[K12OSN] tuxpaint and others running slow

[Bill Kendrick]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 07:19:57PM -0400, Terrell Prudé, Jr. wrote:
> Dunno, but I don't believe that background images are the issue.  The
> issue is the number of changes to the screen inherent in playing a game
> like TuxType, TuxMath, Chromium, Doom/Quake, etc.  The complexity of the
> image itself doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't change.  TuxType,
> like Quake, simply has major, major amounts of simultaneous screen
> changes.  That's what makes it so bandwidth-hungry.

Well, no reason not to but in a request that they add a 'low-bandwidth'
version...  less animation, reduce background complexity (solid colors
rather than flashy, photographic bitmaps), etc. :)


> > What kind of bandwidth does Tux paint use?  (Note: the upcoming 0.9.15
> > will default to 800x600 at 24bpp, whereas previous versions defaulted
> > to 640x480, and always used 16bpp)
> 
> I guess that would depend on what's being done.  If someone's making a
> lot of changes to an image in TuxPaint, then bandwidth usage will go up,
> depending on the number of changes to the screen that X11 has to make.
> It's not so much a TuxType/TuxPaint/TuxAnything issue as it is an X11
> issue.  Using the example of the (totally awesome, BTW) game Chromium
> again, that took up a lot of bandwidth as well.

Full-screen scrollers will certainly do it, yeah.

My Defendguin game, for example, just reblits _everything_ every frame,
since the player is often moving over the landscape... starfield is
flying by, aliens are wobbling about and shooting all the time...

Mad Bomber does less blitting... just erasing and redrawing the bombs
as they fall.  I _think_ Bug Squish is similarly simplified.  (It also
has a plain white background, meaning erasing is less expensive than
the default Mad Bomber mode, which uses a bitmapped background.
Mad Bomber has a 'Zen' option, though, to use Atari 2600-style solid
background colors, though. ;^) )


> 10/100 NICs are so
> cheap these days that I'd say, from a network perspective, your decision
> of 800x600x24bpp is a good one.

640x480 was apparently getting pretty cramped, and Albert Callahan<sp?>,
who's also a Gimp hacker, came in and added some special effects and
wanted 24bpp quality over 16bpp.  It certainly looks better... no 16bpp
green tinge. :^)  (16bpp is typically R=5, G=6, B=5, since human eyes
are more sensitive to green.  That causes greenish printouts, though :^( )

(WOW I'm rambling, sorry!)

-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/