Re: [pygame] Pygame games run slowly :(

[Toni Alatalo <antont@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jul 29, 2009, at 7:54 PM, Ian Mallett wrote:

> Richie is right.  Python is not as fast as most other programming 
> languages, so good processors are a definite bonus.  1GHz shouldn't be 
> too much of a problem, but you could do well to upgrade it.  Likewise 
> to the RAM--which is probably the most cost-effective way to get 
> better results.  Your graphics card also isn't so impressive.  
> Personally, I recommend getting a new computer, although if cost is 
> very much an object, upgrade the RAM.

Perhaps it's just my age and scaringly easily arising moments of 
nostalgia, but for me 1Ghz really is an amazingly huge amount of cycles 
(come on, a billion a second!) and 512mb is not little .. ps3 has 512 
ram I've heard, as games often don't need much. Ram usage of a specific 
game you can easily see with the appropriate os tool (task manager on 
win, top or something on linux or macosx etc).

Yes, Python easily uses like 20x times the cpu compared to native code, 
but exactly because even old compus today are in the gigaherz range, it 
is rarely a problem - I'm often amazed how much py can do for every 
frame in a 60fps game.

It is very easy to make bottlenecks, very inefficient code, that you 
don't notice when use a powerful computer, but that show in slower 
ones. Sometimes it's a single a bit stupid line. That might be the case 
in some of the games the original poster tried, in which case it might 
be a good effort to profile them and optimize. Or try running with 
Psyco (which compiles unmodified py code to native code on the fly, 
with varying results (typically 2-20x speedup).

One reason why I care is that there is even an increase of weaker CPUs 
that can be fun for gaming: mobile devices like Maemo, Android things, 
iPhone .. and one laptop per child (OLPC) where pygame is already used 
etc. And mini-pcs typically also have a relatively weak processor 
(afaik 1ghz) and gfx card (some intel integrated). I think that trend 
is great, 'cause those machines are much cheapter to build and use 
*much* less electricity compared to quadcores with dualcore gpus that 
need their own cooling fans etc -- with current tech the world wouldn't 
be able to handle 6+ billion such workstations.

So if the original poster mentions the names of the games that are 
unexpectedly slow, perhaps the authors are curious enough to profile 
them for fun, or if they are open source someone else can give it a 
shot .. even just say 'import psyco; psyco.full()' as a test. No 
promises from my part though, as should work on our own 
pygame-in-progress instead (which occasionally run on a 400(?)Mhz maemo 
pad too :)

Sure if those games use opengl and need a million polygons etc. only a 
new gfx card could help, it all depends totally on the specifics of the 
game.

~Toni