in a single animated gif.  All animations are either .WMV, UDMD creating an animation from a list of still gifs, or UDMD creating an animation from a list of still pngs.  There is only one animated gif in the folder, and the only place that gif is called in the code is in the DisplayScene04 sub, and the routine never called anywhere.

 

So, there's lots of testing you could do if you really wanted to whittle this down some.  You could try taking a gif from the AMH table and putting it in the CF table; if you say the slow down occurs as soon as the attract gif plays, just grab the "AT0 Rev 2.gif" and place it in the CaptainFuture.UltraDMD folder.  Then go in to the code and search for comet4.wmv and change it to AT0 Rev 2.gif; then shoot the furthest left shot and see if that slows down at all. (or replace any gif you want).  Or you could try taking a wmv from CF and putting it in AMH and replacing stuff there.  Even at that point, I still wouldn't be convinced totally that it was the table since AMH is doing so much more than CF.  I'm sorry I can't trouble shoot this myself since my system doesn't really have any problems.

 

AMH has a lot more lighting and fancy graphics going on, all the time; I don't think anyone's willing to reduce the graphics.  AMH uses many more primitives and a TON more faces than CF; that was Frenetic's choice and changing it would mean so much more work (and personally I think the use of primitives is astounding).  AMH makes heavy use of timers that run constantly and do a ton of work; the table would simply not work without those timers.

 

Although, another step of troubleshooting, change all of the timers to be no less than 10.  Animations, sounds, and some game events will be out of whack, but change all the timers and see if it still slows down.  The bad news would be, even if the timers are the root of the problem, it would be a long time before I get around to changing everything to fit that.

Edited by Shoopity, 17 August 2015 - 02:47 PM.

[freneticamnesic]

Shoopity is there a quick way to play the table without using UltraDMD? Or does it just require deleting all the lines that call for UltraDMD animation?

ie. could we disable the UltraDMD launch script and still play the table, flashers and lights and switches and scoring etc, without an issue?

If it will require commenting out the code, I'll do it tonight and send it to the few people who are having noticeable performance problems, then we'd KNOW if it's the table or if it's UltraDMD...well, not that, but there's at least a chance we'd know if it's the table for sure...

[Kaan]

Shoopity, I've done as you asked. I've reduced all the timers to 10 and now I get about half the max. fps I'm getting. About 30-40 during animation, setting all the timers to a ridiculous number like 1000 gets me full fps(60~). I've tried to narrow it down by setting timers one by one, and it seems to be "TiDMDScore" is the culprit. Although I only get about 30 fps no matter how high I set it to. Other timers also have an effect it seems but I don't know which ones. This timer is at 10 on vp9 version of the table.

 

Captain Future has almost no fps loss while playing that atract gif, maybe a couple fps.

Edited by Kaan, 17 August 2015 - 03:48 PM.

[Shoopity]

OH yeah, the TiDMDscore might be the problem.  When an animation is called, then the code turns on that timer and that timer checks if UltraDMD is rendering.  It shouldn't be doing anything if it is rendering, but I'll double check if it is.  That code is required to pop the Score screen back up as soon as an animation is finished.  You can lower that timer and it shouldn't affect anything other than maybe an animation restarting and the score screen popping up later (a 10th of a second later).  You can also look at that _timer sub to see if it's doing anything (maybe I left in a debug.print in there or something).  It could just be the mere act of checking if UDMD is rendering is causing a delay?

 

Although, I would think setting that timer to, say 5000, would mean it's only checking once every 5 seconds, so it should cause any FPS problems at that point.

 

Fren, I don't think I was diligent enough in checking if UltraDMD was an object prior to doing anything so you might get an error if you just don't load UDMD, but you could try.  Other than that, commenting out/deleting the lines in the aforementioned 4~5 subs (e.g. videoQ) would do the trick.

Edited by Shoopity, 17 August 2015 - 05:50 PM.

[Kaan]

Did some more testing, it seems to be the Timer and TiDMDscore timers that affect the framerate. Increasing Timer breaks the table though, and TiDMDscore alone isn't enough. I've checked the codes for both of those timers from the vp9 table, even used the timer code from that one on Fren's table but the result doesn't change. Only increasing the timers does. This seems more like a problem of vpx than your code it looks like to me?

 

 

Actually, I did use the entire code from vp9 already now that I think about it.

Edited by Kaan, 17 August 2015 - 07:25 PM.

[lucky1]

I don´t think that it is UltraDMD causing the low FPS. When I start AMH it has 9FPS and attract mode is stuttering.

As soon as I press 5 to add credit FPS goes up to 90. What is the difference of attract mode with and without credits ?

I would also bet on the timers because so far I use only a hand full in Captain Future.

 

@ Shoopity About the granny smith and the macintosh. With CF I feel more like Steve Wozniaks with his Apple in the wooden box, but I will see how it develops. Currently I´m preparing the different routines like "spelling words" by hitting targets. As soon as all routines are in I will go on with the missions and implement the combinations of the routines necessary to complete a mission. I only have a rough idea of the final gameplay so far. We will see. Compared to that AMH is a IPod.

Edited by lucky1, 17 August 2015 - 07:36 PM.

[freneticamnesic]

It's loading everything, initializing primitive movement, setting light states, transparencies, lighting all happens at the start of the table. Start a table with 5 lights and no primitive movement then start a table with almost 250 lights and tons of moving primitives, transparent textures, lots of collidables, and then have them all start blinking, high resolution textures being loaded into memoryu, all at the same time. That's going to cause stutter when you launch the table.

On most tables you don't notice it because they're rom controlled and the rom hardly ever initializes as fast as the table, but since this is scripted, it all starts at the same time

You see it a bit on Kingpin too, when you plunge the ball and the flashers go off for the first time, it loads all the textures on the skill shot plunge and there's a slight hiccup, just once, once the textures are in memory, it no longer stutters.

You can test this by starting a game, draining, and seeing attract mode after the game has loaded... smooth as butter

[Outhere]

On my i7 with Windows 7 without a video card I stay 18 FPS - give or take one no matter what happens in the game....

On my cab, I7 with windows 7 with a 660 card, I stay at 220 FPS or more all the time no matter what the game is doing

 

 

 

The location on the screen for the FPS reading, is there any way to move that location?
 

Edited by Outhere, 17 August 2015 - 08:56 PM.

[Kaan]

Shoopity, in the Captain Future table there is only 1 timer and its for dmd. Setting that to 1 from the default 100 gave me the same exact fps problem. During any animation play I got 5 fps and normal during score display.

 

So I guess this is really vpx not working well with low timers, the table needs to be adjusted or is it a bug? Should I file a bug report?

If only I could increase the "Timer" timer of amh.

Edited by Kaan, 17 August 2015 - 11:33 PM.

[Shoopity]

Theoretically speaking, you should be able to adjust the Timer timer and appropriately adjust the CycleAdjuster variable.  That was the idea when I started it.  But, there's plenty of places where that's not the case; I know this is true because theoretically going from VPX to VP9 should be easily done by just changing things like light.intensity to light.image and then changing the CycleAdjuster variable.  Feel free to give it a shot.

 

I think it's something more with VPX interacting with the UltraDMD object?  Maybe some work can be done with COM support?

[arngrim]

ok my part is done, here's a new video with the latest table

 

 

There were some back and forth between me and Shoopity about the new script, table is sent back to him, there are some things i couldn't fix myself, as shown on the vid, will be released soon, a new DOF config will be available as soon as the table is released

Edited by arngrim, 18 August 2015 - 05:08 AM.

[Kaan]

Shoopity, adjusting the Timer to 5 and TiDMDscore to 100 almost let's me play the table perfectly, but some stuff seems to last longer like ball saving and some other stuff. I tried adjusting "Const CycleAdjuster" but I have no idea what I'm doing, this is way beyond me. Well, that's it from me I guess.