MTM2.com

I've been building a truck (yeah, who hasn't heard of that) with a body model that has now accrued a largish number of texture files, and suddenly found that it causes the game framerate to stutter for a few seconds whenever you start a race.

It has:

Four 256x256 RAWs for the body art basic;
One 64x64 RAW for the shocks;
An animation (composed of some 330 frames and running to around 16 seconds) which uses five 64x64 RAWs.

Last night I added some driving lights to it, which accounted for one final 64x64 RAW file, making a grand total of 11 texture files (or 1472 square texture pixels!) for the body model. Cue end of building process, cue beginning of problems.

Now whenever I start a race, the framerate of the game is all choppy. Sitting on the start line, things don't look too bad... but then when the wheels start rolling I can see it's dropping frames left, right and centre, in a fashion that's consistent with the kind of pause you get as the game loads something into memory (only it's doing it over and over). Then just as it seems to be sorting itself out, it does one final momentary hang (which generally coincides inconveniently with my reaching the first corner of the track)... and thereafter, everything runs as smooth as you like.

Now, it wasn't doing this before I added the new lights (and thus had 'only' 10 texture files), or more rather if it was it wasn't quite so bad, so is there some kind of ceiling here? Actually, now that I look at it, even when driving the stock Bigfoot on a stock track, there's some slight stammer off the starting line as it seems to finalise loading things...

Anyway, is it worth trying to do anything about this? I can probably cut out one 64x64 RAW by redefining the texture animation (oh my kingdom for an animation editor) and/or fudging the new driving light texture to be shared with one of the animation frames... or should I just accept whatever drawbacks come with being this extravagant (ie. not waste the energy to tinker with it any further)?

I think it was blinking that caused considerable lag

http://forum.mtm2.com/viewtopic.php?t=1069

Your truck is probably a bit heavy-ish but not as severe as it gets. Perhaps get your testers ;-) to give it a run and see how it fares across a few systems.

re: animation editor

Sit tight, the bugs are being worked out even now.

I think it was blinking that caused considerable lag

There are no blinking lights anywhere on this blinkin' truck.

It occurs to me, though, that the lag may correspond to the frames of the texture animation I have...

Perhaps get your testers

I was initially going to give it out for trials (and spoil the surprise ) until I saw that the stutter seems to happen with everything, if not so severe. But yes, I shouldn't beat around the bush. testers ;-) will know where to find it.

My frame stutter prob with flashing lights is the one Phin is refering to....

The exhaust on the JOKER truck was originally made with headlight beams using painted flames for the beam textures....I used 3, and set them to flicker at 3 different rates respectedly, so they resembled the fast-flickering glow of hot exhaust at twilite and night modes (the beams are only seen in non-daylight settings, as is engine exhaust, so the effect was near-perfect).

Bummer.....for some reason it was causing video-frame stutter......Phineus tested a copy of the beta truck for me and verified the "bug"....I then had to revert to animated textures for the exhaust....

I believe if you toy with or reduce the number of lights, you can remove the stutter....

...maybe reduce the width of the widest light-beams as well....super-wide floodlight-like beams produced stutter on my early versions of my UFO....they were removed in the released version.

I doubt that the texture animation is causing the stutter.You DID say it started after adding the lights..... HOW MANY FRAMES!?? lol...no worries.....as long as you don't have 330 64x64 RAWs......eager to see it!

My frame stutter prob with flashing lights is the one Phin is refering to....

Yes, I know, I checked out the thread when Phineus provided the link. Interesting stuff, up till now I was unaware of all the activity in that thread below the first three or four posts...

You DID say it started after adding the lights.....

Yes, but maybe I should clarify. When I say "I added some driving lights", I mean I added some more detail to the body model, which added another .raw file to the texture pool already used by the model, giving a grand total of 11 textures for the .bin model.

I did add code to the .trk file for another pair of lights, but these are not blinkers... and further, the stutter I'm experiencing is
a) only temporary during the start of a race, and
b) seemingly unaffected by both weather conditions or whether the lights are on or off...

The reason I nominate the texture animation is because I think it's loading the texture used for each frame the first time through the animation (and because it's rather lengthy, the animation doesn't actually end until you leave the start line and reach the first corner), but it doesn't load the textures on subsequent loops through the animation... though the animation only uses one of five textures for any given frame, so that means it's loading textures mutliple times...