Adventure Game Studio

AGS Development => Engine Development => Topic started by: Corby on Tue 01/04/2014 02:42:50

Title: AGS slows down on some PCs?
Post by: Corby on Tue 01/04/2014 02:42:50
Has no idea where to post this. Hope this is okay:

Something has been bothering me after watching a few playthroughs of Heroine's Quest on Youtube. I've noticed that on perhaps a third of them, AGS' gametime seems to be incredibly slow as seen below:

Watch the avalanche and troll animation:

Normal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWs7UyuPj1o#t=332

Slow (in this version, the perfectly timed music needed to restart as well):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8wLFC78RJU#t=337

I remember awhile back, before the latest AGS version (v3.3??) was released, I was also experiencing this issue on my laptop. It mysteriously went away however, and I can't seem to reproduce it anymore. The bizarre thing was, I could eliminate the issue by opening a Chrome browser. I never knew why this worked.

Any one have any insight on this, or has also experienced this?
Title: Re: AGS slows down on some PCs?
Post by: Fitz on Tue 01/04/2014 06:22:01
I've seen the same thing happen in one Let's Play of my game (not TFeldt's, his was perfect) -- the intro sequence went completely out of sync, with the music going at its usual pace and the visuals plodding on at a much slower speed. At one point, the music stopped as the track ended, and the scene went on for another few seconds. It was a pain to watch. I thought it might've been the video capturing software, or the user tampering with the speed settings -- but the game speed in the LP was inconsistent throughout the whole game, sometimes slower than intended, and sometimes faster, actually.
Title: Re: AGS slows down on some PCs?
Post by: DoorKnobHandle on Tue 01/04/2014 10:43:37
I've noticed the same in some Let's Plays of my game TOAD and I always blamed it on my coding novice Let's Players recording on a potato with an unregistered copy of FRAPS. But yeah, I also noticed how the game seemed to slow down and speed up in certain areas without any particular reason (not with many enemies/projectiles on the screen). Maybe it is a bigger issue?
Title: Re: AGS slows down on some PCs?
Post by: Calin Leafshade on Tue 01/04/2014 11:15:53
There is an issue with 32bit surfaces on some integrated hardware. Abstauber reported this on Ever Beginning Tale when I released the source. EBT has no coding that should cause slowdowns but he reported single figure FPSs. Downgrading the surfaces to 16bit fixed the issue. I never followed up to find a cause
Title: Re: AGS slows down on some PCs?
Post by: Radiant on Tue 01/04/2014 11:29:40
Now that you mention it...

...the reason why last year's game Draconis was released in AGS 2.7 is that it caused substantial slowdown on my computer in AGS 3.2. Of course, that is a game that relies on lots and lots of RawDraws so it's hardly par for the course. I'd have to check if this issue still occurs.