forum

Alternative to spinners, Toggling stars [Resolved]

posted
Total Posts
14

How are these suggestions?

They're both great ideas.
4
44.44%
The spinner thing is a great idea, but the stars are fine.
0
0.00%
The star thing is a great idea, but the spinners are fine.
5
55.56%
They're both bad ideas.
0
0.00%
Total votes: 9
This is a feature request. Feature requests can be voted up by supporters.
Current Priority: +0
Topic Starter
[deleted user]
Hello, all Osuers.

First of all, I must say; incredible game and solid code, Peppy. Well done.

Anyway, onto my suggestions. There are two major problems I run into when playing with a mouse (as I have no tablet, Bluetooth receiver, etc), and I've come up with some valid solutions. Here they are...

1) The spinners, dare I say, SUCK when you're using a mouse. You can't spin fast, or your cursor will not be going in a circle anymore, and after the spinner is over, you're way too far from the next few markers to reach them in time.

Solution to 1: Make another "mod" that enables an alternate method of spinning. It could be key combinations, moving the mouse wheel quickly, alternating between left and right clicks, trying to click as fast as possible, or anything else but using your mouse to go around and around and around...

2) When you are doing exceptionally well, stars will glide in from either side of the screen. However, on my PC as well as a friend's, those stars slow the computer down, but not the song. Therefore, we miss 4 or 5 markers before the computer stops throwing a fit.

Solution to 2: A simple mod and/or setting that lets us turn off those stars, so that those of us on 1.7GHz processors won't lag ^^

Sorry if I sound bitchy with these requests, but they are the only thing stopping me from practicing for an all-300 streak... :D
Aliento
I SOMEWHAT agree with the spinners. To be honest, spinners were never that fun in EBA or Ouendan, and they don't relate much to the music. I'd rather just see them gone entirely, but not enough people share that opinion to make it possible. Still, I don't have that much trouble doing the spinners, though I think maybe some of your ideas are pretty neat. Not really sure exactly how I feel about it though.

And, as for the issue of the stars slowing down your machine, I think that's a perfectly valid complaint. Though, it wouldn't be a mod to turn them off, just a choice in the options menu, like the combo flames. In the meantime, I might suggest playing at a lower resolution? Works for me.
peppy
This map has been deleted on the request of its creator. It is no longer available.
Topic Starter
[deleted user]
This map has been deleted on the request of its creator. It is no longer available.
peppy

daltonlaffs wrote:

I really can't imagine why such a small number of stars is completely throwing off my computer's performance; usually it takes 150 hogs coming out of a modded shotgun in Halo to do that.

Here's to hoping the star problem is fixed; it's the only reason I can't call this game the best thing since... the last best thing. :D
You see, since I'm using Direct3D for drawing 2D sprites, I am limited to the graphic card's fill-rate. This is usually not challenged in 3D games as there are fewer semi-transparent regions overlapping. With sprites, they are mapped to a square region, and even the transparent pixels are drawn for every sprite. When two sprites overlap, this means that pixel must be drawn twice. For some reason or another, it seems I actually hit this fill-rate limit on many lower-end cards with the number of stars overlapping each other. I did the maths and it definitely adds up, even though it puzzles what we may think is logical.

What's even more strange is that my onboard intel graphics (8856 i think) beats my nvidia card when it comes to this... and I'm not sure how (though I think it has something to do with drivers).

You can confirm this behaviour by watching task manager's cpu when the star-bursts occur. It should still remain the same as any other point in gameplay.

I'll look into this further tonight, and try and see if anything can be done to relieve the graphics card some more. Another question - do you use the fire effect?
awp
Spinners are easy enough as it is on a mouse and don't need to change. Sure, while on a tablet I can get a bonus of ~12k on midlength spinners and on mouse I only get ~2k, it's still very passable. The trick is not to flail as lots of people like doing but making very tight circles.
EiJi
Spinners are good at is...you can spin like crazy, or you can do more controller circles by circling around the center dot, very small dot and get the same result. I use the latter.

As for the FPS lag, I similar problems, just not as drastic. I have a somewhat high-end machine. Good enough to play Gears without problems anyway >.>

Peppy know about this already though.
Topic Starter
[deleted user]
Hm. This is odd.

No, Peppy, I wasn't using the fire, but it's odd... I turned off something else in the options menu (I think it was the button right under Combo Fire) and suddenly there's no lag at all when I get stars. Any idea why that changed it?
peppy

daltonlaffs wrote:

Hm. This is odd.

No, Peppy, I wasn't using the fire, but it's odd... I turned off something else in the options menu (I think it was the button right under Combo Fire) and suddenly there's no lag at all when I get stars. Any idea why that changed it?
Would you be referring to video support? This should only affect maps which have video, though.
Topic Starter
[deleted user]
Yeah, that's it... no idea. When it's off, the stars work fine, when it's on, they lag like hell. It doesn't make sense, mostly because none of these songs even HAVE storyboarding yet...
peppy
Are you 100% sure this is the case? Looking at the code, changing this option has absolutely no effect unless there is a video playing during gameplay. If you insist this is still the case, could try try using the "no video" mod and see if this has the same effect (with video switched on in options).
RemmyX25

daltonlaffs wrote:

I really can't imagine why such a small number of stars is completely throwing off my computer's performance; usually it takes 150 hogs coming out of a modded shotgun in Halo to do that.
I like that analogy.


Anyways, spinners are fine, you just have to spin your mouse in a circle whichever way is most comfortable.
As for the Stars, it seems like the program keeps looking for the video even if theres none loaded, hence the lag.
peppy

RemmyX25 wrote:

As for the Stars, it seems like the program keeps looking for the video even if theres none loaded, hence the lag.
I don't know how you can say that after my last post. I'm 99.99999% sure I ruled this out.
peppy
Any improvement on stars lag? I think it should be a bit better now..
Please sign in to reply.

New reply