5.12 vs 5.13 vs 5.14 smoothness

ID:2655657
 
Feb 14 2021, 3:20 pm
(See the best response by The peoples republic of china.)

Problem description:
I've been working on a game for sometime now, and for awhile now, my team and I have noticed that 5.12 seems to be incredibly more smooth then 5.13, we've been telling our testers to try the game in 5.12 rather then 5.13 as they too noticed the choppiness present in 5.13

Now with the release of 5.14, not only that it's even more choppy, icons with movement states no longer play when moving.

Here are some comparisons:

5.12: https://streamable.com/rr5gdv
Smoothest movement in comparison to the other two.

5.13: https://streamable.com/btbv3n
Choppy movement, but not as choppy as 5.14

5.14: https://streamable.com/e/fgph6d
Super choppy movement and move state animations don't play.
Workaround for move state not playing: lower mob's step-size, having it the same as the icon-size causes this effect.


The icon being used, to show move state:


With the cool new features, 5.14 bring such as the particle system, it's getting harder and harder to ignore this. Presently, we just tell them to use 5.12 byond when playing, but we now want to utilize 5.14's particle system.

I haven't found any workarounds for the choppy gameplay, perhaps I'm doing something wrong
OR:
atom/animate-movement is stuck at 0? and changing it no longer has any effect on 5.13+
Feb 14 2021, 5:56 pm
Best response
Are these tests being done locally (directly from a dmb) or are they from the perspective of somebody connected to a server? (Even if it's just another instance on the same computer that is hosting)
Feb 14 2021, 6:31 pm (Edited on Feb 14 2021, 7:39 pm)
In response to The peoples republic of china
It's hosted but multiple clients from the same computer, I'll test with just the DMB
Feb 14 2021, 7:55 pm
When running locally, the 5.14 icon movement state not working, seems to fix itself, however the choppy movement on both 5.13 and 5.14 retains.
Feb 14 2021, 7:57 pm
WOW!
Feb 14 2021, 8:37 pm
Very strange. I know that even in a minimal latency scenario (clients connected to a server being hosted on the same machine) DS is just noticeably choppier if you aren't the host client, but I'm not sure what would cause this for local instances.

In my projects the game always runs as smoothly as your first example as long as you are playing on the host client. For clients that are connected however (even clients on the same machine as the host client), the game usually looks and feels more like the second example.

Your third example looks like a different issue altogether that has something to do with step_size and camera gliding, which were bugged for a bit in 514- are you sure you have the most recent version of the beta?
Feb 14 2021, 8:44 pm (Edited on Feb 14 2021, 9:07 pm)
The movement animations not playing sounds like a bug, so you should post a bug report in Beta Bugs with a test case. I'll be happy to look into that.

Choppiness is another matter because it's too subjective. Without a test case that displays some obvious visible jitter I won't have anything to work with.

As a thought, I wonder if you have FPS set too high and the increasing complexity of the render and pre-render process is causing your game a bit of trouble. That would be the most obvious source of choppiness, if the game is having trouble with timing. But without seeing your code this is just a guess.

[edit]
Adding to this, I recommend you get data from the client profiler to see the average times on the render and pre-render when you're moving around. That data would be very useful, especially across the different versions.
Feb 15 2021, 10:40 am
I've been able to depict what version causes the more choppy movement for me, it's this version: 513.1523 and anything after.
Looking at the update-logs,

- Gliding is now tied to actual elapsed time instead of ticks, for smoother movement closer to what animate() produces.

Perhaps, it's this update causing it?
Feb 15 2021, 12:36 pm
In response to Only Reality
Give the man some testcases!