Author Topic: [QoL] Higher player movement speed  (Read 313 times)

Offline 0ros

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[QoL] Higher player movement speed
« on: November 18, 2024, 11:07:04 pm »
I wondered why that wasn't higher since I've seen so in other turn-based games, etc.

The current speed seems "somewhat fast"; I suggest at least "50%" higher, or "2x" as much, if possible.

Offline Delian

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Re: [QoL] Higher player movement speed
« Reply #1 on: November 18, 2024, 11:31:14 pm »
You can already increase player unit movement speed in options > battlescape.

Offline 0ros

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Re: [QoL] Higher player movement speed
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2024, 12:43:45 am »
You can already increase player unit movement speed in options > battlescape.
Yeah, but even at the slider's max, it is only "somewhat fast". (Currently, the speed is at "slow finger movement speed", while "2x" would be at "normal".)

Offline shinr

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Re: [QoL] Higher player movement speed
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2024, 01:07:08 am »
IMO, there is nothing "somewhat" about the max speed movement.

And from my understanding, you want a 90s-style uncapped-CPU-cycles-near-instant-teleportation speed?


Offline Delian

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Re: [QoL] Higher player movement speed
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2024, 01:21:07 am »
If the units are moving slow for you, that's probably because the device you're using sucks and can't handle processing faster movement. For me, at max slider, stuff is teleporting around.

Offline 0ros

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Re: [QoL] Higher player movement speed
« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2024, 03:21:11 am »
If the units are moving slow for you, that's probably because the device you're using sucks and can't handle processing faster movement. For me, at max slider, stuff is teleporting around.
How does that make sense? Is the max slider forcing "240 FPS"? Is that how it makes the units move faster? Because it's an old engine? Something as simple as unit movement speed shouldn't be tied to that, normally (which is why in some other turn-based games there was no such issue).

That reminds me of uncapping FPS of console games speeding them up.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2024, 03:25:13 am by 0ros »

Online Meridian

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Re: [QoL] Higher player movement speed
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2024, 10:00:36 am »
1/ Moving units as anything but simple.

There is a frikkin crapton squared of calculations involved:
- recalculating field of view with every step and turn
- recalculating lighting every step
- recalculating reaction fire every step
- and so on...

If the map is too big, or the max visibility distance is modded bigger or there are too many enemies to check, it will take a lot of time to calculate everything and the movement will be snail-pace.

Try comparing for example vanilla small UFO map speed against XPiratez space map speed.
The first is close to teleporting for me, the second is barely 2-3 steps a second.

2/ Besides movement calculations, the complexity of the map rendering itself can be a limiting factor. If map rendering is taking almost all CPU time, then...

So check:
- what resolution you're playing on
- how much you're zoomed out (how much of the map you see at once)
- what level you're on (rendering ground level is much simpler than rendering top levels, just try it with XPiratez base defense, or even just TFTD alien colony)
- what crazy rendering filters you're using
- and so on...

3/ There's many other factors involved, which are either too complicated to explain or I don't even understand fully myself.

Check the settings recommendation here, for most obvious mistakes: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=8208.0
If it doesn't help, buy a better computer, or play less complicated mods, or less crazy filters/resolution, or simply accept it.


PS: Max slider is (trying to) perform a movement animation step every 1 millisecond, min slider is (trying to) perform a movement animation step every 40 milliseconds.

Offline 0ros

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Re: [QoL] Higher player movement speed
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2024, 05:40:39 pm »
I was using a "smoothed pixels" filter, "5xbr". Disabling that made the units move much faster.

Then I disabled VSync for OpenGL. That made the game run with the smoothed pixels filter as fast as without any.

That was in the "Temple of Sirius" map of XPiratez. It's a large map with many buildings.


The CPU is a Ryzen 3.


Problem solved, then?