Home Register Arcade Gallery Chatroom Members Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Log In
Go Back   Inside: SereneScreen Fan Forum > SereneScreen Products > Marine Aquarium 3 for Windows
Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 02-19-2009, 10:34 AM   #461
feldon34
Forum Administrator
 
feldon34's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2000

Location: Rock Hill, SC
Posts: 10,937
And yet felt the need to post ANOTHER annoying wall of text.
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman
feldon34 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-19-2009, 11:03 AM   #462
Jim Sachs
Developer
 
Jim Sachs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2000

Location: Southern Oregon
Posts: 9,768
All the "please notes" have been duly noted.
Jim Sachs
Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium
Jim Sachs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-19-2009, 02:33 PM   #463
JamesGreystone
Registered
 
JamesGreystone's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2009

Location: Canada brrrrrr
Posts: 29
Me thinks you need to go enjoy a slab of Pizza Jim. You deserve it.

P.S. The peanut butter recall will end soon and you can return to that if you like.

JamesGreystone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-19-2009, 02:43 PM   #464
Jim Sachs
Developer
 
Jim Sachs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2000

Location: Southern Oregon
Posts: 9,768
Time enough for pizza after I get these darn interfaces done.
Jim Sachs
Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium
Jim Sachs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-19-2009, 08:16 PM   #465
timelord
Time is relative.
 
timelord's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2008

Location: United States, Pennsylvania
Posts: 20
Regarding the 30fps frame rate

I was tweaking the Display a little and the screen flickered and went blank. Then it came back and looked pretty good. So I went and tried the Marine Aquarium and my frame rate has increased to 75fps. Apparently the default video card settings selected full screen with no border whatever that means. When this setting was set the frame rate was 30fps. This is a vio laptop 2.26 GH duo core with 4GB system memory and video card ram 1759 according to the dxdiag setting. Now it looks much sharper now also. I am amazed. I was not able to see all of this awesome detail before now I can. What a beautiful program. Thanks for all the hard work you put into this Jim. It is AWESOME!
Richard
PS I noticed that the Aquarium version 2.6 had the option to Limit Frame Rate in the user settings for the program. Will this also be available in the Marine Aquarium 3.0 version? Seems like a useful tweak.

Last edited by timelord; 02-19-2009 at 09:39 PM.
timelord is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 04:11 AM   #466
Ray Wright
Registered
 
Join Date: Feb 2009

Posts: 2
My dead star fish

It gets better all the time but agree with one contributor who said he had a 'dead''starfish! Mine just sits there and does nothing more than raise a leg occasionally. I miss it on the glass. Maybe there's a disease going about that affects starfish! Can we add a water treatment maybe? If the threads are correct we will be getting crabs (no funny remarks about that!) and sea slugs and who knows, perhaps jelly fish. Can't wait.
Ray Wright is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 10:01 AM   #467
Nicki
Sugar Plum Fairy
 
Nicki's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2008

Location: Toronto
Posts: 1,267
timelord , pressing the up/down cursor keys affects the 'sleep' setting , which will alter the frame rate . Higher sleep number , less frames . Eventually there will be a slider like in 2.6 , sometime after Jim has finished the new fish models/behaviour .

P.S. Time is also wibbly wobbly timey wimey ;P
Run you clever boy. And remember...
Nicki is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 10:22 AM   #468
rctneil
Registered
 
Join Date: Jul 2008

Posts: 239
Originally posted by Butters:
timelord , pressing the up/down cursor keys affects the 'sleep' setting , which will alter the frame rate . Higher sleep number , less frames . Eventually there will be a slider like in 2.6 , sometime after Jim has finished the new fish models/behaviour .

P.S. Time is also wibbly wobbly timey wimey ;P  
You forgot the Stuff part!

Time is Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey STUFF!

rctneil is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 10:49 AM   #469
cjmaddy
Registered
 
cjmaddy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2001

Location: Lancashire, UK
Posts: 7,854
Regarding the 30fps frame rate

timelord,

Nicki is right, but beware that lowering the Sleep() setting too far, to increase the FPS, has the effect of maxing out the CPU usage... NOT good!

On my system, lowering the Sleep() to '1' can give as much as 190 FPS, (in Windowed mode), but with 100% CPU usage!!!
The default Sleep(10) setting produces about 112 FPS in MA3 Windowed mode, and registers around 60% CPU usage in the Task Manager.
Increasing to Sleep(20) produced about 52 FPS and registers around 25/30% CPU usage. - Your setup of course may be different.
Increasing beyond Sleep(20) makes no further improvement to CPU usage, BUT reduces the FPS still further!

I suggest increasing the default Sleep() setting until your FPS drops to around 40/50. - It can benefit your CPU usage, considerably!

Your selected Sleep() setting is remembered by MA3 for the next start-up.
cjmaddy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 11:14 AM   #470
feldon34
Forum Administrator
 
feldon34's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2000

Location: Rock Hill, SC
Posts: 10,937
Diehard fan of the new Doctor Who (2005-forever I hope) here too.

Christmas Special was a tad sappy I have to say, but still great fun. Grabbed it off BT the morning after it aired and showed it to some friends.

There's a "favorite TV shows" thread over in the Culture section. Not sure if there is one specifically for Doctor Who.
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman
feldon34 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 11:15 AM   #471
Jim Sachs
Developer
 
Jim Sachs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2000

Location: Southern Oregon
Posts: 9,768
Ray Wright - The starfish moves about quite a bit, but it currently starts in the same position each time the program starts. Here's the problem with it going on the glass: There has never been a smooth transition from the floor to the glass, or vice-versa. In the old program, the starfish would wait until the lights were completely out to switch. MA3 doesn't have automatic lighting yet, so I either need to implement that, or develop a smooth transition where the starfish crawls from the floor to the glass. (Both of which are on the list.)

Right now I'm busy chasing down a crashing bug in the new Logo interface when using multimonitors. Then it's just a matter of adding Patrick's Random request, and I'll be able to upload Beta 9c.
Jim Sachs
Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium
Jim Sachs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 11:26 AM   #472
rctneil
Registered
 
Join Date: Jul 2008

Posts: 239
sounds great Jim, Can't wait
rctneil is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 02:20 PM   #473
iMark
Registered
 
Join Date: Mar 2003

Location: MIssouri
Posts: 105
I do kind of miss the automatic lighting, at times...maybe when you get to that point, it can be an option to use it or not, and the starfish will only get on the glass when it's on...that is, if it's impossible to get the starfish on the glass any other way...
iMark is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 02:29 PM   #474
Jim Sachs
Developer
 
Jim Sachs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2000

Location: Southern Oregon
Posts: 9,768
That's how it was in the old program - automatic lighting was optional and the starfish would only make the transition if it was on. Creating a realistic movement from the floor onto the glass is definitely something I intend to do, after I put out some of these other fires.
Jim Sachs
Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium
Jim Sachs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 02:42 PM   #475
iMark
Registered
 
Join Date: Mar 2003

Location: MIssouri
Posts: 105
Originally posted by Jim Sachs:
That's how it was in the old program - automatic lighting was optional and the starfish would only make the transition if it was on. Creating a realistic movement from the floor onto the glass is definitely something I intend to do, after I put out some of these other fires.  
lol..I figured that wasn't going to be an "impossible" you'd be happy living with...I was happy with the way it worked before, and like I said I do miss the auto-lighting at times, but I'd also be wowed to see the starfish climb up on the glass in full view...this is an exciting program that just keeps getting better...I'm content to wait for good things to come...
iMark is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 02:44 PM   #476
cjmaddy
Registered
 
cjmaddy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2001

Location: Lancashire, UK
Posts: 7,854
Do you think we could tempt Fish Picker back? ..... Are you out there, Ron? - (Mountainmaster)
cjmaddy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 02:58 PM   #477
Jim Sachs
Developer
 
Jim Sachs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2000

Location: Southern Oregon
Posts: 9,768
iMark - automatic lighting will take a while to implement. MA3 has no "lights", everything is done with Shaders. While this makes all kinds of interesting new effects possible, there's no longer a central "lights up" or "lights down" switch within the program.
Jim Sachs
Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium
Jim Sachs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 03:37 PM   #478
iMark
Registered
 
Join Date: Mar 2003

Location: MIssouri
Posts: 105
ahh..I see...the auto-lights were cool sometimes, but this new aquarium looks so fantastic, I won't be disappointed if they never return or it takes quite some time to implement it...there are much more exciting things to look forward to first....
iMark is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 03:42 PM   #479
Jim Sachs
Developer
 
Jim Sachs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2000

Location: Southern Oregon
Posts: 9,768
Most people didn't like the autolights, especially when it went into sillouhette form. But it served two functions: allowing the starfish to go onto the glass, and preventing burn-in. Now that the whole background moves, burn-in shouldn't be a problem.
Jim Sachs
Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium
Jim Sachs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-20-2009, 05:45 PM   #480
Rick Simon
Registered
 
Rick Simon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
3 Highscores

Location: Michigan
Posts: 93
Originally posted by Jim Sachs:
Most people didn't like the autolights, especially when it went into sillouhette form. But it served two functions: allowing the starfish to go onto the glass, and preventing burn-in. Now that the whole background moves, burn-in shouldn't be a problem.  
Except for those of us with multi-monitor displays that are wide enough, though there should be few of us.
Rick Simon is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply
Go Back   Inside: SereneScreen Fan Forum > SereneScreen Products > Marine Aquarium 3 for Windows



Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:13 PM.


Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.