[pygame] Re: Is Pygame suitable for full HD games?

[Luis Morcillo <luismorcillo@xxxxxxxxx>]

First of all, thanks a lot for the quick reply :)

Silver, please see my answers embedded:

On 5 feb, 19:31, Silver <rockac...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 2/5/2012 6:23 AM, Luis Morcillo wrote:
>
> > I finished the tiled background engine, and I've noticed a
> > 15 fps drop in 1920x1080. And when I added a 5 planes parallax scroll,
> > fps are going down to 10-20. I doubt it's the machine, as I play games
> > like Starcraft in Ultra settings on it. Also, I'm noticing most games
> > developed with Pygame are 640x480 or 800x600. So the question would
> > be: is Pygame suitable for doing a full HD side-scrolling platformer?
>
> > My current approach is to render all scrolls planes and the tiled
> > background to a single surface (the ".image" of my Stage class),
> > instead of rendering each one in different planes. I haven't tried
> > separating yet, but I doubt it will improve performance, as the
> > blitting will be the same. Am I wrong?
>
> If you don't blit it directly to a HWSURFACE, then it will still be
> software blitting and probably wont make much of a difference. Try
> initiating your .image with the HWSURFACE flag, and see if it improves
> speed.
>
> I think you are blitting everything to a .image, then the .image to the
> screen once, right?
Yes, that's right-

>
> > I've read the Surface.blit() function is somehow slow and shouldn't be
> > overused, but I don't know another way of rendering images to the
> > screen. I tried using flags "HWSURFACE | DOUBLEBUF | FULLSCREEN" and
> > it increased 2-3 fps. Am I missing some other optimization or am I
> > just using the wrong engine for an HD platformer?
>
> Say, are you using per-pixel transparency?
> I know for a fact that it slows pygame down a lot, so if you don't need
> intermediate tranlucency (eg, fading) you could use colorkeys.
>
> I know that per-pixel alphas are slow, because I ran a test at 1920x1080
> and adding a fifth surface with per-pixel alpha dropped frames from ~ 30
> to ~8 per second.
>
> Using colorkeys gave me 200 fps w/ pygame.RLEACCEL.
> Adding one surface w/ transparency dropped it to 60fps.
>
> I can send the code if you wish.
I've tried the two approachs I know: using convert.alpha() and using
convert() + set_colorkey(). Both dropped down fps a lot. I don't know
how to use that HWSURFACE for a ".image", but I think I have to use
OpenGL, and I'm a bit lost about that. Is that another dependency I
have to import in my game, or is it just a flag? I'd really appreciate
if you could send me a snippet code :)

>
> I do have a higher-end system, so opengl will probably be a good idea.
> I'd suggest looking into PyGL3Display, which works for me although I
> have just started to try it out.
>
> I hope I have been helpful to your efforts.
You have. Thanks a lot again ;)