Question about Time

Antman · Post by **Antman** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 3:17 am

How come if you are standing the spot doing nothing, the ingame timer increases at about 2 sixths of a second, but when you hold down a turning key and continuously spin, the timer starts going by about 8 sixths of a second for the same time interval.
I made two games of CSB that were almost identical except one had the boots of speed and the other didn't, and even though one was obviously way faster than the other, the times were still similar, about 12 and a half minutes. It seems that going faster doesn't really help because time speeds up to match you!

rain` · Post by **rain`** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 4:13 am

you gotta really hammer down on the movement when you have boots of speed to get faster. the bonus is that you can move nearly as fast as you want, vs without boots where you have a delay of 1/6th of a second (or so i believe)

anotherwords you can move 140598345 squares in one second with speed boots, but only 6 without, but you have to be able to menuever that fast or it wont help.

I just tested it and for 220 moves (strait hallway, no turns) it took 180 'time' with speed boots and over 400 without. So it does make a difference =]

Antman · Post by **Antman** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 4:33 am

Hmmm, you must be right, but i still think the timer is uneven sometimes. CSB under 10 minutes is definetly still on the cards though, i was able to get to the DDD with all three keys in about 5 minutes 10 seconds but then i fell down a pit

, and i can bypass the first blackflame at Dain, which saves alot of times. As for moving with boots, i do move way way faster with the boots than without the boots. And how did you make a corridor 220 squares long?

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 4:58 am

I cannot believe that you can move more than once per 'tick' of
the clock. and

you can move 140598345 squares in one second with speed boots

certainly seems impossible. Another problem taht can arise is that the keyboard
repeat rate can be set too low. I discovered this while trying to 'step' through
movie frames rapidly.

At any rate, if you move more than once per 'tick' of the clock then your game
cannot be played back and I need to fix that.

Notice, too, that the 'Extra Ticks' is turned on by default. You might want to
turn that off for your record-breaking attempts. See Technical Documentation/
Miscellaneous/ Game Clock at http://dmweb.free.fr for some discussion.

rain` · Post by **rain`** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 5:35 am

yeah its not 220 its 180, i miscalculated. I just made a dungeon with 6 long hallways stretching from top to bottom and put teleporters from the bottom to the top in the next column, held down forward, and watched time/moves go up. You are correct, with speed boots it matches 1 move per 1 tick while without speed boots it matches about 1 move per 2 to 2.5 ticks. So speed boots simply make you move a little more then twice as fast. thats my observations though by running down a 180 room strait corridor =]

Antman · Post by **Antman** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 5:53 am

I see now, thanks. I am definetly moving faster than 6 moves per seconds, that is easily done by just holding down the turn key, but instead of the game not being able to be played back, the timer just speeds itself up to match the rate at which you are moving, so when you play back, it look slower than you were actually and is slower (without extra ticks), thats what i think is happening anyway. So if it could be increased to 10 or 20 per second it might work better..?

Anyway, just made a record of 10 minutes 37 seconds! It was near perfect except a demon near the end stuffed me up a bit, and a few minor things. So under 10 minutes might be possible, but definetly would be if the timer thing could handle more than 6 moves per second.

Is extra ticks supposed to be turn off when we start playing? I always thought it was a playback thing.
Paul, do want me to send this latest record? So others can watch it, and i have no web space.

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 11:02 am

Hey you guys! It would be interesting if you could test the speed boots movement vs. without with a full laden hero (yellow load and red load...) if you like, would be cool
thanks in advance

Antman · Post by **Antman** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 11:28 am

I think there is normal load, yellow, red, and super red. I think the boots of speed with red load is about the same as normal with out the boots.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 12:09 pm

I thought boots of speed stopped working when a character is overloaded?

Antman · Post by **Antman** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 12:41 pm

No, but the weight does still have an effect. The order of speeds when overloaded with or without the boots is something like :
Grey Boots
Yellow Boots
Grey No boots
Red Boots/Yellow No boots (they are the same speed)
Super Red Boots
Red No Boots
Super red No Boots
I think thats the order...but there might be another weight level past Super Red which is even slower. There is also the third factor of injuries, which makes you even slower, just when the head and feet are injured though, i think.

Post by **Gambit37** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 12:53 pm

From Doug Bell:

In DM, you can only move every other frame (unless you have speed boots on the entire party).

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 1:07 pm

The boots of speed are awesome. Just their protection isn´t that well (16/2) and you have to have all party members equipped...

does dexterity influence the movement with boots of speed?

i remembered someone say it sets dexterity to 250 or sth...
or: with other words does it help daroou with slow dex of "30" the same as it helps wuuf with dex like "60" ?

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 3:32 pm

Doug Bell uses the word 'Frame'. In the Atari the hardware 'Frame Rate'
was the same as your power-line rate....50 or 60 Hertz. He is referring to
the software Frame Rate....which I have always called a 'Tick of the Clock'.

Someone wants more 'ticks per second'. But the number of 'Ticks per second'
is only a definition that we have adopted. The player can move once per
Tick. And the records are defined by the number of Ticks. We divide by
6 to convert to approximate seconds which is more intuitive. You can speed
up the number of 'Ticks per Second' using the 'Speed' menu. But that only
makes things harder, not easier. You can still only move once per 'Tick' and
the Ticks are coming faster.

All of this takes a bit of thought....sort of like the international date line. Is
it yesterday or tomorrow?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 5:32 pm

It's always thursday when you least expect it

I think the convention of 6 ticks = 1 secnd and play limited to normal speed seems fine for the trials

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:27 am

ok, so the "NORMAL" CSBwin game speed is an equivalent of original DM/CSB game speed in Europe played on AtariST, while the "FAST" CSBwin game speed is an equivalent of original DM/CSB game speed in USA played on AtariST?

In other words: when I want to play a game on CSBwin EXACTLY in the same speed that the original game was played in USA (60 Hz system) AtariST in 1987 then I should choose "FAST" in CSBwin menu? Or should I turn off an "EXTRA TICK" option?

When I start CSBwin, the speed is always set to "NORMAL" at the beginning, wchich means original DM/CSB speed in Europe (50Hz system)?

Paul Stevens wrote ( http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Tec ... me%20clock ):

The 'Fast' setting is at 5.45 'ticks' per second, the speed that the old Atari tried to maintain.

so, choosing the FAST setting in the menu with EXTRA TICK=ON means exactly original USA game speed?

Suule · Post by **Suule** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 9:02 am

So the desired speed was 6 ticks per second? (1/6th of a second) like I've been observing in DM2?

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:23 pm

To be quite precise......I think the Atari
set the 'Tick Flag' every 11 vertical
retraces. So the 'ticks' should be 11/50 second
in Europe and 11/60 in USA. Of course
I have only the USA version of CSB, not
DM and not Europe version.

Very importantly......I think the Atari did not
always manage to keep up with this speed.
The Atari was very slow compared to any sort
of Pentium. The thing ran at 8 MHz and required
6 cycles or so to do anything. So, even though
the refresh counter (interrupt driven) set the 'Add a
Tick now Flag' every 11 refreshes, the main code
would often miss one and therefore run slower.

CSBwin on a Pentium should never miss a Tick.
Except in ConfluxIII where slowr machines might
spend a LOT of time in some complex DSA.

Moreover, I am not 100 percent certain about
any of this. I might bet odds about 10 to 1
that it is 'substantially' correct.