Bare Bones Player Windows and Throttled Frame Rates

Feature Requests Studio Features
#1

Time after time am I testing my game and need to run a test for some multiplayer related features. I click start server with 2 clients, and wait for 3 windows to show up, and proceed to resize every one of them so I can get a good view of my server output and both clients game windows. Now comes the fun part of testing what needs to be tested, and tabbing between both game clients to view said test at a decent frame rate.

So here I am now, my friends annoyed I keep asking them to help test, and myself annoyed I keep having to resize windows and dance my fingers around just to test my game. Time for a feature request.

  • Add a setting in studio that allows player clients to be a “bare bones” version of the studio window. Having just the game window visible by default (assuming the setting is true) would make managing tests with multiple client far easier, and viewing multiple clients at a reasonable resolution wouldn’t require a bunch of setup for every test. Shout out to my layout saving request from well over year ago.

  • Add a setting in studio that allows lets you turn off frame rate throttling, or set your own limit for throttling. When it comes to things like animations, physics simulations, bullets, etcetera, I’ve had a hell of a time testing by myself because the client I’m not focused on has an abominable frame rate. Making sure all aspects of things are working as desired (especially when they’re related to frame rate) almost requires having a friend to test or having another computer to properly test with, other wise it feels like I’m guessing it works fine. I’m sure everybody at some point or another has had this grievance.

So there are my requests, easy enough to explain and complain about (as shown above), but probably a hell of a lot harder to bring into fruition.

15 Likes
#2

I’d rather Player1, Player2, Player3, etc… (test client windows) remember where they were positioned and what their layouts where, individually.

That way I set it up once and it’s always the same unless I easily change it.

1 Like
#3

Certainly agree, I always dread testing because it takes so long to set up.

4 Likes
#4

“Whoops, mispelt one thing, redo”

#5

Sometimes one of the client windows don’t load properly and where the game window should be it is completely grey so I have to close it and start a new client.

1 Like
#6

While I think having a framerate throttle implemented would be great, I just found a workaround for this last night. Dxtory trial version has a framerate limiter that allows you to simulate applications at a lower framerate. This is really useful when you have a high-end PC and you’re working on something that should be happening at a constant rate regardless of framerate.
dxtory.png.

You can download Dxtory here: ExKode | Dxtory - Downloads
(Wasn’t sure if posting an offsite link is against the rules or not, so I spoiler’d)

#7

Posting offsite links it okay unless it’s inappropriate, but you can use your own discretion to determine whether or not something should not be posted.

#8

2 Likes
#9

Do we have a Trello card for a keyboard shortcut to turn all Studio UI off at once and then turn the UI back to the state it was before being disabled, or something similar?

#10

Not that I’m aware of. If it’s something you’d like, make a new topic for it and let me know what UI parts you’d like to turn off and why. Any explanation you give helps give your idea a better chance!

Edit: I stand corrected. There’s a client one for this already: Trello

Keyboard shortcut to toggle Studio UI visibility
#11

That’s not the same. That’s for turning off the leaderboard/topbar/developer UI in-game so you can get scenic screenshots, and it’s also on-hold because the current idea of implementing it could be used to gain an unfair advantage in some games (e.g. turning off UI when you’re blinded by a flashbang). I made a feature request specifically for disabling Studio UI here if you want to take a look at it.