OS4 Slooooow

[clieuser9999]

I have a Clie T665 OS4.1 (320x320)

The gameplay is so slow it is barely usable. The menu system is worse, I have to click and wait 2-3 seconds to see if it registered. A regular menu would be much prefered, but I read your post that people expect prettier menus (essentially). I consider this a bit unfortunate.

I'm hoping the speed picks up, this looks like the #1 implementation of sudoku. It's a great game, and your company is known for great products. I'm pulling for you.

Unregistered until it is playable...

[Kieren]

Ahoy there clieuser9999,

There be a few factors which can affect the speed on high resolution OS4 devices such as the T665, although ye devices processing speed does play a large part. On the Sony CLIÉs, an option called "hi-res assist" also be known to cause slow performance.

*ahem* I should probably stop talking like a pirate for a few minutes to explain this bit :)

To check whether this option be scuppering yer plans, open the "Prefs" application on your Palm (usually found under the "System" category of applications). Once you have opened the Prefs application, tap in the top right hand corner to display a list of the different options, and select the "Hi-res" option.

You should see an "Enable High Resolution Assist" checkbox at this point. I usually suggest making sure this box is unchecked, as it does significantly reduce the speed of games which are able to handle running on a hi-res device on their own.

I hope that be useful matey!
Kieren
Technical Support and Plank Maintenance

[clieuser9999]

Thanks for the post. I'll give it a try tonight when I get home to my clie and post a reply.

[clieuser9999]

Hmm.. that option was unfortunately already unchecked.

I suspect that graphics routines need to be optimized for OS4. Making it cross-compatible may have caused the older OS to suffer a bit. I'm hoping that you see it is worth while to improve the performance on older palms, because it is not really playable at this time. Considering the little graphic needs of this app (no animation etc) hopefully it won't be too hard to crank up.

Clieuser.

[Howard]

The graphics system we use is already *very* enhanced for pre-OS5 devices, but the major problem is that the game uses 16 bit graphics, which on a 320x320 screen on a lower powered device, there just isn't the processing power to make it quick. 66MHz devices suffer a little, and the 33MHz devices suffer more.

We use lots of tricks (like only updating the parts of the screen that have changed) but this still isn't quite enough...

We're looking at some things to perhaps make the game run better on Pre OS5 devices (less heap requirement for the Palm users, less screen updates for Sony users). I recollect that the latest OS4 devices that were released were around the end of 2002. We'll try to support this OS for as long as we can, but I hope you'll understand that my priority is to support the majority of devices that have been released more recently. (I'd estimate this is 90%+ of our users now.)

Howard.

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by frankbaird)
I am also experiencing very severe slowness on Sony Clie PEG-N610C. I have Hi-Res Assist disabled.

It seems like it would be easy to use less than 16-bit graphics. It seems like the game would be just fine even in 1-bit mode! I want to just play the game. Eye candy is nice, but certainly for this game, playability is much more important.

Would it be possible to reduce the graphics bit count (8-bit or 4-bit even) when running on OS4?

Thanks.

[Kieren]

Would it be possible to reduce the graphics bit count (8-bit or 4-bit even) when running on OS4?

Reducing the colour depth is certainly an option we've discussed for solving this problem, but is actually a LOT harder than it might first seem! It's not possible to "simply" reduce the colour depth from 16bit to 8bit due to the very different ways in which Palm OS stores colour information for these colour depths - for 16bit it stores an RGB value (denoting what mix of red, green and blue to at a given point), and for 8bit it instead stores a position within a 256 colour palette (which can itself be any colour). Converting between the two on the fly is possible, but requires even more processing power than generating a Diabolical puzzle would!

Producing separate 8bit graphics manually is also tricky, because it takes a huge amount of time to reduce the graphics down to the right selection of colours without losing too much quality (or ending up with random jagged bits all over the place), because you have to reduce ALL the images to using the same set of 256 colours.

This isn't the only solution we've considered, and I hope I've explained the difficulties behind this seemingly simple approach.

Warmest regards,
Kieren
Technical Support

[Kristopher]

Could you find the 8-bit equivalents to the 16-bit colors, and then use them to right a different version for 8-bit Palms (it could also be low-res)?
Aaar! 'Tis 'color', not 'colour'!

[Kieren]

Could you find the 8-bit equivalents to the 16-bit colors, and then use them to right a different version for 8-bit Palms (it could also be low-res)?


The terms "16-bit" and "8-bit" refer to the total number of colours used (or potentially used) in an image of the specified colour depth. An 8-bit image uses a palette of 256 colours which technically do not all have to be unique, as under Palm OS the colour of a given point in the image is determined by referring to the position of a colour within that palette - you could even change that colour, altering the resulting image, without altering the data that makes up the "picture" part.

In a 16-bit image, the range of colours is much larger, 65536 colours, and these ARE always unique because they are constructed as described above, by specifying a mix of red, green and blue.

However, creating the equivalent colours in both is not the hard part, the hard part is taking a set of images using potentially all 65,536 colours, and cutting that down to a single set of no more than 256 colours which are then used by ALL those images. Sudoku seems to use very few colours, but the subtle blends and shading between areas are very deceptive.

Using low-resolution only support is another possibility we've considered for improving performance for Sudoku under OS4, and it may yet yield the best improvements (However, it won't prove too popular with the hi-res CLIE owners, so we're still considering the options ;) )


Aaar! 'Tis 'color', not 'colour'!


This be depending on which country ye be from me hearty. Here in the sunny UK we spell it differently, and it's a habit that be hard to break.

[Kristopher]

sunny UK
I visited England twice and it was either foggy, cloudy, raining, or snowing.
:)

[Kieren]

I visited England twice and it was either foggy, cloudy, raining, or snowing.


Ah, Summer!

[Astragali]

sunny UK
I visited England twice and it was either foggy, cloudy, raining, or snowing.
:)

Hmm... you've definitely not been lately... we've had quite a few hot, sunny days these past few summers; so much so that we can actually call them summers!

Global warming... hmm...

Mark

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by JeriRat)
I love my SJ 22 but the Palm OS is 4.1. I enjoy this game so much I'm trying to win a TJ 37 (Palm OS 5.2) off ebay.

Even have the desktop version...

This is a serious addiction.

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by FrankBarnard)
I'm another user that loves the game and bought without ever trying it based on my experience with other Astraware games. But I'm surprised and frustrated by the extremely slow input response. Like others, I wait seconds after each input to see if it was accepted. I'm also on an older Sony T615. The graphics on Sudoku don't need to be very sophisticated so it is hard for me to understand the use of 16-bit graphics instead of 4- or 8-bit. Please continue to work on the game optimized for OS4.

Frank

[Howard]

I'm another user that loves the game and bought without ever trying it based on my experience with other Astraware games. But I'm surprised and frustrated by the extremely slow input response. Like others, I wait seconds after each input to see if it was accepted. I'm also on an older Sony T615. The graphics on Sudoku don't need to be very sophisticated so it is hard for me to understand the use of 16-bit graphics instead of 4- or 8-bit. Please continue to work on the game optimized for OS4.

Frank


Its nice that you've had such a good experience with other games from us!

The shading and colouring for hints and solutions is one of the features that requires 16 bit. (16 bit graphics allow blending of colours, which isn't possible in lower bit-depths.) Also, it means we can make a nicer looking game, which has been a factor for many people.

Certainly I don't like inputs being slow - and waiting seconds is more than I've seen in our tests.

The T615, if I recall right, is the exact worst possible case... it is high res (lots of pixels), but with the slowest OS4 processor (33MHz), and that combination is the biggest challenge! We certainly found that Bejeweled high-res wasn't as good, even though it looked prettier, because the frame-rate wasn't as good, and response times really matter!

We will look at this further for update versions, but I have to say that it may not be something which is possible to change for this class of device. I'd suggest that the upcoming month or two may be an appropriate time to consider an upgrade, but the Sony design was often great, and I can understand not wanting to part with it.

Howard.

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by FrankBarnard)
Howard,

Thanks for the reply. Maybe something else is happening. This is the only application that I have the problem with. You mentioned that Bejeweled had similar problems but Bejeweled & other Astraware games run fine--I think I'm running the hi-res version of Bejeweled (v. 2.1). I've had it for several years on a number of Sony's (T415, T615, T665--I keep using these because they are still the most sleek PDAs out there.) So could this be something else? Even when I switch back to my home menu or another application there is a ridiculous delay.

Frank

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by marho)
I´ve Clié T625.
When I download demo version the speed was quite OK. Now I buyed full version and this is very very slow. For me in this type of game I will accepted black/white version rather then waiting the seconds for reaction.

Thank you.
Martin

[Howard]

I´ve Clié T625.
When I download demo version the speed was quite OK. Now I buyed full version and this is very very slow.

So after inserting your registration code, you found the response to be slower? That's most surprising - but gives us something to look at.
(The registration system should not be being used during the normal part of using the game, so it is certainly not something we expected!)

Howard.

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by marho)
I´ve Clié T625.
When I download demo version the speed was quite OK. Now I buyed full version and this is very very slow.

So after inserting your registration code, you found the response to be slower? That's most surprising - but gives us something to look at.
(The registration system should not be being used during the normal part of using the game, so it is certainly not something we expected!)

Howard.

This is not exact, sorry. When I installed (30.9. 474kB)demo version, it was quick. After a few hours of utilisation suddenly it slow down. I already forgeted if it was by itself, or if I installed new demo or doing anything with clié, but I was suprised. Even I thinked that is your way to force the users of demo to buy full version. Then I buy full version and this continued be slow.
Martin

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by momonthgo)
Just want to add my 2 cents worth. I have a Clie t615 and love it. I use it mostly to keep track of the kids' schedules and addresses and games to play while I'm waiting for them.

I love the Sudoku game but as has already been mentioned it's terribly slow on OS4. While there are cheap Palm devices (~$100) out there I have a hard time justifying spending the $$$ as well as the time to get everything set up just so I can play Sudoku - especially as I don't need many other bells and whistles.

Please don't give up on us dinosaurs!!!

[Howard]

Larry is currently working on an update to try to work better on some of the older devices, hope to have something shortly after Christmas. (Obviously getting QA testing done is difficult since the last two weeks in December is when we undo the QA teams' shackles, and recapturing them sometimes takes into January ;) )

Howard.