Tester needed
  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    Bladerunner
    Posts: 418 from 2004/2/19
    Well some people complained about MorphOS + Ambient beeing to slow with default settings, especially with Blizzard/BVision Combo. I am not sure, but perhaps it may help to reduce the Gradient/Alphablending Usage a bit. I thought about reworking my last Skin to use less Bitmaps and Gradients and such. But before I do that, I d`like to know whether there is really a speed benefit. So please do the following:
    Load a Skin which uses not that much bitmaps, rainy blue is a good start, Nescio und Nebulosis should work too.

    Then load this
    Mui Setting file, which is actually just a slightly modified Version from default Settings.
    Please let me know if this makes things a bit faster. If so, then try the "blend frames with background" Option (a value between 50 and 60 is a good start) and let me know if this makes things slower again or not.

    Hoping for Feedback
  • »26.08.05 - 22:12
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  • MorphOS Developer
    zukow
    Posts: 645 from 2005/2/9
    From: Poland
    i copied mui4 and ambient cvs from my pegasos and now ambient is faster
  • »26.08.05 - 22:58
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    Bladerunner
    Posts: 418 from 2004/2/19
    it is faster with mui4? strange... I could have bet, that this might have slowed things down. Anyway, did you try one of those skins + those Mui settings? (Won`t work unfortunatelly with Mui 4, as it has loading prefs currently disabled) Any difference Speedwise?
  • »26.08.05 - 23:05
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    zephar123
    Posts: 139 from 2004/3/8
    interesting has anyone tried 3.8? may soudn funyn but 3.8 runs best on m peg2 go figure lol.
  • »26.08.05 - 23:49
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    Bladerunner
    Posts: 418 from 2004/2/19
    Well thats all really interesting, but.. could please someone test this combination and play around with this frame blending thing? According to Christoph Gutjahr it indeed increase the speed, but i need to know if I can enable also this background blending thing...
  • »27.08.05 - 10:56
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    AmigaMancer
    Posts: 265 from 2005/8/25
    Quote:

    Well some people complained about MorphOS + Ambient beeing to slow with default settings, especially with Blizzard/BVision Combo.

    That's correct. It's painfuly slow with the default settings.

    Quote:

    I am not sure, but perhaps it may help to reduce the Gradient/Alphablending Usage a bit. I thought about reworking my last Skin to use less Bitmaps and Gradients and such. But before I do that, I d`like to know whether there is really a speed benefit. So please do the following:
    Load a Skin which uses not that much bitmaps, rainy blue is a good start, Nescio und Nebulosis should work too.

    Pardon my ignorance, but i don't know how to use skins. Teach me how and i will give you feedback about this.

    Quote:

    Then load this
    Mui Setting file, which is actually just a slightly modified Version from default Settings.

    After loading your settings the speed difference is HUGE! No more waiting for volume/directory window opening or window/screen menu apearance! Ambient seems to be as fast as WorkBench 3.x, now.
    One minor problem: When i open the MUI settings window after i have load your settings, all the items apears kind of borderless and thus hard to distinct.

    Quote:

    Please let me know if this makes things a bit faster. If so, then try the "blend frames with background" Option (a value between 50 and 60 is a good start) and let me know if this makes things slower again or not.

    I don't notice any change in speed with this option.

    Btw, is there an e-manual for MorphOS/Ambient somewhere?
    Amiga 1200 user.
  • »27.08.05 - 12:57
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    Bladerunner
    Posts: 418 from 2004/2/19
    Quote:

    Pardon my ignorance, but i don't know how to use skins. Teach me how and i will give you feedback about this.


    You are right, Settings are slightly different used in MorphOS, imho this is much more usefull, but thats a matter of taste.
    For Prefs, you don`t use the Preferences Drawer any longer, but a buildin Prefs App. You launch it via the pull down menu, go to settings/system settings. the "Main Preferences Application" will pop up. Here you choose "Screen Mode" A list with your current defined Screenmodes apears. Select Ambient (Either doubleclick on it or just select and click on edit) and you will prompted to "Edit Screen" Here you can choose different resolution and your preferd skin. Those mentioned above are allready there.
    Are there any additional speed boosts, if you select one of those skins?

    One more test, if possible, I made another Mui Package, based on my latest Skin, with gradients disabled, only Blending is enabled. Please download it here you can simply drop the MorphOS drawer on your MOS Partition (the MorphOS Drawer should be left alone, unfortunatelly skins are with the current Mui Release only loaded from there) then load the blizzard.prefs Settings file (you might reboot before the new bitmap drawer appears, if you have allready changed the Mui Settings, because Mui locks this gfx drawer)
    Does it still behave as fast as with the other settings file?

    Quote:

    Btw, is there an e-manual for MorphOS/Ambient somewhere?


    Hmm not that I am aware of one. But perhaps someone like to write one? ;)
    Otoh feel free to ask if things are unclear

    thanks for testing.

    PS Senex, If you read this, please don`t add it on A-News yet :D I am still testing and if there are indeed speed differences, also with those other skins, I will make a new Skin package ;)
  • »27.08.05 - 14:08
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    AmigaMancer
    Posts: 265 from 2005/8/25
    Quote:

    You are right, Settings are slightly different used in MorphOS, imho this is much more usefull, but thats a matter of taste.
    For Prefs, you don`t use the Preferences Drawer any longer, but a buildin Prefs App. You launch it via the pull down menu, go to settings/system settings. the "Main Preferences Application" will pop up. Here you choose "Screen Mode" A list with your current defined Screenmodes apears. Select Ambient (Either doubleclick on it or just select and click on edit) and you will prompted to "Edit Screen" Here you can choose different resolution and your preferd skin. Those mentioned above are allready there.

    Easy.

    Quote:

    Are there any additional speed boosts, if you select one of those skins?

    I've just tried all of the default skins and i can say, in general, that they don't seem to have a noticable influence in ambient's speed, or that their influence is too small for me to notice.
    I'm not completely sure about this, but "heavy" skins like classic and clara, feels slightly slower in opaque window movement.
    Just for the record: clara and classic on the other hand, are the only of the default skins with a good and modern look.

    Quote:

    One more test, if possible, I made another Mui Package, based on my latest Skin, with gradients disabled, only Blending is enabled. Please download it here you can simply drop the MorphOS drawer on your MOS Partition (the MorphOS Drawer should be left alone, unfortunatelly skins are with the current Mui Release only loaded from there) then load the blizzard.prefs Settings file (you might reboot before the new bitmap drawer appears, if you have allready changed the Mui Settings, because Mui locks this gfx drawer)
    Does it still behave as fast as with the other settings file?

    Yes. It feels just about the same, plus that the pre-mentioned problem with the MUI preferences window is gone and the icon/window menus are much better looking, now. ;)

    Quote:

    thanks for testing.

    You are welcome
    Amiga 1200 user.
  • »27.08.05 - 18:44
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    Bladerunner
    Posts: 418 from 2004/2/19
    Allrrrright! Thank you for testing :) To summarize it, the main Problem seems to be indeed Muis Gradient Feature. So I don`t rework the whole skin, but just upload this Mui Package here on MZ.
  • »27.08.05 - 18:54
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    zhulien
    Posts: 118 from 2004/8/21
    Hi Bladerunner, I'm another A1200/bvision/64mb user willing to test anything you require also. I don't have networking working yet, so am limited to what is 'on' the machine itself for now... The default skin looks fantastic by the way.
  • »27.08.05 - 23:37
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    Bladerunner
    Posts: 418 from 2004/2/19
    Zhulien:
    Tests are done now, as a result it seems that indeed the gradients slow things down, as i mentioned below. According to AmigaMancer, Intuitin Skins itself don`t slow down things significantly.
    But in your case, having only 64 MB Ram, it might be a good Idea to disable things which eat ram, like backdrop Pictures and such. Also those mentioned "light" skins which does not have that much bitmaps.

    I am curious is there enough ram left for proper usage? (btw, for our
    "Newbies" :D )Tokai`s Statline Tool is an excellent App for Displaying different Stats like memusage, CPU Usage and much, much more.)

    Oh, before I forget, The default Skin is Jobbo`s work. (It is ferox I supose?) He is the master of skin design, I really whish I had his talent ;)
  • »28.08.05 - 00:05
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  • Just looking around
    Posts: 1 from 2005/8/28
    From: Sweden
    Hi!

    Well, I also thought that it was the gradients that was horribly slow, since one had to wait a second or two for anything to happen. But the solution is simpler then that, with SnoopDOS I found out that it was looking for Vera.ttf, which isn't on the MOS PowerUP CD, so I just copied the Verase.ttf to Vera.ttf and voila, the slowness is gone! Might need a reboot for things to make change...

    After that I can't say that either MUI or Amibient is slow at all on my BPPC 175Mhz...
  • »28.08.05 - 17:00
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