Timeline Animations, FPS, and Speed

[DarkFantasy]

Problem:
Small changes with FPS have a big impact on the speed of a particular animation. This is a problem when building scenes as they will play on different machines differently rather than the way they were intended. What I would like to do is include a slider that allows the user to modify the speed of the animation.

For example:
- If I have a new high end machine and tune the animation speed to my machine it will be way too slow on lower end machines
- If I account for the lower end machines and tune the speed up then it is too fast on higher end machines

Points to Consider
- In most cases there are multiple animations in a single scene, sometimes on multiple "people"
- In many cases there are multiple animations grouped together on multiple people (For example Male has 2 animations Hard, and Slow; Female has 5 animations that are randomly run)
- Given the points above it is impractical to modify the "Local Speed" - In complex scenes the number of animations grows dramatically based on the above 2 points
- "Global Speed" in Timeline is not exposed to the triggers as an option to change (or am I missing something?)
- Many animations are "synced" so if the speed changes for one person, it must change by the same amount for the other person

Desired end result
- Optimally I would like to be able to have a slider that modifies either the "Global Speed" or if that is not possible modifies the currently playing animations "Local Speed"
- A second thought would be to have two buttons that modify the local or global speed on both "People" - one button increases by .1 and one decreases by .1

Questions:
- I don't see "Global Speed" as an option in the triggers. Is there any way to allow the user to modify it using a button?
- Without creating a nightmare of buttons that I need to hide/expose depending upon the animation being played (even worse if the animation has several random animations that are being called) is there any way to accomplish this?
- I suppose I should also ask AcidBubbles but is there an option I am missing to "normalize" the speed so it plays against the same baseline time rather than a speed of "1" being equivilent to .5 on a lower machine and 1.5 on a higher machine?

 

[MacGruber]

Animations play with the same speed on every machine, no matter the frame rate. If you experience slow downs, it is likely that your machine can't keep up with physics updates and is skipping physics updates, causing physics to run slower. Make sure your physics rate and cap are setup correctly. Physics cap is the maximum number of physics updates per frame. So if your game runs at 30fps on a slow machine, but you set physics rate to 72Hz (the default) there will be some frames where your machine has to do usually 2 and sometimes 3 physics updates per frame to keep up, so your physics cap should be set to 3.

 

[DarkFantasy]

Animations play with the same speed on every machine, no matter the frame rate. If you experience slow downs, it is likely that your machine can't keep up with physics updates and is skipping physics updates, causing physics to run slower. Make sure your physics rate and cap are setup correctly. Physics cap is the maximum number of physics updates per frame. So if your game runs at 30fps on a slow machine, but you set physics rate to 72Hz (the default) there will be some frames where your machine has to do usually 2 and sometimes 3 physics updates per frame to keep up, so your physics cap should be set to 3.

Interesting, I had no idea! Thank you MacGruber! I noticed this with some of my scenes and I noticed this with some of the other scenes I downloaded when I rebuilt my machine a few months ago. I have been adjusting the absurd speed they are presenting in through the Timeline speed settings.

 

[MacGruber]

Yeah, physics settings have to be right on the machine used to build the scene AND on the machine used to play the scene.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Hey @DarkFantasy ! I recently investigated in more details how speed works in VaM, and @MacGruber is right, here are a little bit more details.

So physics works by running on a "fixed time", which means a "physics frame" has to take a very specific amount of time. That means that unless you have the ability to run your graphics and every physics frame under the configured settings, time will be almost correct; but if the physics frame finishes a little bit late, the "time" will change so physics can always continue to run in a stable way.

I added in Timeline 5 (unreleased) the ability to sync up to "real time" instead of "game time", which means you can better track music for example. I'd say generally you'll get more reliable physics simulation with game time, but for the cases where real time matters, that'll be the way to go. If I have time (probably not at this rate) I'll try to also make an option to sync up to "audio time", which should be the same as "real time" except it'll take into account compression and loading delays.

Nothing's ever simple in game dev world

 

[keycode]

Hey @DarkFantasy ! I recently investigated in more details how speed works in VaM, and @MacGruber is right, here are [ ... omissis ] and loading delays.

Nothing's ever simple in game dev world

even for us, simple modest users, not so simple to fight with transitions issues, rebel body collisions when we get things paywalled from patreon bazar... etc. From my comfort passive point of view I know it's easy to be misunderstood... and easy to look polemic... not so tragic, anyway as some horror loops. What I like even less is my banal, naif impression that there is no real knowledge sinergy among timeline patreon creators ( so jealous of their "looping" $$ obvious motivations) ... some of the most pledged, they were even limiting themselves in using (your timeline) a solution probably too much techn. advanced for their looped poor skills. There are still hopes of course. Some vam creators ( one very new arrived some few weeks ago to the bazar, from far east ...the other 2 who knows from where they are, they are making excellent scenes with your script. The rest ... is like a fake burning sunset of an old Hollywood movie, without glory or merit, always the same (shit)... but lot of "talk and badge" ... (...)

 

[keycode]

In the end what I'm sure of.. that with lot of evidence, till now at least... trash mocaps loops "will never kill our timeline-star" [cit. paraphrase of famous song]