Player: Implement Option: Skip Frames

[hellow554]

I would like to see a option in the debug menu, where you can disable the fps limit, so the game runs faster (like some snes/gba/... emulator can do). It's not about increasing the fps to something higher, so the game runs smoother, but to make it faster. I hope you get the idea :)

• [x] Visual indication
• [x] Android-support

[ItsSchoko]

When i recall correct in some emulators the option to run games faster (but not smoother) is called "skip frames". (Just to have a term here)

[hellow554]

Thanks for the clarification. Updated the title description. :)

[Rinnegatamante]

In reality skip frames and framerate unlock are two different things:

"Unlock framerate" means the player can go over 60 FPS (in retail games it's like if you play with VSync disabled).
"Skip frames" means you discard a couple of frames every second to improve average framerate (if you discard too much frames, you'll have pretty bad rendering similar to stuttering).

[Ghabry]

Implementing this should not be too difficult. So accepting this as an enhancement. Concerning frameskip: We are not an emulator, like any modern game the rendering (FPS) runs independend of the game logic (no idea what the term is, lets call them updates per seconds UPS). The player tries to run at constant 60 UPS, to achieve this it can reduce the frame rate (FPS). This is shown in the corner, when it falls below 30 you will notice extreme lag. So to make the game run faster the UPS must be increased and the fps can stay constant. The frameskip is mostly noticeable on slow hardware like the 3ds. Without frameskip it would run maybe at half speed but we get normal speed with skipped frames.

And we would also require to make the music faster (which is completely independend of anything in an extra thread) because games can query the current position and can break when it is wrong.

This is also the reason why message fast forward (shift in debug mode) is not enabled in general: It causes race conditions because events finish faster then normal and breaks some games.

[BlisterB]

Ow @Ghabry, if you allow to accelerate the game, please put an option to not accelerate musics and sounds.
I think 90% of gamers has play to game like Pokemon constantly using Frame Skipping to have a decent game speed, but the quicker music is really annoying.

[Ghabry]

I want to propose the following for this:
https://github.com/Ghabry/easyrpg-player/commit/769596e522950c59527b75357315faf39715bca5

The advantage over zegeris solution is that only the "game updates" are increased, not both (graphics + game updates). This means that muuuuch higher update rates are possible on slow hardware because the slowest part is the graphic rendering and rendering the graphics faster is not necessary because this runs decoupled from the update logic.
With that patch the graphic rendering stays at 60 FPS and the game updates go up to 300 (F) or 600 (F + PLUS).

Not increased: Music/Sound speed (is more work and some people don't like it) and transitions (this is a bug in our transition code we have to fix someday >.>)

And no visual indication (yet)

[Ghabry]

No idea where to post this but is debug related so: Cherry told me about "FatalMix RPG_RT" and is maybe of interest for @zegeri and other devs:
http://blog.livedoor.jp/haienasan/archives/1412729.html

Download the corresponding zip and then your RPG_RT has features like: 3 - Speedup x4, Q instant save (see the readme, tons of stuff)

[Ghabry]

The OSD button candidate for Android is 'BLACK RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE TRIANGLE' (U+23E9) ⏩ , Unicode 6.0, I hope Android 2.3.3 supports this glyph.

[BlisterB]

Is there a fast forward feature implemented :o ?
Does it use a fix "keyboard" button ? That's how I call Player's button.

[Ghabry]

Fast forward is not merged yet but the button will be "F" and Android gets a new osd button

[BlisterB]

Okay, I'll try to implement that this week-end.
I don't know if that has been decided but I don't think this should be enable just for debug mode. Everyone loves fast forwarding :).

[Ghabry]

no this is always on. Uhhhm, if you want to do this post a patch here, dont do a pr

[Ghabry]

How the speedup indicator looks:

Have less games on this pc, hehe

Android follows tomorrow.

[Ghabry]

@BlisterB
I quickly added a Fast Forward button