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View Full Version : Transparent worm names randomly kills frame rate.


franpa
25 Sep 2010, 15:18
Sometimes you get massive stutter when using them but this can be countered (usually) by minimizing and restoring the game. Cycling through non-transparent and transparent or full names, names, health, none etc. will incur the performance problem again.

CyberShadow
25 Sep 2010, 15:35
That doesn't make any sense.

Are you sure your description of the problem is accurate?

franpa
26 Sep 2010, 15:03
Pressing Delete cycles through levels of name details. (Team name, Worm name, Worm health, none)

Pressing Ctrl & Delete cycles through levels of transparency (Transparency on or Off)



Cycling through either* will eventually trigger or remove the stutter, keep cycling to trigger or remove the stutter again etc. Minimizing also seems to affect it.



*levels of name details only triggers it if Transparency is already on.

CyberShadow
26 Sep 2010, 16:24
I understood your description, it's just that the problem doesn't make sense to me.

The only possible explanation I can think of about this is if the video card or driver is enabling some kind of premature optimization due to intensive direct access to video memory (specifically, the primary surface), which is done to perform alpha blending. In either case it's almost certain that this is not caused by a fault in W:A, and I can only recommend a workaround you already know - disable the transparency for a moment.

Alternatively, it could be something much more mundane, such as interception of the Delete/Alt+Delete keypresses.

franpa
27 Sep 2010, 06:40
Well I use a Gainward Geforce 250gts "Deep Green" 1024MB PCI-E card with the 260.63 beta drivers for Windows 7 x64 if you have a tester with a same series card maybe get them to update there drivers or some such to help you debug exactly what the cause is.

The stutter affects both me and a friend. I have the already mentioned video card which is just a 9800gtx+ disguised/renamed while my friend has a Geforce 280 card, both of us use latest drivers.

CakeDoer
27 Sep 2010, 12:35
Hmm. I use an ASUS ENGTX260. I normally don't cycle through transparent bars, so I'll see if I can recreate it.

edit: doesn't work with me

wormspluff
27 Sep 2010, 16:41
Hmm. I use an ASUS ENGTX260. I normally don't cycle through transparent bars, so I'll see if I can recreate it.

edit: doesn't work with me


Hi guys i maybe in the wrong thread, but what the heck
Im having problems with screen resizing ...im using a 42" lcd screen and no matter what i change resolution to it seems to not fit the screen properly.
Is there a solution to this?
Also i would like to mention about the wormskit/rubberworms and snooper....
it does not seem to work properly for windows 7... i know your probably going to say worms was intentionly made for win xp but im sure some of you clever programmers can solve these common issues?

W0RM$pluff:rolleyes:

CakeDoer
27 Sep 2010, 20:28
Worms Armageddon wasn't even made for Windows XP and originally didn't even support that. http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa224/dash_082/moar%20emoticons/emot-pseudo.gif

Explorer
28 Sep 2010, 11:24
Im having problems with screen resizing ...im using a 42" lcd screen and no matter what i change resolution to it seems to not fit the screen properly.

My general advice:
Check your monitor, there should be an option to adjust the screen. (Auto Adjust or such)

Also i would like to mention about the wormskit/rubberworms and snooper....
it does not seem to work properly for windows 7...

Would you please tell us how it stops working - in detail?
(crashing? getting an error message? or something else?)

Deadcode
27 Oct 2010, 17:48
Sometimes you get massive stutter when using them but this can be countered (usually) by minimizing and restoring the game. Cycling through non-transparent and transparent or full names, names, health, none etc. will incur the performance problem again.

This happened to me, too, when I first implemented this feature. (I wouldn't describe it as a stutter though, just a frame rate drop.) I assumed it was just because applying the 65536 byte transparency lookup table to every transparent pixel was CPU-intensive; I ended up not using my own feature very often.

However on my next CPU+motherboard+RAM+video card upgrade, the transparency feature performed much better, rarely or never having an impact on frame rate.

Any modern PC should not have this problem, so it is puzzling.

franpa
28 Oct 2010, 11:03
It could also be just an edge case in some driver versions I guess.