It's somehow cool to see the highscores from differnt users online I tried my best to beat the leading 'Quique' for the first two levels -- but failed miserably by around 5 seconds
I really wonder on what system Quique plays the game? It would be a nice enhencement to see the Operating System and gaming machine (AOS4/Sam, AOS4/Peg2, Linux/PC, Windows/PC, OSX/MAC, etc.) next to the best times. I really can't imagine where I lost 5 seconds and maybe it's my Sam440ep which is the bottleneck and not my fingers on the keyboard
Quique are u playing with usb or ps2 keyboard or with gamepad?
To have a list with the best times of all levels would be another neat thing
I'm running BOH in my Debian machine. But when I played it in AOS4 (A1SE) it seemed smoother. My Debian installation is for AMD64, but using 32-bit libraries for running BOH (don't know if that has much impact in performance).
Edit: I run Debian in my Dell Inspiron 1521 laptop (AMD Turion X2 TL-60 1.6GHz) using its keyboard but connected to my 21" CRT monitor when playing BOH
Edited by emeck on 2010/8/22 23:31:50 Edited by emeck on 2010/8/22 23:32:41 Edited by Rigo on 2010/8/23 12:08:09
From my POV, it's great that you're so concerned about BOH times Once again, thanks for submitting your records.
As for the system issue: the power of the machine is totally irrelevant as far as times go, as the internal timer is not tied to the graphics refresh rate, nor, more in general, to the real-life time.
That said, I made a quick test to make sure that Quique's times were realistic: without playing a perfect game (i.e. I wasted some 3-5 seconds), I could complete "0. first approach" in 56 seconds, 3 seconds less than the current record - and anybody can do that
Anyway, measuring times relative to very short and easy missions makes little sense... isn't it far more interesting completing more missions? F.ex., chech out Dave's and Radical Dreamer's results...
I'm running BOH in my Debian machine. But when I played it in AOS4 (A1SE) it seemed smoother. My Debian installation is for AMD64, but using 32-bit libraries for running BOH (don't know if that has much impact in performance).
One thing that has a major impact on performance is the screenmode: the key is using the smallest zoom factor possible. Especially, there's a huge difference between 1x zoom and 2x zoom (if you're interested, I can explain the technical details). On AmigaOS, it's easy to set up a full screen mode that allows to use 1x zoom (without visual distorsion), but on other systems it isn't (possible at all) and thus it might turn out that on AmigaOS the game looks smoother. Please refer to page 9 of the [url=http://www.bohthegame.com/downloads/user's_manual.pdf]user's manual[/url] for detailed instructions regarding how to set up the best video mode.
That said, I made a quick test to make sure that Quique's times were realistic: without playing a perfect game (i.e. I wasted some 3-5 seconds), I could complete "0. first approach" in 56 seconds, 3 seconds less than the current record - and anybody can do that
So, there is room for improvement then. I'll replay missions again after I finish all of them. Just started the high difficulty ones.
Quote:
One thing that has a major impact on performance is the screenmode: the key is using the smallest zoom factor possible. Especially, there's a huge difference between 1x zoom and 2x zoom (if you're interested, I can explain the technical details)
I'm using fullscreen 1680x1050. That is 4x zoom I think. Maybe I should try a 2x fullscreen mode
Definitely. Playing missions knowing what to do and with the objective of setting time records does miracles.
Quote:
I'll replay missions again after I finish all of them. Just started the high difficulty ones.
I wholeheartedly second such choice!
Quote:
I'm using fullscreen 1680x1050. That is 4x zoom I think. Maybe I should try a 2x fullscreen mode
That's definitely overkill and probably causes frameskipping. Since you have a 16:10 screen, the ideal mode would be 384x240 (you should have such entry in the menu, marked with a star), but chances are that your system does not support it. If you have your A1 attached to the same monitor, add 384x240x32@60 to your monitor tooltypes and enjoy the smoothness
[quote]...One thing that has a major impact on performance is the screenmode: the key is using the smallest zoom factor possible. Especially, there's a huge difference between 1x zoom and 2x zoom (if you're interested, I can explain the technical details). ...
ah yes that's it, silly me, I remeber you mentioning this to me last year and I can confirm that it does have an effect on the overall smoothness/speed of BOH on my Samflex editing my first post
ah yes that's it, silly me, I remeber you mentioning this to me last year and I can confirm that it does have an effect on the overall smoothness/speed of BOH on my Samflex
Since I happen to have a few minutes now, I'll explain where the big difference is.
At 1x (i.e. when there is no zoom) this is (roughly) what happens every time the graphics are redrawn:
1: the background gets rendered (with lighting and all) onto an internal raster; 2: the background gets rotated (and, if necessary, converted to the host pixel format) onto a 320x240 raster; 3: the additional graphics (sprites, writings, etc.) get rendered on the 320x240 raster; 4: the current transition effect (if any) gets applied on the 320x240 raster; 5: the video raster gets refreshed with the contents of the 320x240 raster (in other words, the 320x240 raster gets moved to video memory).
With 2x, 3x or 4x zoom:
1, 2, 3 and 4: like above; 5: the 320x240 raster gets zoomed to another raster; 6: the video raster gets refreshed with the contents of the zoomed raster (in other words, the zoomed raster gets moved to video memory).
Not only there is an additional and expensive step (the 5th here), but also the final step is much more expensive because the amount of data to transfer is a lot bigger (4 times as much at 2x, 9 times at 3x and 16 times at 4x).
More players have submitted their highscores; and some unbelieveable times!!
The secret of great times is playing already finished missions going straight to the point, avoiding unnecessary parts, etc. Times that at first are unbelievable are indeed quite human. But I'll never stop saying that it's more important to finish more missions than playing over and over the old ones
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