Mario Roots, Jr Koopa AI

Get 7-Zip.

So I've been spending some days doing misc things. The level, BG wise is done. Just need to actually do the enemies and other events that take place. Can't believe I still have 1 full month till ncfc.

Here is a small showing of it. Ignore the water/doors. I still have to make a swimming mario and such.

Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP240IH64lo

oh and no thats not all the red bandit/fat shy guy will do. also probably really minor and unimportant, but wall kicking has been changed.(for the better). Now you just press ctrl on walls..and thats it!. Hold ctrl to slide down, and press ctrl again to kick off. You dont have to press any arrow keys so yay for that.

and now I have some college applications to do.

Swimming sounds hard to program with an engine like that. You positive about getting this released for the NCFC?

Yep. only thing that is going to be sorta annoying to do is the red bandit enemy.(making him steal a certain item from your inventory and run away with it) But as for swimming nah, that will be probably easy. just have something constantlyadd to the gravity, and slow the movements by half or something, add some custom swimming sprites and etc

This post has been edited by kirbyhi5 on Aug 26 2008, 10:40 PM

Nice on the new video.
So how many Chapters are there in the game?

Off Topic - On your avatar is that from Soul Eater the anime?

Going to be around 6 chapters. Each chapter has 5 segments. Then there's the chapter boss(All the bosses you saw so far were just mini-bosses).

but then again the stages aren't really that long, so its not too much to of a task to complete. and yes, it is from the upcoming soul eater episode where mika lets the beast take over.

Just loved how they did her face expressions.

Completed enemy AI for Red Bandit, Fat Guys, and Black Toads. Made a 2 minute video featuring what all they can do + swimming Mario..(yes I love making videos)

VIDEO:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSgFr86otEw
(100 Internet's to anyone who knows where I got the black toad AI idea from.)

Well since all the enemy ai is done, the peach castle level is just about done. So far things are going just as scheduled. Things are going much faster now that the engine is done. (I'm not going to spoil anything past chapter 1 though)

hurray for pixelshaders mirite

Holy, I just realized what may be the problem as to why this goes slower on older computers. Every level has a ton of pixel shaders, and the ones that don't, people claim run at full speed.This could be gold, thanks for mentioning that. I should probably go test this out on my xp though before I jump to conclusions.(As for it could be the amount of layers too. Seems frames with 1 layer run at fullspeed, while as others with more layers go slower, Damn you HWA beta).

Edit: Found out the major problem came from the layers. I put the entire level in 1 layer, and it remained at 50-66 fps on my old xp computer. The layers lag either because of hwa beta or just mmf2 . now its time to see which one

This post has been edited by kirbyhi5 on Aug 31 2008, 11:07 AM

Is there a specific kind of pixel shader you use?I know there are versions of pixel shaders.The latest pixel shader is 4.1 i think.

Can you tell me what the game would look like withought the pixel shaders?

it's mainly rbg shading/some rotations and other minor effects on some levels. I'm starting to think they aren't the problem though. It may be the layers(which is odd, because layers shouldnt cause fps dips)

with all layers= 25-30 fps even though its set to 66.
with 1 layer= 45-66 fps when set to 66.

However that solely cant be the problem because it's not staying at a constant 66 fps. I'll have to disable any groups of events that aren't in use I guess and see what happens.(Which I still doubt it is the coding because the overworld map runs in slow motion too and it only has around 30 events or so),or could just be my old xp computer just sucks too much. I mean it is like 5 years old.

This post has been edited by kirbyhi5 on Aug 31 2008, 11:47 AM

How many layers are there?I don't know how mmf1/2 works.I think it is reasonable for the layers to slow framerate cause the GPU will be displaying more stuff on screen and the fact that the layers need to be processed the CPU will also have to work, but it is what i think and might not be true.

About 6, but there aren't really any BG's/events that take place in them.

Layer1= Parallax scrolling(3 objects)
Layer2= back pillar scrolling(1 objects)
Layer3= Main layer and where most of the things take place.
Layer4= front pillar scrolling(1 object)
Layer5=HUD display
Layer6=Pause menu(which is completely empty, because everything is created when you press pause, then removed from layer when you exit pause menus)

This post has been edited by kirbyhi5 on Aug 31 2008, 11:59 AM

Having several layers won't slow it down at all.

I don't get how it won't slowdown on older/weaker computers with that many layers being displayed.You might know this but VSync slowsdown the GPU and the CPU(maybe), triple buffering can increase performance when VSync is on.

I still think it would slowdown.Something is BEING displayed and needs to be processed.

it won't matter whenever the images are being displayed on one layer or spread across layers, they're still drawn.

Major slowdowns can either be because
pixelshaders
large images
alot of objects
objects being visible outside of screen
fast loops
alpha channels
scaling and rotating
bad coding

This post has been edited by MechaBowser on Aug 31 2008, 12:21 PM

I'm going to do more experiments once my sister is done using the old xp computer.
Surprisingly I didn't notice any fps drops when I had vsync enabled on my xp, so that's one thing that's not much of the problem.

I really hope the layers do not cause any lag either. Perhaps there is an event that is "always" reading data from the .ini file that I overlooked. I'm going to temporarily disabling a large amount of event groups that aren't in use to see how that works out. If it still doesn't stay at a constant 55-66 fps, then my old computer just sucks.

-Only around 300 objects
-Checked CPU usage in task manager, and its consumption is that of IE7 being run.
-all large images are not created at framestart
-all objects destroyed outside of frame
-all fastloops disabled unless acted upon(and at that, there aren't that many fastloops)
-must be the coding of the .ini.(which shouldn't matter if groups that aren't in use are disabled. I'm guessing there was an event that was always reading data and updating information from the .ini, so Im changing that once sister is done. )

There's only so much you can do with bare minimum specs.

This post has been edited by kirbyhi5 on Aug 31 2008, 12:34 PM

Hrm, I don't know MMF2 very much, but from what you've told me, I'm thinking that it could be Constant INI Read or Pixel Shaders that's Lagging it.

Hah! Found it. Apparently there was an event that was actively reading and updating information from the .ini file. This should of been a "at start of frame" event only. I guess I overlooked it because I didn't notice and speed reductions on my computer, but on the old xp, it ran at full 66 fps. This is great. Now it's time to see how well it performs with all 4 layers.

Constantly getting info from a .ini won't lag at all since it's nothing graphical and inis are quite fast.

And some graphiccards and processors doesn't support Vsync as well as other computers, which is why it causes lag on most computers.