by George E. (6 Submissions)
Category: Games
Compatability: VB Script
Difficulty: Beginner
Date Added: Wed 3rd February 2021
Rating: 
(10 Votes)
Increase your game's FPS, coding tips, game tips, mesh tips, etc, might help you out a bit, i know they all greatly affected the way i code VB games, vote if you want, hope it helps
VBcoders
Version .01a - update #1
A few tips to speed up your games frame rate a bit, it's
amazing that some of this makes so much of a difference.
sources, maybe you agree maybe you don’t, they all work for me, and I've run into
a lot of posts here on PSC that say "my frame rate is so low" etc so
here's my two cents (that’s right no spell check :) )
Thanks psc and everyone who has
ever posted here, persistantrealities.com, vbspeed.com, tv3d, unreal sdk, and everyone else
in the world - Gandolf the Gui
if you don’t fit into this category
and I’ve forgotten to mention you than tuff luck
vote or don’t it’s just here to
help people out
this is not actual source code so
don’t say “it doesn’t compile”
_______________________________________________________________________
Do Loops:
They are easy enough to understand and much easier and
faster than timers.
i.e.
do while 'the escape key is not pressed' or 'the level is
still running'
''
loop
very simple
and always in your loop you need to have a do events, one
and only one do events
If you are making a single player game than you might want
to think about capturing the user input and only executing your loop when input
has fired, this method is death (bad thing) on multiplayer games
At the beginning of each loop reset your TimeElapsed
Variable, with that you have an exact count and are able to do things like
physics, motion of any kind, and many other things.
the hang of it.
_______________________________________________________________________
In-line vs. modularized code
Crazy enough, but (as per vbspeed.com, and
persistantrealities.com) inline code is faster than modularized code
_______________________________________________________________________
Variables
always use option explicit and
declare all variables and never use global
always declare your constants (but
never as 16-bit integers,varient,object or anything
non-32 bit)
Never...never...never use
'as object' or 'as variant' or 'as any', amazingly slow
Most of us have 32-bit processors a few might have the 64's
let alone the $$$ for one
A longs and singles are 32 bits, integers are not, wee, use
longs and singles
i.e.
dim i as integer
for i = 0 to 1000
next i
should read:
dim i as long
for i = 0 to 1000&
next i
(no, the i after next .. "next i" doesn't change
the speed of anything)
**and**
VB has to treat all numbers as individual entities so
declare your numbers!!!
(yes, you read me right, declare
your numbers!)
Type
Integer
Long
Single
Double
String
//
A=5
B=5
C=(A+B) * 2
vs.
dim A as long
dim B as long
dim C as long
A=5&
B=5&
C=(A+B)*2&
With Variant (no Declare)
: 3.5 secs
Without Variant
(declared as Long) : 1.9 secs
//
_______________________________________________________________________
dynamic array fallout:
should you use dynamic arrays, of course you should, should
you keep appending to the uboundubound(
the answer is no, iterate through your array, if an object in your array is
past the state of usefulness i.e. has hit something, reuse it, remember, the
larger an array the slower it is, if your character just spent 20 rounds and
they are all flying through the air and he/she keeps firing, than yes, append
to the ubound, iterating is slow when compared to
appending constantly, but when you finally do have to iterate the array and now
you’ve appended to it 100,000 times and poof your game just halts you’ll
understand what I’m talking about.
_______________________________________________________________________
Redundant coding: the last nail in the coffin
Private declare function iLoveSocks( HowMany as long ) as
long
iLoveSocks = HowMany ^ 45&
End function
Private sub blah()
Dim A as long
Dim B as long
Dim C as long
a = iLoveSocks(1000)
B = iLoveSocks(1000)
C = iLoveSocks(1000)
End sub
is utterly and completely wrong and will figuratively make a
60fps game run at 5
It should read
Private sub blah()
Dim A as long
Dim B as long
Dim C as long
Dim TempVal as long
TempVal = iLoveSocks(1000&)
A = TempVal
B = TempVal
C = TempVal
end sub
amazingly quicker
use temporary variables everywhere
and anywhere that they can replace blocks of code
a practical example:
Dim X As Single, Y
As Single, Z As Single
X =
Cos(Deg2Rad(angle)) * 50
Y =
Tan(Deg2Rad(angle)) * 50
Z =
Sin(Deg2Rad(angle)) * 50
can be optimized
like this :
Dim X As Single, Y
As Single, Z As Single, RadAngle
RadAngle =
Deg2Rad(angle)
X = Cos(RadAngle) *
50!
Y = Tan(RadAngle) *
50!
Z = Sin(RadAngle) *
50!
When it's possible,
precompute values for expansive operations and organize them in tables. This is
usually used for the trigonometric operations Cos, Sin, Tan,
Dim Angle
Dim CosValue(720)
As Single
Dim SinValue(720)
As Single
For Angle = 0 To
719
CosValue(Angle)
= Cos(Deg2Rad(Angle / 2))
SinValue(Angle)
= Sin(Deg2Rad(Angle / 2))
Next Angle
This table is
accurate at 0.5 degree. Then, to use it, you need to multiply the angle by 2.
To have the
approximation of the cosine of 45°, you need to use "(45 * 2)" and
voila... you get 0.707....
amazingly enough people will
actually use 2 ^ 2 when hmm.... 2*2 and better yet, 2& * 2& is
_______________________________________________________________________
Strings:
hmm... strings in VB are really
slow, amazingly slow when compared to longs or singles
but.. if
you have to use them than just remember to use
Mid$, Right$, Left$, Chr$
they are 3 times faster with the $
can you do realtime,
every frame, string manipulation and keep 60fps.... omg,
no, no no
what does that translate to..
don't use strings for anything let
alone packets, use bits for that, bit shifting and the like are amazingly
faster than strings
but........if you really have to use them......... use them
client side only and then use string tables in resources if you don’t know how
to use text graphics
StrComp vs
'String1=String2' .......persistantrealities.com
Public Sub TestOne
Dim strTest1 As
String, strTest2 As String