TGB issues on Mac OS
by Stefano Fontana · in Torque Game Builder · 07/24/2006 (1:30 pm) · 6 replies
Hi.
I installed the 30 days trial of Torque Game Builder on my computer, but I find that the interface is very slow. When the TGB is running the user interface of my computer becomes very sluggish, the dock takes like 2-3 seconds to appear when I move the pointer to the bottom of the screen and everything is redrawn very slowly.
Has anyone experienced this issue?
My computer is an iBook G4, 1.42 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 32 MB Video Card and MacOS 10.4.7
I tried to install the demo also on my powermac G5, Dual 2.3 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB Video Card, MacOS 10.4.7, but the demo is sluggish there too. It runs a little faster, but it is still annoying.
I tried to check with activity monitor, and TGB takes always quite a lot of processor time, even when it is in the background. But still cpu activity is well below 100% (in the dual PM one cpu is always idle).
I tried to check with shark (Developer Tools) and it looks like there are some openGL related functions that are constantly called.
Thanks for the help :)
Stefano
I installed the 30 days trial of Torque Game Builder on my computer, but I find that the interface is very slow. When the TGB is running the user interface of my computer becomes very sluggish, the dock takes like 2-3 seconds to appear when I move the pointer to the bottom of the screen and everything is redrawn very slowly.
Has anyone experienced this issue?
My computer is an iBook G4, 1.42 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 32 MB Video Card and MacOS 10.4.7
I tried to install the demo also on my powermac G5, Dual 2.3 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB Video Card, MacOS 10.4.7, but the demo is sluggish there too. It runs a little faster, but it is still annoying.
I tried to check with activity monitor, and TGB takes always quite a lot of processor time, even when it is in the background. But still cpu activity is well below 100% (in the dual PM one cpu is always idle).
I tried to check with shark (Developer Tools) and it looks like there are some openGL related functions that are constantly called.
Thanks for the help :)
Stefano
#2
07/24/2006 (7:27 pm)
Are you saying TGB is slow or the rest of your computer is slow when TGB is running in the background?
#3
Link: http://fontaz.net/TGB/UserInterface.mov (61 MB)
The video is recorded on the iBook laptop. I think it should be apparent that there is something wrong when TGB is running: at the beginning TGB is not running and as you can see the dock is very responsive, but when I launch TGB the little strings over the application's icons cannot keep the pace with the movement of the mouse (this is not the only issue). Basically the computer runs fine, but the interface is jerky, like when you play Quake 3 and your computer is not fast enough. You can even see that the mouse is not redrawn very fast.
I also found out that the amount of "sluggishness" depends on the project open: if I start an open project the slowdown is there, but not so apparent. If I load the Fish Game tutorial then it is very slow. It is less slow with the shooter demo (I didn't use a proper metodology with stopwatch and frame counter, it is just my impression).
Even when doing nothing the interace is slow. I have a shark file here for you to download and check if you want)
iBook_G4 time profile with shark: http://fontaz.net/TGB/TGB-TimeProfile.mshark
One more thing (this is a minor issue): if I hide the TGB on my PM G5 (option-click on the desktop when TGB is the front app) then the interface of the mac becomes almost unusable: the dock takes seconds to appear, the finder is very slow etc.
I made another shark session for you to download. TGB is hidden and I'm doing nothing else with the computer. As you can see there is a function that keeps getting called (ml_set_interrupts_enabled).
Here is the shark file of PM_G5 with TGB in backgroung: http://fontaz.net/TGB/PM_G5_TGB_background.mshark
I hope this post answers to your questions :)
Thank you for your kind assistance.
Stefano
07/25/2006 (5:29 am)
I made a little movie that shows what I mean when I say that it runs slow.Link: http://fontaz.net/TGB/UserInterface.mov (61 MB)
The video is recorded on the iBook laptop. I think it should be apparent that there is something wrong when TGB is running: at the beginning TGB is not running and as you can see the dock is very responsive, but when I launch TGB the little strings over the application's icons cannot keep the pace with the movement of the mouse (this is not the only issue). Basically the computer runs fine, but the interface is jerky, like when you play Quake 3 and your computer is not fast enough. You can even see that the mouse is not redrawn very fast.
I also found out that the amount of "sluggishness" depends on the project open: if I start an open project the slowdown is there, but not so apparent. If I load the Fish Game tutorial then it is very slow. It is less slow with the shooter demo (I didn't use a proper metodology with stopwatch and frame counter, it is just my impression).
Even when doing nothing the interace is slow. I have a shark file here for you to download and check if you want)
iBook_G4 time profile with shark: http://fontaz.net/TGB/TGB-TimeProfile.mshark
One more thing (this is a minor issue): if I hide the TGB on my PM G5 (option-click on the desktop when TGB is the front app) then the interface of the mac becomes almost unusable: the dock takes seconds to appear, the finder is very slow etc.
I made another shark session for you to download. TGB is hidden and I'm doing nothing else with the computer. As you can see there is a function that keeps getting called (ml_set_interrupts_enabled).
Here is the shark file of PM_G5 with TGB in backgroung: http://fontaz.net/TGB/PM_G5_TGB_background.mshark
I hope this post answers to your questions :)
Thank you for your kind assistance.
Stefano
#4
08/02/2006 (5:09 am)
Any news about that? Must I suppose that it is just my computer too slow to run TGB?
#5
In most of the included demos they run in at least 60-70fps and when in the editor everything is "snappy" :)
08/02/2006 (5:43 am)
I got a 1.2Ghz iBook G4 with 768mb of RAM and it works just fine...In most of the included demos they run in at least 60-70fps and when in the editor everything is "snappy" :)
#6
08/02/2006 (6:49 am)
Uhm them I wonder what's going wrong with my ibook... which os are you using?
Torque Owner Paul Scott
Default Studio Name
When you say it runs slow... please post a screenshot of it running slow, so that I can get some idea of what kind of graphical stuff it's choking on.
Just so you know, TGB is graphics card bound. That means that most of your app time will be spent in OpenGL, because the TGB has to wait on the graphics card to complete the last frame before it can send the drawing commands for the next one. Most all games are graphics card bound. So most all games will be spending the bulk of their time in OpenGL.
So:
1) Post the top few functions & % Times in the Shark trace.
2) Post a screenshot of what you had in the window when you took the trace.
3) I'll let you know why it's going slow.
Share and Enjoy.
/Paul