[bobnimbe]

The magic knight animate just fine on my homesystem! .

it's a intel core 2 @ 2.40 Ghz *2
4 gig of RAM
and then it's Vista 64.

on top of that a gfx-card of.:
GeForce 8600 GT with 256 MB  of memory.



The whole issue with how to perform when holding in a bunch of key's together is always a pain, and always a fun hobby to try when trying to break games. Some NES-games for instance flip out completely. (since you can't press LEFT && RIGHT on a NES-controller some games just don't care to implement it) .

My main QA (my girlfriend) however just slams on the keyboard until she breaks my betas, and then file a nice little report, while I go (why would ANYONE do THAT?!!) .

haarr!

[Pobatti]

The magic knight animate just fine on my homesystem! .

it's a intel core 2 @ 2.40 Ghz *2
4 gig of RAM
and then it's Vista 64.

Thanks for that info

It seems to confirm my theory. Your home system is roughly equivalent to my laptop, except you have an extra gigabyte of RAM. The fact that everything works fine could be down to the fact you have more video memory, and as Betpet mentioned earlier - likely to have more up-to-date drivers.

I really don't think the CPU requirement of the remake is very high is any case, so we should be able to eliminate that - for example on my 2.1Ghz Dual-Core Athlon64 system the game uses somewhere between 17-24% of the CPU power with very occasional leaps up to 32% from time to time. Without any music, performance peaks at around 25%. On the subject of CPUs, BlitzMax is single-threaded, and is therefore unable to take full advantage of dual-core processors.

Based on that theory (and assuming I understand dual core CPUs), a single-core 1Ghz system should be able to run the game - with the game eating up between 50-64% of processor time.

As far as RAM is concerned, on my system the game seems to balance itself out at around 22,000K without music, up to between 42,000K and 66,000K with music depending on the size of the OGG file that is used - this is because of the awful way in which Blitz handles OGG files with the whole audio having to be decompressed into memory before it can be played. I am considering a switch to MOD music as a result, because they keep the high quality at a low file size, and since I really don't like the idea of having the game packaged with gigantic WAV files.

Even so, considering the OS overheads, the 66MB memory usage shouldn't be too much of a problem with folks that have around 256MB or more RAM - unless the BlitzMax garbage collector tries to free up memory more actively when there is less than half the total memory remaining or something like that.

Finally, VRAM shouldn't really be a problem - despite noticing that it's those with less VRAM that seem to have the major problems. I have 256MB of VRAM on my ATI Radeon 3100, and yet the ATI Tray Tools FlashOSD is reporting to me that there is still 249MB available to me when I run the game, so it looks like only 6MB is actively used - now I'm really confused!

So, to reiterate, the game only uses:

* 17-32% CPU Processing Time (of a 2.1Ghz Dual-Core AMD64)
* 22,000 - 66,000K RAM
* 6MB VRAM

From that short list, it doesn't 'look' like the game requires a high-power computer system to be able to play - and yet the game displays various problems and issues on machines that (while in theory ought to be able to run the game) are either slightly older or less powerful than others that display no problems whatsoever.

Betpet's driver comment comes into play here - I can only guess that these older and less powerful machines have older and more outdated drivers or graphics hardware.

That being the case, I know there are about 1000 ways in which I could effectively shrink system usage down even further, but if these are indeed driver issues then all the code optimisation in the world probably won't make much difference in the end.

I will have a look nonetheless to see what I can do - altering how the garbage collector works and how my graphics are stored in memory would be a good start. If anyone has any ideas that might point me in the right direction here, please let me know as I'm actually quite confused.

Thanks everyone

[Pobatti]

Hi again

I've been doing some tweaking, and I've made a few small changes to the game code. Of great importance is that fact that I've decided to take Betpet's advice myself and actually upgraded BlitzMax to a much newer version - this may help eliminate bugs caused due to problems with the old version concerning certain modules.

Another change I made was to switch over to MOD music. The difference is immense - much faster load times, much lower memory usage and much smaller audio files. All this, plus the nice bonus that MOD files are much easier to obtain on the web.

Because of this, I am temporarily removing all music from my binary distributions for the time being - since the licensing terms at 'The Mod Archive' prevent me from shipping these files in the same archive as the game, although they can be freely downloaded and distributed in their original unaltered form by anyone who wishes.

VERSION 1.46

Changes:

* As a couple of people have reported display issues in previous builds
  of the game and others have suggested driver updates, I have taken
  this advice myself and decided to update BlitzMax to a much more up
  to date version. This and all future builds will use this version of
  BlitzMax to compile - which might eliminate bugs caused by problems
  with the modules in the older version.

* I've tried my best to tame the rampant garbage collector by changing
  it to manual collection that should now leave the graphics alone.

* I have decided to incorporate MOD music functionality in this and all
  future builds, replacing the OGG music all previous versions used. I
  decided to do this because OGG files are rather large and eat up huge
  amounts of RAM while they are being played, as well as take a while
  to load in some cases. The music-switching capabilities of v1.45 are
  still present, but now the replacement track must be in MOD format,
  which are actually easier to obtain than OGG.

* As a result of the switch to MOD, I have been forced to remove music
  from the binary archive of the game. This is due to licensing issues
  of tracks originally obtained from 'The Mod Archive'. To view the
  terms of the license please visit:

  http://modarchive.org/index.php?terms-upload

  I am allowed to host and redistribute the mods through my site in an
  unmodified form - just as long as they are not bundled in the same
  archive as the game.

  Music may be downloaded from http://modarchive.org until I am able
  to obtain music I am legally allowed to include with the game.

Knight Tyme v1.46 - Binary Executable
Knight Tyme v1.46 - BlitzMax Source

And for those of you who need some music, the snazzy Spellbound remix by TDK (as posted yesterday in OGG Vorbis format) is available from 'The Mod Archive' in MOD format:

http://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=59362

You can use any MOD file, just rename it to 'music.ogg' and place it in the same directory that the Knight Tyme executable is in and the game should automatically be able to find and play it.

I would be very interested in finding out how this build performs, especially on those computer systems that had previously reported various errors - since the compiler change, garbage collector switch and MOD music may have made a massive difference, and I need to know how things stand now before I make more drastic changes.

Let me know how it goes

[Scottige]

No graphical glitches on latest version here.

2.5 intel Quad core
windows 7 premium 32 bit
4 gig of ram
Bog standard 256 radeon GFX card.

No speed issues.

Any chance of redefinable keys or even a config file that would let you change the defaults?

[Pobatti]

No graphical glitches on latest version here.

2.5 intel Quad core
windows 7 premium 32 bit
4 gig of ram
Bog standard 256 radeon GFX card.

No speed issues.

Any chance of redefinable keys or even a config file that would let you change the defaults?

Thanks Scottige, it's great to know that it works sometimes

Redefinable controls are something I want to look into, as well as user-selectable graphics modes. I will be using configuration files when these are included, and a small program written in Borland Delphi to help configure it all - since these things are very difficult to implement directly into the game code itself, a mini configuration tool may be the way to go.

This will all take time to implement however, and really must wait until I am sure that most people are able to play the game without various issues. Once I'm reasonably satisfied that the project has become stable then forward development will continue.

Thanks again

[betpet]

Played fine on my laptop...

AMD Athlon 64X2 QL-64 (2.1GHz Dual Core)
4GB RAM
Vista Home Premium (32 bit)
ATI Radeon HD3200 Graphics with 256MB ram

[Pobatti]

Played fine on my laptop...

AMD Athlon 64X2 QL-64 (2.1GHz Dual Core)
4GB RAM
Vista Home Premium (32 bit)
ATI Radeon HD3200 Graphics with 256MB ram

That spec sounds like a slightly upgraded version of my laptop, we both appear to have exactly the same hardware except you have an extra gigabyte of RAM and a 3200 Radeon (mine's 3100 with the same VRAM).

It's looking like there could be hardware or driver issues with the game on some machines. In a post I made yesterday (more like an essay) I figured out that the game should logically be playable on much weaker hardware, so it's not the RAM, CPU or VRAM that's the problem there.

What particularly puzzled me was the screenshot SprayDough posted. Apart from Magic Knight and a few letters all the other sprites didn't render. This is wierd because all the sprites are loaded together and drawn in the same way. To add further confusion to the issue, only a few of the letters displayed correctly - yet all the letters are on exactly the same tile sheet, the game just selects the letters from the sheet and displays them as needed. If a few are working why aren't the others?

The full size of the entire 16x16 graphics set that is loaded into memory when the game is first run (everything but the large screen images) is just 165kb, surely even a PC with very limited memory should have no problem holding all of the graphics in memory at once.

Thanks for the feedback, with two successes in a row I'm starting to feel that better about things. I just have to keep reminding myself that even some big budget commercial games ship with similar display issues and random crashes - and while these tend to be patched somewhere further down the line, they have a team of experts behind them not just one beginner coder.

The thing that's really started to get to me a little is the sheer number of 'guest' users who will view this board as I'm getting no positive feedback from them. While I understand that not everyone feels the need to register on the boards (these guests can't post), given that this project has had to fight off and overcome so many bugs and glitches in the past couple of weeks, I tend to believe that it's the majority that are having the problems and only the few who regularly post in this thread who are not.

I'm probably just being paranoid, thanks for the success report

[betpet]

Well, no feedback from Spraydough yet may be a positive thing

[Pobatti]

Well, no feedback from Spraydough yet may be a positive thing

That comment went completely over my head as I'm fairly new here

Spraydough's already been on and given some feedback so I have no problem with him, even though it was negative feedback. Positive feedback is always nice to have, but knowing about problems is important too. If ten people tried my game, and one person had major problems, then in theory it's possible that 10% of all computers might have difficulty running the game. With odds like these, it's easy to see why I am so obsessed with fixing or at least understanding the problems people have with my remake.

Regarding Spraydough, while I would be very interested in finding out how the newest version performs on his system since the previous one failed so badly - I never expect any player to post a response or even be on this forum every single day so I'm sure he'll post in his own time when he is able to.

That being the case I'm feeling this thread's suddenly gone very quite lately, partly because of the absence of Zerohour. After posting so regularly for over a week it's just a little odd for her not to be around.

I just hope I haven't annoyed her with all my updates

[Spraydough]

Well, no feedback from Spraydough yet may be a positive thing

Haha - Not so fast you whippersnapper you! - Sorry, not really been around for a couple of days.

I'll have a look at the new build tonight and report back.

Latest drivers on the laptop, by the way, though latest drivers on that thing still date from the mid 19th century.

I'm loving the enthusiasm this game is getting, by the way.

[Spraydough]

Spraydough's already been on and given some feedback so I have no problem with him, even though it was negative feedback.

Not negative feedback, I prefer differently possitive! You're getting a lot of feedback from a bucket load of people which is great whichever way you look at it. My problems, which are most likely down to 'lack of decent PC' are fairly minor compared to the gamebreaking stuff that will be affecting all users - which, by the way, you seem to be fixing on demand, which is fab. It normaly takes me weeks to look at a reported bug!

Regarding Spraydough, while I would be very interested in finding out how the newest version performs on his system since the previous one failed so badly - I never expect any player to post a response or even be on this forum every single day so I'm sure he'll post in his own time when he is able to.

I post when I'm told to! Bob has the cat-o-nine-tails out behind me right now.....

[Pobatti]

Haha - Not so fast you whippersnapper you! - Sorry, not really been around for a couple of days.

I'll have a look at the new build tonight and report back.

Latest drivers on the laptop, by the way, though latest drivers on that thing still date from the mid 19th century.

I'm loving the enthusiasm this game is getting, by the way.

Thanks

Based on all the research I've done on the issue the display problem that happened to you before seems to be connected to the garbage collector and memory usage - the two main areas I tweaked in the newest build. Instead of using the Blitz default of 'collect whatever whenever if it looks like there's too much RAM in use' I'm now doing it manually... and I really hope the upgrade of my compiler and Blitz Modules (from 1.28 to 1.39) brings small improvements in reliability and stability.

I really hope v1.46 is more successful for you

[Pobatti]

Not negative feedback, I prefer differently possitive! You're getting a lot of feedback from a bucket load of people which is great whichever way you look at it.

I blame incorrect phrasing on that little misunderstanding, as I was trying to get across the same point and see things the same way as you do. When I say 'negative feedback' I don't mean people actively complaining (which, by the way, I'm amazed I haven't encountered yet), but rather feedback along the lines of 'this doesn't work' which, as I explained in my previous post, is actually far more useful to me and appreciated even more so.

I do appreciate that all the comments and feedback I have received to date have been positive in nature, thanks everyone who's responded so far

My problems, which are most likely down to 'lack of decent PC' are fairly minor compared to the gamebreaking stuff that will be affecting all users - which, by the way, you seem to be fixing on demand, which is fab. It normaly takes me weeks to look at a reported bug!

I do accept that people who do not program in Blitz and haven't looked at the source code files I upload might consider these patches and updates to be rather complex, but really they're not. Unfortunately, a lot of the bugs that people find in the game (particularly those Zerohour reports as she downloads each release very quickly and tries to complete each one) are down to 'schoolboy errors' that creep in when I'm trying to apply larger scale changes to the game engine - for example a load of bugs were caused when I added the scaler system as I missed out updating a few routines here and there to make them properly compatible.

Due to the complexity of the game, and my eagerness to make an updated version available, I occasionally forget about little sections of the game, when such a bug is reported to me the penny usually drops straight away and I'll fix it up there and then before I forget.

Due to this, many of these fixes are only a line or two long and are very easy to diagnose and fix - usually.

I just can't see the point in making people wait

[betpet]

Bugger.  I was hoping lack of news meant that nothing had been found and testing was continuing.

Fingers crossed that things are fixed

[Pobatti]

Bugger.  I was hoping lack of news meant that nothing had been found and testing was continuing.

Fingers crossed that things are fixed

Fingers and toes crossed here

In all seriousness, I'm really hoping the project can move on past the debugging phase because there are a few features some forum members have expressed an interest in me adding and new sprites and graphics to draw...

Everything's on hold until I get the green flag that tells me all the bugs that -can- be fixed have been fixed. Once everything stabilises then I'll be able to dedicate myself more fully to these secondary tasks, and edge ever closer to 100% project completion.

[betpet]

Everything's on hold until I get the green flag that tells me all the bugs that -can- be fixed have been fixed.

*cough* cleaned up graphics *cough*

[Pobatti]

*cough* cleaned up graphics *cough*

They're still being worked on, don't worry

The problem is, all the time I spend looking at my code and trying to understand what might be causing problems, checking this forum and the Blitz forum for technical support and various other things is time I'm not spending doing the graphics, so things will be slower than usual for a while - especially as many of the remaining graphics are larger, more detailed and more complex so they'll take me longer to do.

I kind of 'cheated' by doing all the easy stuff first

[Spraydough]

That's better, superb job.

Right, I'll news it at some point over the next day or so.

[Pobatti]

That's better, superb job.

Right, I'll news it at some point over the next day or so.

Fantastic! Thanks Spraydough - best news I've had in ages

That great piece of news means I can progress with the remake a fair bit faster than I have been recently able, although I have been keeping myself quite busy today in any case...

Knight Tyme v1.47 - Binary Executable
Knight Tyme v1.47 - BlitzMax Source

This release was originally intended as yet another bug-fix release, as I had found a couple of bugs in v1.46 over the course of the day - one of which was another nasty game-breaking one involving the fact that I had neglected to include manual garbage collection in the 'flying the starship' section of the game (overloading system RAM and crashing out).

I have also included a couple of small new features for those who are interested...

VERSION 1.47

Changes:

* People who tried playing MOD music in v1.46 might have noticed that
  the tracks didn't loop. I have identified the reason why so now they
  should loop properly.

* Due to the manual garbage collection switch in v1.46, the 'flying the
  starship' section was causing the game to crash because I forgot to
  manually initiate collection at that point. That problem is now fixed.

* I have added two more commandline parameters to the game that will
  let you have a little bit more control over how the remake runs on
  your system:

   OLDGFX - Use the original 8x8 sprites and tiles
   DOUBLE - Scale the screen to twice it's normal size

  You can put use as many of the available parameters as you want, in
  any order. Please note that since OLDGFX uses 8x8 sprites and tiles
  instead of the newer 16x16 sprites and tiles, this parameter will
  cause the game to display in a smaller window. This can be countered
  by also using DOUBLE in the same line.

* A few more sprites and tiles have now been updated and redrawn.

So there you have it Betpet, your idea of selectable graphics sets has begun to make it's way into the game, although at the moment the choice is literally between the 'original 8x8 sprites' and the 'updated 16x16' sprites. As well as that, you now have an option which uses the screen-scaler system I implemented to play the game in a double-sized window!

On my laptop, the double sized window is actually just a tiny bit too big for my desktop resolution, but the option's now there. The game will default to the graphics mode that all previous versions have used, so if you don't want to use a different display mode then you won't notice any difference.

Please note: now you can scale the performance of the game to your system. If the regular display mode is just a little slow on your computer, you will find that the OLDGFX parameter is your friend as the game becomes less resource intensive with it active. You can even combine the parameters, ie 'OLDGFX DOUBLE' would start the game with the original 8x8 sprites but scaled up so the window is the same size that it would be if using the 16x16 tiles.

I'm sorry I've used parameters to implement these features as I know they're fiddly to work with, but it's easy for me to implement these features at the current time in this way. My eventual plan is to create a configuration tool, therefore making things much easier and eliminating the need for parameters altogether... but that's still a fair way off.

Enjoy the screen toggling and sizing features of v1.47

[betpet]

Oooh I likes this.  Add the fact that Aliens vs Predator came out 1 day early on Steam and I'm a very happy chappy

[Tam Toucan]

Just a note to say I tried it on my works PC (E6550 Core2 Duo with crappy integrated GFX) and home PC (Althon 64 3000+ with GeForce 6800) and works fine. Nothing more to say. I'm afraid I hate these games with a passion that can only be explained by some childhood trauma. If I have to go back into therapy because this brief exposure then I'm sending you the bill

Seems nice and authentic to the the original. Good work.

[betpet]

Any updates on this fine effort?

[Spraydough]

A very (criminally) belated but much deserved Front Page for this.