Odd flicker of graphics

[Fleet Unity]

I posted this on the Mantis I looked to see if anyone else did I did not see any so if their was sorry about that here is the post.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=15922

[x4000]

Thanks!

* Ported over the "sorted batched" sprite logic that is used for shots and ships in The Last Federation.  This is now used for far zoom icons and shots and similar in AI War, and prevents the bulk of that flickering that previously could be seen.

* Far Zoom Icon Combination Distance is now default of 0 (and will automatically reset itself to that for everyone), rather than a default of 12.
** This causes the combination of far zoom icons to lower the number of draw calls to cease.  This actually saves you some CPU, which is great, and it shows you literal icons for every ship rather than combining nearby ships into one kind of compound icon.
** This also solves the remainder of the flicker problem that has been reported in recent builds.  Why this aspect of the flicker is only showing up recently is not entirely clear, but it seems related to the overall higher framerates and thus the higher rate of recalculation of these groups.
** Most importantly of all, these groups really are not important for performance reasons now, because the game is now doing the sprite batching that these were trying to work around the lack of previously.  We still have the feature available in case someone does turn out to need it, but this is not expected.

[Bud Backer]

Just found you posted here too do I'll repeat what I said in the announcement thread:

On my system the flickering is worse, not better, when ships overlap. Only at far zoom, but much more common even with just three ships where before it was for larger groups only.

In case you're wondering:

MacBookPro Retina Edition
I7 Quad-Core 2.7GHz
Nvidia GT650M 1 GB
16 GB RAM
OSX 10.9.5

[Fleet Unity]

It seemed to fix it for me thanks will have to experiment more later also now any ship with modules it will show the modules mark levels and now their icons on far zoom. This may be why Bud Backer is still having that problem but I would not know.

Edit: I made a new Mantis post just in case about the modules icons in far zoom.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=15947

Also this is probably why this is happening now "This causes the combination of far zoom icons to lower the number of draw calls to cease.  This actually saves you some CPU, which is great, and it shows you literal icons for every ship rather than combining nearby ships into one kind of compound icon" The modules count as ships so this is most likely what is causing this new modules mark icons on modular ships now. Also will re post this in the mantis just in case.

[x4000]

I have fixed the modules thing for the next version, and I'm looking into the flicker bit.  The only flickering I'm seeing is when the icon border colors are shifting back and forth.  So I'm working on that one (it's a pain), and we'll see how that does.

[x4000]

Thanks!

* Fixed the remaining flicker of far zoom icons, which could happen when ships of one sort changed icon colors.  So if something was changing icon colors periodically in particular, you'd notice icon flicker at that point.
** The solution to that was actually making these into dictionaries in-memory, and the way that this is done actually leads to even MORE efficiency gains through more batching.  So yay, even more performance.

[Kahuna]

Wiiiii

[Bud Backer]

Thanks!

* Fixed the remaining flicker of far zoom icons, which could happen when ships of one sort changed icon colors.  So if something was changing icon colors periodically in particular, you'd notice icon flicker at that point.
** The solution to that was actually making these into dictionaries in-memory, and the way that this is done actually leads to even MORE efficiency gains through more batching.  So yay, even more performance.

Hi Chris;

I'm getting some flicker again that seemed eradicated in 8.017. The Knowledge number beside a Science Lab was bouncing up and down  (Perhaps 1/4 the height of a character). And I've had fighters and engineers that overlaps flicker at a rather high speed. It's less than it was before you started working on this in terms of how often it happens, but more than it was in 8,017 when I don't recall seeing it even once.

I tried changing the ship spacing (trying all the way to 12) and it made no difference whatsoever, so I put it back at default (0).

[x4000]

The knowledge number definitely wouldn't be related, that would be something else.

As for the fighters and engineers, that's really odd.  You might try changing your performance settings up some and see if that fixes it; if so, then it's probably the framerate limiter that is causing the issue for you (for reasons unknown to me).  I wouldn't go to Insane, but if you go to High or Very High that might solve it.

[Bud Backer]

I'll give it a try when I get home. I'm concerned what raising the performance profile will do once I have larger fleets.

The problem only arises when one is zoomed out to max or near max. Zoom in half way or more and it isn't present, if that tells you anything.

[x4000]

Hmm, that's very odd.  You might try also shifting vsync on.

[Bud Backer]

Hmm, that's very odd.  You might try also shifting vsync on.

I only had time to play for a few minutes last night so I didn't get to see if turning vsync was helpful. Are there any potential downsides to having it on?

[Fleet Unity]

I can confirm I am seeing it to but is not consistent at all. One time it was with raid star ships then when I reloaded it stopped. I tried it with V Sync on noticed no difference also tried a higher profile makes no difference also for the science labs number or exhausted bouncing thing, it always seems to do this once in awhile I am pretty sure it happened in version 7.001 some times but I cannot remember. The flickering is very rare now and it seems random in far zoom or close to far zoom. It also does not do it all the time so its kind of hard to explain. I just wanted to confirm I am seeing it too. I also set my refresh rate to 0 to see if that made a difference it does not but like I said its random well to me it seems to be random.

Edit: I also tried loading an older game at first it did not do it at all and then I exited and reloaded and only a few ships flickered so like I said its not consistent. I have noticed that when you start the game the game seems to load the planet icons only when you select the planet for the first time I also noticed this with other icons as well. I think this is because its loading them from the disk they appear in about a second or so. Also after they load this does not happen until you exit AI War and reload for the planet icons. I also have not played much since version 8.017 and on that version I do not think this happened but I did not play it much as I was playing The Last Federation more at that time.

[x4000]

Gotcha -- I am not sure what to think, then.  I'm afraid I have some personal stuff coming up, so I'm going to need to resume talking about this in a week and a half ago.  Sorry about that.  If there's any information that folks accumulate during that time, I'll definitely check it out when I'm able to be at a computer more.  Thanks for understanding!

[Fleet Unity]

Ok If I see anything else in my testing I will post it here then.