Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Hi! I am basing this on videos i've seen. So please troll me.

Have you guys tried bounce? Someone should install FRAPS or equal ... It looks like framerate drops below five:ish quite often, while most of the time staying around maybe 10-15. I also think the accelerometer is poorly implemented as it seems lag about 0.3 seconds after movement is made.

Worst of all is that there seem to be a slight freezing every now and then; looks like hard-drive-lag or something.

Could someone with the phone post in-game videos where it shows game is smooth?


Whats even better is that the official video of the game (posted on youtube HERE), has a much better FPS. This makes me think it is recorded on another system or emulator on a PC... what a joke...

Im tired of choppyness/lag/delay/ in every ******* app (ok not every app, only browser, rss, games, jada jada, jada jada.. ).

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

that is just not true.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

ok quake3 impressed me slightly

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Bounce Evolution definitely doesn't feel like 5 fps, it is very playable. The official video seems like the real deal comparing the video and the game on the machine side by side.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

If that is the case, im happy. Could you post a youtube video of it please? :)

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

It's very smooth here. It depends on what's going on in the background, though.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Are you planning to buy a N900?

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

yes I am :)

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

oh boy... here we go again.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

A-ha, found the last two apples in the forest level of Bounce Evolution! :) 14/14 finally.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

I downloaded Bounce yesterday and have played it twice. Once alone and once with buddies watching. When I showed it to my buddies, their first comments were "Oh... it stutters a bit".

The game does stutter, especially in the beginning. It sort of freezes alltogether for a second and then continues. Frame rate seems very good though when it's not stuttering.

Controls are very responsive and it's an awesome demo to show off the device with. It's not really a game, since you can complete the first level in less than a minute and there are only two levels.

But to answer your question: Yes it stutters. It doesn't lag, because to me that means it's falling behind all the time and 95% of the game runs perfectly smooth.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Pay attention to what you're running in the background. If you want to assess Bounce itself, run it after a reboot (after the device has settled down) and in offline mode. Noticeable stuttering is perfectly normal when you have half a dozen tasks doing their things in the background (or plainly taking up memory).

Also keep in mind the N900 is pushing around 2.5x more pixels than, say, the iPhone. It would probably help quite a bit if there was an option to halve resolution.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

No stuttering on my device (except perhaps the occasional tiny hickup), but I do remember that it ran pretty badly for a while. Perhaps it was fixed, or something else on the system.

Of course background tasks and/or low memory situations will cause the game to stutter, it's still essentially a _phone_ after all, running high quality 3D graphics. :) That you can even do multi-tasking while running the game is quite a feat.

Framerates for the most part match the video (although there are places where they drop to what I would perceive as around 15-20 FPS), and there is no noticeable lag from the accelerometer. You are probably confusing this with the inertia, which is a bit on the heavy side.

A little game called Enigma should give a better idea of accelerometer sensitivity, and it's hard to control because the ball reacts to the smallest tilt.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

I think the forest level may not be 100% smooth all the time, although the space level pretty much is. But both run very well and are really playable.

Running something on the background will affect this of course, but without reboot or without turning off phone but just not running anything else seems very playable to me. It is perfectly OK while playing music on the background too.

For those still looking for those hidden apples... read this in reverse:

seert eht kcik

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

The video posted by the developers is pretty deceptive in regards to actual performance. The video posted on youtube (Ilinked n the OP's post) seems to have been captured directly from the frame buffer. It's very likely that the video was not being rendered on an N900 when captured and probably on desktop hardware in order to achieve that smooth 30fps. I've seen videos of people playing bounce and I've been able to see the constant lagging. I'll tell you this, it's not a constant 30fps, more like 5-15fps but it's pretty impressive for a handheld to pull off graphics like those.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Just try rebooting your phone

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Thanks for all the replys! Its a very interesting device indeed. I love that it is resistive because that means we could end up with some really good RPGs in the future that demand accuracy! :D

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Mmm... picking up loot with the stylus... :)

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Those of you who have observed Bounce lagging badly, what firmware version do you have on your phone? Some pre-production version or the sales release 42-11? An important graphics fix made in the software just before the sales release which almost doubled up the performance of Bounce so some lagging is expected if the game is run with an older software.

Also, the device has computation priority groups (cgroups) and Bounce is currently classified incorrectly to have only background priority. Fortunately this doesn't normally affect the performance too much when running only Bounce. But in multitasking situation it can potentially make it perform badly if other applications are open because all applications withing the same group have a shared resource usage limit.

About the official YouTube video, yes it is captured on desktop computer but just because it is much more convenient to do so, not to cheat. On the contrary, it actually has lower frame rate on many occasions compared to the device. The video was captured with a constant frame rate of 30 but for example the race level on the device has frame rate between 40 and 60.

The forest level is indeed bit heavier than the race but it shouldn't be noticeably laggy either. The fps drops to 18 in two places for a second but on the average it is running between 25 and 40.

- Miika (from Rovio)

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

My entire device runs great and fast. Not really sure where the whole "choppy" thing began but mine runs great even with quite a few apps open. It has only been slow and unresponsive one time, and that was when disconnecting from a cellular network at the same time as attempting to open up a google-talk IM (which I guess the IM program freaked out a little when the cellular network dropped at the same moment)

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

One thing that did seem to slow down my device a lot was Modest (the mail app). I had 5500 messages in my inbox, so I am assuming it might have affected performance a lot while periodically polling the account. I trimmed it down to 700 mails in the inbox and at least it *feels* a lot snappier now. Running newest firmware (42.11).

I decided to test the game right now with the trimmed down mailbox. I closed down all apps, so that my dashboard was empty. Bounce ran lag free on the waterfall level except for the very beginning, when the camera moves up the brown slope, before the actual game begins. The most common stuttering place, the waterfall before the logs fall down, ran absolutely silky smooth. It stuttered like crazy before, when I watched my wife play the game.

So, sorry. It appears I was incorrect about the lagginess of Bounce.

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

Miika/Rovio, can you reveal if your are preparing a full(er) version with more levels? Or another game?

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

jaysire: No need to be sorry at all, I have also seen some embarrassingly laggy videos about Bounce, mainly from Maemo summit. I just wanted to explain the reasons behind those, usually being an old software or too heavy multitasking situation. Strange that you have seen lagging on the first camera run even on "good configuration" because it's actually the lightest part of the level and runs nicely 40 fps on my device.

Viipottaja: As for more levels I can't promise anything yet but for other games definitely! We are finalizing another game for N900 currently and it should be out by Christmas, at latest. It's something we have been very exited here so stay tuned. :)

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

If you're talking about Angry Birds, then it's a quite funny-looking game you have there. It's nice to see that Rovio keeps up with the pace - and quality. ;)

Re: Bounce On Nokia N900... Lagfest
 

i don't know where you've heard the game lagz, but it is very playable from my experience, maybe a bit too fast at times...