swing slowness.. myth?

[Abuse]

thats another problem with the api as it currently stands - none of the Java2D stuff is hardware accelerated, so using VolatileImage gives no benefit at all.

Infact, if you performed an AlphaComposite of 2 VolatileImages it is *slower* than doing it with 2 BufferedImages (TYPE_INT_ARGB).

crazy realy

Hm, if you don't need these things, yes, they are useless and Java2D is not the world champion with drawImage(). Never user these VolatileImage things. Can't they be blitted very fast?

[SpongeBob]

The difference between 25 and 50fps in an unbridgable gulf. 25 looks awful for 2D but seems more acceptable in 3D. It's the same kind of difference that shows up when you try using timer based animation instead of tick-based in 2D.

I think the opposite is true.  I also think Orangy was talking more along the lines of 3D (with his example of B&W) while I was going on about 2D.  2D looks fine at 24 frames per second.  Do this with 3D and it looks god awful.  Reason being that with 3D animation you can easily produce 60 unique frames of animation per second while I know of no 2D game out there using over 20 unique frames per second.

The word "unique" is key here.  As I said early with my example of Disney they produce 12 unique frames (or cells) of animation per second.  They duplicate these frames to get a desired 24 FPS.

Commercial example:  Diablo II runs at 25 FPS.  B&W runs pretty good at 50 FPS.  If you were to crank Diablo II up to something higher you would not notice any difference since the same number of unique frames of animation are still played.  With each increase in FPS for B&W you can get smoother animation.

[Orangy Tang]

2D looks fine at 24 frames per second.  Do this with 3D and it looks god awful.

Nope, quite the opposite. I was refering to both 2d and 3d, but as Cas mentions you can get away with a lower fps in a 3d game because of the overal movement being non-linear compared to a 2d game, where any dropped frames will stick out like a sore thumb. Its just that non-frame based animation is more common in 3d because it makes more sense.

Diablo may 'only' have 24 frames of animation, but you can bet that they're scrolling the background at the same rate as the refresh rate to get it nice and silky smooth. Or play Bauldurs Gate 2 and compare how smooth the characters are (traditionally animated sprites) against the spell effects (particle & vector based animation).

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Herkules]

I'm with OringyTang here. The point is that 2D can be far better observed by the eye.
But also for 3D, it really depends. While MSFlight is fine with 20FPS, Q3A will be unplayable. So it largely depends on how fast the camera moves.
For 2D, not only framerate, but also constancy of framerate is highly important, bc. is directly relates to the smoothness of aninamtions. Thats where Java sucks ....

[SpongeBob]

Diablo may 'only' have 24 frames of animation, but you can bet that they're scrolling the background at the same rate as the refresh rate to get it nice and silky smooth.

The background moves as fast as the characters: 25 FPS.  This is the developers ideal setting.  As many of you know who have played Diablo II keeping even at that consistant frame rate would have been nice  .  

Or play Bauldurs Gate 2 and compare how smooth the characters are (traditionally animated sprites) against the spell effects (particle & vector based animation).

The big difference there could be that Baldurs Gate has over 108,420 frames of character and monster animations.  Part II saw and addition 100,000+ frames (see games technical faq).  The more unique animation frames you have the more 'silky' the end result can be.

For 2D, not only framerate, but also constancy of framerate is highly important,

Can't agree more.  Diablo could possibly run at 200 fps on a good computer but the designers purposely cut this down to a self imposed 25 FPS.  This is because movement and animation in games is often based on the desired frames per second.  Its all about timing.  This also prevents the game becoming too fast in the future when you have better hardware.  Think of them as self imposed speed caps.

[Abuse]

ah, thats why motion in diablo 2 is so horribly jerky

have you got another example - diablo 2 isn't the best written of games (aside from the god aweful netcode - its packed full of logic bugs as well)