Attract-Mode Support Forum

Attract-Mode Support => General => Topic started by: slippyblade on July 10, 2015, 12:05:29 AM

Title: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: slippyblade on July 10, 2015, 12:05:29 AM
Not entirely sure how to describe the behavior.  I plugged AM 1.5.3 onto a windows laptop that I've gutted down to a bare mobo.  The emulators run great, full speed.  But AM itself is painfully slow.  I initially thought it was just being slow, but when I changed layout to AttractMan it looks like AM is processing full speed, but only updating the screen every 1/3 second or so.  The pacman jumps about 5-6 dots forward in regular chunks regardless of windowed or full screen mode.  Nothing else is running except bare windows services.

It is a direct copy/paste of the install from my test machine where it works just fine.

Any ideas?
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: nitrogen_widget on July 10, 2015, 01:50:19 PM
What's the graphics on that laptop?
Are they worse than old school radeon 7000/7500?
Have you checked for updated drivers?

AM uses the video cards power to do it's stuff.
Emulators mostly use the CPU.
So that could be your issue.
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: slippyblade on July 10, 2015, 03:30:35 PM
Graphics are integrated.  Intel 945 if that helps at all.  I know that I need to feed MAME the "-video ddraw" flag for it to work.

PS - sorry for the number of questions and issues.  Learning a new system sucks.  :( 
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: nitrogen_widget on July 10, 2015, 06:53:44 PM
that should be fine.
I have an older laptop than yours and AM runs at full speed.
has some artifacts but, i'm on linux and drivers for this chipset arn't great.

I'd see if there are newer drivers for your OS?


Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: slippyblade on July 13, 2015, 09:38:16 PM
Not sure what the deal is.  I've tried a laptop and two different desktops and all three of em are showing the exact same behavior.  I'm gonna try plugging in a card and not using the on-board graphics and see if it makes any difference.  I'm using 1.5.3, btw.
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: akafox on July 14, 2015, 11:10:33 AM
actually I had the same problem. I have a 1.8 dual core 2 GB laptop running AM on Win XP 32-bit. it ran horible. Ver slow and choppy. I put lubuntu linux on it and it runs fine now. lol I never did figure it out. Do the other displays run choppy as well?
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: slippyblade on July 14, 2015, 12:10:37 PM
Do the other displays run choppy as well?

Yeah, even Basic.

I tried AttractMan just because of the animations.  I figured it was a good benchmark tool and it was.  It's not that the PacMan moves slowly, it's that it jumps.  Like it's only updating the image every half second or so but it is still processing the movements real time.
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: slippyblade on July 15, 2015, 11:39:57 PM
After beating my head against a Linux install for a while, upon advice from Omega I am trying a couple older versions.  Installing clean copy of Win7 now and going to try AM 1.5 and see if that makes a difference.
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: omegaman on July 16, 2015, 05:44:23 AM
Let me know how its working for you :p. AM runs great on my win7 rig. I use the 32b version and the performance it still fast.
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: slippyblade on July 22, 2015, 10:24:59 PM
AM 1.5 32bit is working like a charm.  Not sure what the deal was - 1.5.2 and 1.5.3 both seemed to choke on the integrated graphics, but 1.5.0 is working great.  Weird.
Title: Re: Skipping/stuttering
Post by: raygun on July 23, 2015, 09:56:47 PM
I think the version of SFML that gets used in the windows build might have changed after version 1.5.0... maybe the more recent versions don't like your hardware?  Just  a guess though