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Re: fast, smooth updates

To: REALbasic Games <realbasic-games at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: Re: fast, smooth updates
From: Robert Steely <robsteely at nc dot rr dot com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:52:16 -0400

On Wednesday, July 23, 2003, at 03:04  PM, Joseph J. Strout wrote:

Well, no, we've discussed how you can choose when to yield to background tasks. You're just not satisfied with the result, because when you do yield, it (not surprisingly) causes a glitch in the framerate.

That's my point! You're yielding on RB's terms.

I'm not sure what that means. You're choosing when to yield. What more do you want?

I think what he is saying is that in a C program, the programmer is in full control of the main event loop and can determine which events to handle, which ones to ignore, and can customize it to maximize game performance. In RB, you get what the runtime gives you which may not be optimized for game development. Your options are:

1. Use a timer or thread to update frames and live with the framerate glitches.
2. Update frames from within a tight loop and lock up the GUI.
3. Disable background tasks and selectively lock up the GUI.

There just doesn't seem to be a happy medium. Somehow, RB game developers need more control over which events get serviced, how often they get serviced, and when.

Perhaps this could be fixed through additional compiler directives. Or maybe we should have an alternate runtime for game development with an event loop better suited for high framerate games.

Bob


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