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[William Broom]

Can anybody help me with this problem? It's pretty weird. I'm making this game in Game Maker and it lags. It gets around 20-22 fps. But the weird thing is, it only does this when the window is completely visible. If any other windows are overlapping it, even by the tiniest margin, then it shoots up to 30 fps. Then when I click back on the game window, the overlapping window gets pushed behind it and the framerate goes down again. I found a way around it by moving the game's debug window over the game window - because the debug window doesn't fall behind when it loses focus, I can play the game at 30 fps and it works perfectly. But this isn't going to be an option when I want to make it into a standalone executable.

Now, I don't much about what things slow a game down, but I don't think my game is highly system intensive. There are no flashy particles, high numbers of collisions etc, and each level is only a single screen. The framerate doesn't seem to be affected at all by the amount of objects in the level. And I figure if I'd accidentally written some kind of noobish laggy code, the game would freeze rather than just slowing down.

Has anybody encountered this problem before, or knows of some secret programmer's secrets that makes sense of it?

[ChevyRay]

Are you using...

surfaces,
polygon/circle drawing functions, or
any sort of particle system?

PM me an EXE and I'll tell you if it runs likewise on my computer. It's hard to say what it could be without knowing what you've got happening, but I find it very strange that it stops doing it when a window is overlapping.

You should run your games at with the room speed at 60 fps anyways, looks better

[moi]

Strange bug, it could be caused by a problem in the input handling routine, as input is probably being disabled when you're game isn't in focus.

[Hideous]

But it doesn't lag when the debug window is over, and then he can still control his game.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Try turning off vertical synchronization.

[Core Xii]

Sounds like something's wrong with a dirty-rectangle drawing system. I don't really know how GM does this stuff but what I mean by that is I'm assuming GM uses a dirty rectangle screen update system, where it only uploads those regions of the screen into video memory that changed in the last frame.

But when you have overlapping windows, the operating system tells the application that it needs to re-draw its screen, because otherwise the other window would leave a "ghost" image on the app's screen.

So my guess is this system is somehow buggy in GM, whether you triggered it or not by doing something, and is causing this problem.

Of course, this doesn't actually help you in any way since it's a theory of the problem and not a solution.

[medieval]

It might be because your game processing priority is set to high.

Go to Global game settings > Other

Then check game processing priority. Set it to normal if it's not.

[William Broom]

Well, I did a little bit more testing and it does seem to be dependent on screen activity to a certain extent. If I take out everything but the player and some platforms, for example, it runs smoothly no matter what. If I put in loads of basic enemies, then the 'uncovered' framerate can go down to 15 fps or so, but the 'covered' framerate stays firmly at 30 fps. Whomp-type enemies (that are constantly checking for the player to move underneath them) affect the framerate more. But it's still kind of weird because I would have thought that if one whomp reduces the framerate by 8 fps, then two whomps would reduce it by 16. But instead, I can put in about ten of them and only have the framerate drop by 9 or so. Is this normal?

It might be because your game processing priority is set to high.

Go to Global game settings > Other

Then check game processing priority. Set it to normal if it's not.

Nah, it was already on normal. Thanks anyway.

Are you using...

surfaces,
polygon/circle drawing functions, or
any sort of particle system?

Not sure what a surface is but I don't think I'm using it. No polygons or particles.

PM me an EXE and I'll tell you if it runs likewise on my computer. It's hard to say what it could be without knowing what you've got happening, but I find it very strange that it stops doing it when a window is overlapping.

Thanks, I'll do that. If you want to see the difference between covered and uncovered, you can cover the window with task manager, since that's another window that doesn't fall behind automatically.