Pipmak using nearly %100 CPU?

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Pipmak using nearly %100 CPU?

by jfcwilson :: Rate this Message:

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Hi all,
 
I was discussing a tech demo I'd built with Pipmak for The Ages of Ilathid, with another team member, and he reported this, which I found to be true here also:
 
>- And the biggest issue: the game steadily uses 100% of one of my CPU cores, even >when I'm not doing anything. It doesn't take much CPU to play an audio file and show a >static image on screen, so why is the engine spinning in a loop and wasting so much >CPU? (Some other games do this too, and it's very annoying)
Is this a problem, and can it be avoided?
 
Thanks,
  James


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Re: Pipmak using nearly %100 CPU?

by Christian Walther :: Rate this Message:

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James Wilson wrote:
> I was discussing a tech demo I'd built with Pipmak for The Ages of
> Ilathid, with another team member, and he reported this, which I found
> to be true here also:
>  
>  >- And the biggest issue: the game steadily uses 100% of one of my CPU
> cores, even >when I'm not doing anything. It doesn't take much CPU to
> play an audio file and show a >static image on screen, so why is the
> engine spinning in a loop and wasting so much >CPU? (Some other games do
> this too, and it's very annoying)

It shouldn't do that. It's supposed to render only as fast as your
monitor can display it (60 Hz on a typical LCD), and that should take
much less than 100% CPU on a moderately recent computer. However, I've
seen several reports by now that this feature isn't effective for some
people. Is this on Windows too? I'm not sure if there is anything I can
do to properly fix this, but I need to add an additional hard frame rate
limit for the case that the vertical retrace synchronization isn't
working. (It happens here too when the window is completely obscured and
actually annoys me as well.)

Detecting when the image is completely static and not rendering at all
during that time, however, is an optimization that has not been done so
far, and given that in many games, there's always something that moves,
it wouldn't save a lot anyway.

  -Christian


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Re: Pipmak using nearly %100 CPU?

by jfcwilson :: Rate this Message:

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Hi,
 
Yes, it's Windows XP home SP2.

--- On Sat, 10/10/09, Christian Walther <cwalther@...> wrote:

From: Christian Walther <cwalther@...>
Subject: Re: Pipmak using nearly %100 CPU?
To: pipmak-users@...
Date: Saturday, October 10, 2009, 4:39 AM

James Wilson wrote:
> I was discussing a tech demo I'd built with Pipmak for The Ages of
> Ilathid, with another team member, and he reported this, which I found
> to be true here also:

>  >- And the biggest issue: the game steadily uses 100% of one of my CPU
> cores, even >when I'm not doing anything. It doesn't take much CPU to
> play an audio file and show a >static image on screen, so why is the
> engine spinning in a loop and wasting so much >CPU? (Some other games do
> this too, and it's very annoying)

It shouldn't do that. It's supposed to render only as fast as your
monitor can display it (60 Hz on a typical LCD), and that should take
much less than 100% CPU on a moderately recent computer. However, I've
seen several reports by now that this feature isn't effective for some
people. Is this on Windows too? I'm not sure if there is anything I can
do to properly fix this, but I need to add an additional hard frame rate
limit for the case that the vertical retrace synchronization isn't
working. (It happens here too when the window is completely obscured and
actually annoys me as well.)

Detecting when the image is completely static and not rendering at all
during that time, however, is an optimization that has not been done so
far, and given that in many games, there's always something that moves,
it wouldn't save a lot anyway.

  -Christian


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your
developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay
ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
_______________________________________________
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Pipmak-Users@...
news://news.gmane.org/gmane.games.devel.pipmak.user
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pipmak-users


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Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your
developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay
ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
_______________________________________________
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