Re: [pygame] Frantic (again)

["Rene Dudfield" <renesd@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I like your improvements.  The game is looking better, and sounding better :)

However it takes *ages* to load.  Have you considered packing all of
your images into a couple of big images?  I see you already do that
for the explosion animations, and the rotated ships.  That would make
the game load a lot quicker.

Maybe have a little timer animation on the loading screen to show
loading progress, so I know something is still happening.  If you
could show a progress bar, or % loaded that would be even better.

I think it might have been because I had a machine with only 512MB of
ram.  amd athlon 2100+, geforce ti4200 64MB vid ram.  After I finished
the game windows told me it was increasing the amount of virtual
memory I used.

So maybe you could only load the animations, and images you need on
each level?  That would reduce the memory requirements.

Do you use dirty rects for updating the screen?  The game seems to
slow down during some animations.  I think it may have to do with
swapping memory to disk.  So maybe fixing the memory usage would fix
the slow downs too... not sure.

Have you considered limiting the frame rate to say 30fps?  That way it
might look smoother overall.

I liked your new story, and the thrusters.

Good work... keep it up.  You're almost there :)


On 6/20/06, Rene Dudfield <renesd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It takes *ages* to load.
>
> It doesn't seem to get past the loading screen for me.  Been there for
> ten minutes or so.
>
>
> On 6/20/06, Rene Dudfield <renesd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > It should be able to be reduced to around 8MB I think.  From looking
> > at the files.
> >
> > I'm going to play it some more soon, and I'll give you my thoughts on
> > the game later.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 6/20/06, Alexander Sashnov <asashnov@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > "David Mikesell" <dave_mikesell@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > >
> > > > everyone that does on this latest version.  It really is a fun little
> > > > (well, 17.5 Mb isn't really little, is it) game.   Let me know what you
> > > > think.
> > >
> > > I look to the screenshots and not understand why its size so big.
> > > I still have limited internet channel :-(
> > >
> > > --
> > > Alexander Sashnov
> > >
> > >
> >