Spring RTS Engine

We've got game saving, LUA, and replay functionality now. By some combination of this, could we set up a way of recording min/max/average FPS while the game runs through a set of scripted events of some kind, in order to determine system requirements? AFAIK Spring still doesn't even have a set of minimum/recommended sys req's... It would also be useful for allowing us to say, for sure, "You need an upgrade", or "You need a new computer," or "You should be fine if you run the game with these settings."

fraps does it with no help from spring......

caydr only you care about computer strength and spring FPS.

What about jj?

for sure we need a benchmark, best would be to run it everytime the lobby starts. if you join a game that is too much for your hardware (eg mapsize and player-count) it should give you a warning. thats the only way to prevent 2 fps games ond DS_duo and all other big maps.

KDR_11k wrote:What about jj?

Not very accurate (or safe); take a look at http://www.jobjol.com/ and sort by score.... look who's top...

jackalope wrote:caydr only you care about computer strength and spring FPS.

The reason I want this feature is so I'll be able to tell people if they can play Spring or not... nothing wrong with that.

Take the example of a recent posting in General Discussion. A lengthy discussion ensued with people left and right telling this guy what sort of upgrade he needs, when none of us could really say for certain what even the minimum system requirements for a playable experience are.

The reason FRAPS is unsuitable is because:
A) it's not as user friendly as a button that says "benchmark"
B) there's no pre-defined test that everyone can run to see how their systems hold up - some arbitrary FPS number doesn't tell you anything - what if they were just looking at the sky or were zoomed in really close?
C) frankly... benchmarking is great for showing off. People like to do it so they can see visible results of their hard-earned cash, and many more people know what a benchmark is than what "FPS" stands for.
D) A "SpringMark" (tm) utility would be a great new feature for the engine as a whole. Benchmarking utilities are generally not free and don't often give you an accurate indicator of real-world gaming performance. This would be the first free, open-source benchmarking program for real-world gameplay I know of... I'm sure such a thing already exists, but it's probably not very common.

Easy to use, good for the community, and good for Spring as a whole, though what probably wouldn't be nearly as big a project as doing something like redesigning the netcode, but still with lots of benefits.

I think this would be a neat feature. +1

Perhaps it could run through a standardized replay and give the average FPS?

replays dont give framespersecond. If your laga nd it slows down that slowed down game is played back at fullspeed.

Good call. Especially with mods getting more lua-intensive and using more extreme scripting (lots of polling going on). Hell, my computer starts to lag when I play the KP singleplayer modes since there are so many Bits driving around.