Re: [Help-liquidwar6] Release 0.0.6beta

[Christian Mauduit]

Hi,

On Mon, January 12, 2009 6:00 pm, Kasper Hviid wrote:
> 2009/1/12 Christian Mauduit <address@hidden>:
>> Can I assume the .exe installer works and the game runs at acceptable
>> speed on MS-Windows? This is not obvious for me for I'm compiling the
>> game
>> on a low-end computer which does not have any hardware accelerator, so I
>> get about 0.1 frames/sec ;) I'm still not 100% sure the OpenGL bindings
>> are OK.
>
> Yes, the installer worked perfectly, and I'm running 62 fps.
OK, perfect. FYI the 62 fps means your computer just has "enough power to
run the game at optimal speed" for the game will limit fps to about 60
even if it could display more frames (see --frames-per-sec option).

Out of curiosity, what would be the ouput of "liquidwar6 --bench"?

> Thanks for the fix. I mostly just design my map.png to survive a
> downsize to 508x356.
508x356 is very high, even with a recent computer you might have trouble
running this with default settings. The defaults in the current version is
to display 800x600, and then to downscale by a 4 factor (--fighter-scale
option). This means running the game out of the box, you get 200x150 maps
which are workable on pretty much any recent computer. Someone using a
1600x1200 resolution will end up with a 400x300 map, with 2048x1536 ->
512x384. It's OK to have 508x356 maps, but there should be a good reason
to have such a resolution, and be aware that layered maps with such a
resolution can really be slow. There's still one big "but" to what I'm
saying -> the most time consuming operation in a map is moving the
fighters, and it's directly proportionnal to the number of fighters you
have. The --single-army-size and --total-armies-size options allow you put
more or less fighters on a given map. So even a 1000x750 map can be
workable if it has few fighters on it. Combined with some --zoom special
setting this can lead to different ways of playing, where you see only a
fragment of a hudge map, with relatively few fighters on it.

Maybe in the long run the game will be optimized so that big maps are
faster, but also keep in mind that in a network game, you can never guess
the power of the other computer, and it's IMHO wise to assume your peers
do not necessarly have brand new shiny hardware with bells and whistles.

I'd say it's up to the map designer to decide. I think it's OK to design
hudge maps. Technical limitations shouldn't limit creativity. But maps
that *require* a minimum resolution to make sense should have the
min-map-surface parameter set. A good way to test wether a map is workable
at a given resolution is to disable texture support (either run with
--use-texture=false or toggle the option through the menu "options -> map
-> ignore texture"). This way you'll see the real "logical" resolution of
the map.

> thanks - that map.h seems to have pretty much everything. If "the
> right way" is to much of a bother, the manual could just tell the map
> designers to check out map.h.
Well, nice pretty-printed and up-to-date docs are always worth the effort
;) And, for that matter, map.h does *not* have everything. It has
everything for rules.xml and style.xml but defaults for hints.xml are to
be found in src/lib/ldr/ldr.h

Have a nice day,

Christian.

-- 
Christian Mauduit <address@hidden> - http://www.ufoot.org/ ___ __/\__
Liquid War 6 - http://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/     / _")\~ \~/
"Les amis de la vérité sont ceux qui la cherchent et non _/ /   /_ o_\
ceux qui se vantent de l'avoir trouvée" - Condorcet     (__/      \/