Private beta testing has started on TTD, and I discovered something I hadn't really considered: Gamemaker play speed on older computers.
I program and test on a decent ($1,200 retail, 1 year-old) notebook and/or my slightly older but powerful in it's day 3.2ghz P4 desktop. They both run TTD at 60 fps, no problem. I even have a turbo-mode cheat that jacks the speed up to 100 fps, and again, no problem. It's a 2D game with prerendered sprites, there's usually no more than 50 enemies onscreen at a time, etc.But on an older emachine (4 yrs old, I don't even know the specs offhand) it crawls to about 12 fps. Then I tried it on another older PC, about 5-6 years old. It runs at about 4 fps.Whoa. If you have a PC that old it's time to upgrade, but still, I don't want to "lock out" someone with an older machine that wants to play. Is it my clumsy programming, or is it Gamemaker? Or a little of both? Any thoughts or feedback on this one would be welcomed.
'If you have a PC that old it's time to upgrade'
Wrong attitude. It'll run word, IE, and check E-Mails quite happily, so why should someone who only does that upgrade?They're not someone who only does that if they want to play this game. If they want to play games they should upgrade.
If they are someone who wants to play games casually, no.
Except we're talking about 5-6 year old computers. That's not casual gaming, it's archaic gaming.
arc plays his 10 year old linux games XD
My computer's 6 years old. "Time to start upgrading". I'd gladly do so if my parents were even remotely close to approving something like that. They're a bit more frugal on spending money when it comes to computers. T.T
I remember having a pc with 900mhz (That was fast back then!) and 128mb ram!
PROTIP: Use old PC's as media centers. Just chuck a bigger HDD in them and they work perfectly.