Baricanna - level builder preview and endless bouncing
52https://www.patreon.com/ulillillia --- Note: the video has no audio, intentionally.
With enough setting up done regarding platforms and before I decided to implement the menu system stuff I needed, I figured I'd test a rather extreme situation to hunt down some bugs. I figured it'd be hilarious seeing all the balls, coins, diamonds, and items flying all over the place, bouncing endlessly from being swatted by fast-moving platforms. I originally thought of making the video only a few minutes, but then, I figured... why not show off the level builder as well and all the neat wonders I have, at least a preview of some of what I can do. The video has 2 parts to it. The first shows some basics and the endless bouncing, the second shows the level builder in more depth, such as bulk adding terrain or working midground filler.
While spawning all the treasure from endlessly resetting the treasure chest, I was beginning to notice a massive frame rate drop which was unexpected. I've had 10,000 objects in the view at one point and I was still getting over 240 fps. But, not even 1300 objects and I was getting a move time delta of over 20,000 microseconds? Something wasn't right. So, I checked stuff, commenting out function calls, and realized what was going on to cause it and the optimization was quick and easy. Normally, you won't have 1500 objects bouncing around and being swatted by moving platforms. You'd have maybe 20 at the higher end. Still, this was intended to be an extreme test, to push the game to its limits. I ultimately maxed out at a move time delta of 100,000 microseconds, so low that I was barely getting 10 fps. Game play was hard and sometimes unresponsive.
During the second part, after I made the fix/optimization for that part, I show the level builder and more of it's features, but it's only a preview of the grand scope of things. I show you how I can work terrain, copying existing blocks, bulk filling it in, deleting things, even midground filler and how I can work that where I create a cave-like back fill of sorts. Then I repeat the object spawning where the frame rate loss doesn't happen. The move time delta is still fairly high, but unlike 100,000 microseconds, it's more around 1400 microseconds so a 240 Hz display can handle it, and that's when the 2000-object limit is reached. Again, it's an extreme test case, taking the game to its limits, far beyond what is normally expected. The only time delta that's expected to be high is that of the rest time, which is waiting for the vsync to arrive to draw the scene. My display is 60 Hz so this should be very close to 16,666.7 microseconds. If I were to hook up my 240 Hz display, it would be close to 4166.7 microseconds for the combined total.