Higher FPS on Era

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by Tim_Rocks

Would have to get unixmad involved (where ever he is). That being said, would it really make a big difference on a 2D game? I'm not really sure, but I do know it couldn't hurt.

I don't care about it for the sake of making the game feel less "choppy", but scripts only update once per frame, which is why everything has to be in multiples of 0.05.
If we had 60 FPS we could get a lot more weapon diversity on Era.

And we could make projectiles faster as well, because the current limitation for the projectile speed is the onwall check each frame.

[cbk1994]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

And we could make projectiles faster as well, because the current limitation for the projectile speed is the onwall check each frame.

I don't think the collision check is the real issue. At one point I recreated the default projectiles (and spent a lot of time getting the collision detection to be identical) -- they ended up being basically functionally equivalent, but with lots of other options (variable speed, etc.). We had planned on switching to them, but didn't mainly because it was a lot of work. It's a shame because it could have added many more options for guns.

The default projectiles don't even allow you to slow down bullets, let alone make them faster.

[Tim_Rocks]

Originally Posted by cbk1994

I don't think the collision check is the real issue. At one point I recreated the default projectiles (and spent a lot of time getting the collision detection to be identical) -- they ended up being basically functionally equivalent, but with lots of other options (variable speed, etc.). We had planned on switching to them, but didn't mainly because it was a lot of work. It's a shame because it could have added many more options for guns.

The default projectiles don't even allow you to slow down bullets, let alone make them faster.

Are there still examples on the server?

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

I don't care about it for the sake of making the game feel less "choppy", but scripts only update once per frame, which is why everything has to be in multiples of 0.05.
If we had 60 FPS we could get a lot more weapon diversity on Era.

And we could make projectiles faster as well, because the current limitation for the projectile speed is the onwall check each frame.

Just wanna be clear, I 100% agree that it should be done. I just really don't think it's going to happen.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by cbk1994

I don't think the collision check is the real issue. At one point I recreated the default projectiles (and spent a lot of time getting the collision detection to be identical) -- they ended up being basically functionally equivalent, but with lots of other options (variable speed, etc.). We had planned on switching to them, but didn't mainly because it was a lot of work. It's a shame because it could have added many more options for guns.

The default projectiles don't even allow you to slow down bullets, let alone make them faster.

That actually sounds really cool.

Not sure how much things have changed since the first time Snakeandy and I tried to increase the speed of them, because even at 1.5 tiles per frame there was almost a 50/50 chance that the projectile would clip a wall 2 tiles thick. Can't remember now if he ever changed the actual collision check because I think it was only ever checking the tile infront of the projectile, whereas at that speed you'd need to include a tile infront of that and the current tile.
But I remember he just gave up and made that Gun/Bonus Feature instead, which let you increase the clip size of a gun.

[WillaWonka]

Sounds like a Era 2 kind of change, because that's digging in deep when it comes to updating the game. Many things will have to change, aside from the weapons, images and many gfx updates as well since the frames will be smoother, thus more images to compensate, id think.

[Fiberwyre_P2P]

Raising the FPS would make a big difference and, at the same time, no difference.
Everything in the game is tuned to run at 20 FPS.
Animations certainly aren't going to just magically run at 60 FPS if you raise it to 60.
Loops in scripts are hardcoded to run at 20 FPS.
Gun stats are in increments of .05 (1/20th of a second).

So basically, JUST raising the FPS wouldn't do anything. There would also be a ton of work to do to actually make it worth doing.

Probably the only immediate change you would see is everyone would be moving 3x as fast, since I'm pretty sure Graal/Era's movement system doesn't account for time deltas between frames, as evidenced by running exceptionally slow when you're running at a sub-20 FPS.

[xDarkTAx]

Is it possible to forcibly uncap a games locked FPS? And would this increase your ingame speed/get you banned immediately? Along with what Koho said I can get the ingame FPS counter to get up 24 by going inside and outside levels rapidly.

Originally Posted by Fiberwyre_P2P

So basically, JUST raising the FPS wouldn't do anything. There would also be a ton of work to do to actually make it worth doing.

This was also my main thought. I know 60fps would change the game but I was unsure how much work would need to be done to make the game actually playable at 60fps. Apparently a ton.

[cbk1994]

Originally Posted by xDarkTAx

Is it possible to forcibly uncap a games locked FPS? And would this increase your ingame speed/get you banned immediately?

Yes, this is what the speed hack detection does. We found quite a few people toggling speed hacks for raiding when we first developed it.

[Crow]

I'd like to add - not sure if the current version is affected by it - that Graal also (obviously) does not properly compensate for lower frames per second. Back when I played Atlantis on Graal v2.3 on my 233 MHz machine, I got less than 20 frames per second. Because of that, my buffs lasted longer. This, of course, was due to their duration being calculated on the clientside entirely - bad code, essentially. But there are many other ways this could've and has affected gameplay back then.