Inside: SereneScreen Fan Forum

Inside: SereneScreen Fan Forum (https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums/index.php)
-   Marine Aquarium 3 for Windows (https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=46)
-   -   Marine Aquarium 3 Comments & Appreciation (https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4382)

feldon34 02-19-2009 10:34 AM

And yet felt the need to post ANOTHER annoying wall of text.

Jim Sachs 02-19-2009 11:03 AM

All the "please notes" have been duly noted.

JamesGreystone 02-19-2009 02:33 PM

Me thinks you need to go enjoy a slab of Pizza Jim. You deserve it.

P.S. The peanut butter recall will end soon and you can return to that if you like.

:lol:

Jim Sachs 02-19-2009 02:43 PM

Time enough for pizza after I get these darn interfaces done.

timelord 02-19-2009 08:16 PM

Regarding the 30fps frame rate
 
I was tweaking the Display a little and the screen flickered and went blank. Then it came back and looked pretty good. So I went and tried the Marine Aquarium and my frame rate has increased to 75fps. Apparently the default video card settings selected full screen with no border whatever that means. When this setting was set the frame rate was 30fps. This is a vio laptop 2.26 GH duo core with 4GB system memory and video card ram 1759 according to the dxdiag setting. Now it looks much sharper now also. I am amazed. I was not able to see all of this awesome detail before now I can. What a beautiful program. Thanks for all the hard work you put into this Jim. It is AWESOME!
Richard
PS I noticed that the Aquarium version 2.6 had the option to Limit Frame Rate in the user settings for the program. Will this also be available in the Marine Aquarium 3.0 version? Seems like a useful tweak.

Ray Wright 02-20-2009 04:11 AM

My dead star fish
 
It gets better all the time but agree with one contributor who said he had a 'dead''starfish! Mine just sits there and does nothing more than raise a leg occasionally. I miss it on the glass. Maybe there's a disease going about that affects starfish! Can we add a water treatment maybe? If the threads are correct we will be getting crabs (no funny remarks about that!) and sea slugs and who knows, perhaps jelly fish. Can't wait.

Nicki 02-20-2009 10:01 AM

timelord , pressing the up/down cursor keys affects the 'sleep' setting , which will alter the frame rate . Higher sleep number , less frames . Eventually there will be a slider like in 2.6 , sometime after Jim has finished the new fish models/behaviour .

P.S. Time is also wibbly wobbly timey wimey ;P

rctneil 02-20-2009 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Butters (Post 111115)
timelord , pressing the up/down cursor keys affects the 'sleep' setting , which will alter the frame rate . Higher sleep number , less frames . Eventually there will be a slider like in 2.6 , sometime after Jim has finished the new fish models/behaviour .

P.S. Time is also wibbly wobbly timey wimey ;P

You forgot the Stuff part!

Time is Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey STUFF!

:D

cjmaddy 02-20-2009 10:49 AM

Regarding the 30fps frame rate
 
timelord,

Nicki is right, but beware that lowering the Sleep() setting too far, to increase the FPS, has the effect of maxing out the CPU usage... NOT good!

On my system, lowering the Sleep() to '1' can give as much as 190 FPS, (in Windowed mode), but with 100% CPU usage!!!
The default Sleep(10) setting produces about 112 FPS in MA3 Windowed mode, and registers around 60% CPU usage in the Task Manager.
Increasing to Sleep(20) produced about 52 FPS and registers around 25/30% CPU usage. - Your setup of course may be different.
Increasing beyond Sleep(20) makes no further improvement to CPU usage, BUT reduces the FPS still further!

I suggest increasing the default Sleep() setting until your FPS drops to around 40/50. - It can benefit your CPU usage, considerably!

Your selected Sleep() setting is remembered by MA3 for the next start-up.

feldon34 02-20-2009 11:14 AM

Diehard fan of the new Doctor Who (2005-forever I hope) here too. ;)

Christmas Special was a tad sappy I have to say, but still great fun. Grabbed it off BT the morning after it aired and showed it to some friends.

There's a "favorite TV shows" thread over in the Culture section. Not sure if there is one specifically for Doctor Who.

Jim Sachs 02-20-2009 11:15 AM

Ray Wright - The starfish moves about quite a bit, but it currently starts in the same position each time the program starts. Here's the problem with it going on the glass: There has never been a smooth transition from the floor to the glass, or vice-versa. In the old program, the starfish would wait until the lights were completely out to switch. MA3 doesn't have automatic lighting yet, so I either need to implement that, or develop a smooth transition where the starfish crawls from the floor to the glass. (Both of which are on the list.)

Right now I'm busy chasing down a crashing bug in the new Logo interface when using multimonitors. Then it's just a matter of adding Patrick's Random request, and I'll be able to upload Beta 9c.

rctneil 02-20-2009 11:26 AM

sounds great Jim, Can't wait

iMark 02-20-2009 02:20 PM

I do kind of miss the automatic lighting, at times...maybe when you get to that point, it can be an option to use it or not, and the starfish will only get on the glass when it's on...that is, if it's impossible to get the starfish on the glass any other way...

Jim Sachs 02-20-2009 02:29 PM

That's how it was in the old program - automatic lighting was optional and the starfish would only make the transition if it was on. Creating a realistic movement from the floor onto the glass is definitely something I intend to do, after I put out some of these other fires.

iMark 02-20-2009 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Sachs (Post 111124)
That's how it was in the old program - automatic lighting was optional and the starfish would only make the transition if it was on. Creating a realistic movement from the floor onto the glass is definitely something I intend to do, after I put out some of these other fires.

lol..I figured that wasn't going to be an "impossible" you'd be happy living with...I was happy with the way it worked before, and like I said I do miss the auto-lighting at times, but I'd also be wowed to see the starfish climb up on the glass in full view...this is an exciting program that just keeps getting better...I'm content to wait for good things to come...

cjmaddy 02-20-2009 02:44 PM

Do you think we could tempt Fish Picker back? ;) ..... Are you out there, Ron? - (Mountainmaster) :)

Jim Sachs 02-20-2009 02:58 PM

iMark - automatic lighting will take a while to implement. MA3 has no "lights", everything is done with Shaders. While this makes all kinds of interesting new effects possible, there's no longer a central "lights up" or "lights down" switch within the program.

iMark 02-20-2009 03:37 PM

ahh..I see...the auto-lights were cool sometimes, but this new aquarium looks so fantastic, I won't be disappointed if they never return or it takes quite some time to implement it...there are much more exciting things to look forward to first....

Jim Sachs 02-20-2009 03:42 PM

Most people didn't like the autolights, especially when it went into sillouhette form. But it served two functions: allowing the starfish to go onto the glass, and preventing burn-in. Now that the whole background moves, burn-in shouldn't be a problem.

Rick Simon 02-20-2009 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Sachs (Post 111133)
Most people didn't like the autolights, especially when it went into sillouhette form. But it served two functions: allowing the starfish to go onto the glass, and preventing burn-in. Now that the whole background moves, burn-in shouldn't be a problem.

Except for those of us with multi-monitor displays that are wide enough, though there should be few of us.


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:59 AM.

Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.