TextField counting as extra draw call and slow downs

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TextField counting as extra draw call and slow downs

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Started 4 years ago by Lorenzo Nuvoletta
Latest reply from Josh Tynjala

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Lorenzo Nuvoletta

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Lorenzo Nuvoletta

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I have been working hard to keep the draw call number has low as possible, although I have noticed that creating a hud with a lot of text makes the draw call spike, exactly every text added, adds 2 draw calls (the text itself and the ui that has to pick up from last z sort).

This means that if you have a XP bar, with A level number, gold and some other type of currency, in the hud, you are already at 10 draw calls. With no TextFields, its only 1 draw call.

Is there anyway around this besides not using a TextField?

Now this is especially a problem on iPad3, since I noticed that at around 30 drawCalls the framerate start dropping below 20 fps (assuming that there is only 1 2048x2048 texture in memory and some TextFields floating around).

Posted 4 years ago #
tsangwailam

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tsangwailam

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Use bitmap font for the text will dramatically increase performance.

Posted 4 years ago #
Lorenzo Nuvoletta

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Lorenzo Nuvoletta

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Yes, I am talking about TextFields with BitmapFont.
I understand why they increase the draw calls, I was simply wondering if there is a way to still use BitmapFont without incurring in the extra draw call cost.

Posted 4 years ago #
tsangwailam

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tsangwailam

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Since textfield have their own quad batch. So, it increase the drawcall. You may refer to this thread for the details.

http://forum.starling-framework.org/topic/bitmap-font-draw-calls-state-change#post-9451

Posted 4 years ago #
Al_Birdie

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Al_Birdie

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30 draw calls on an iPad3 and fps drop below 20fps? That doesn't seem right.
I'm not sure what exactly it is you're doing, but I reckon you're doing something terribly wrong. Our application easily handles over 200 draw calls at about 40fps on the iPad3.

Posted 4 years ago #
Jeff

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Jeff

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wondering if there is a way to still use BitmapFont without incurring in the extra draw call cost

Yes, you can use BitmapFont.createSprite directly to create a non QuadBatch backed Sprite of a sequence of characters. Depending upon how long your text sequences are or how many of them you have you might see a different performance profile when not using QuadBatch-ed text.

EDIT: If using Starling 1.4+ use Daniel's batchable property suggestion below on TextField instead. This has the added benefit of using a QuadBatch whether or not the QuadBatches will themselves be further batched together if drawing state allows it.

Posted 4 years ago #
Daniel

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Daniel

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Actually, Starling 1.4 brought a small new feature with it -- I think I didn't mention it before.

http://doc.starling-framework.org/core/starling/text/TextField.html#batchable

Set "textField.batchable = true;", and the TextField will be batched if possible. Very useful for short texts.

The same property was added to the "QuadBatch" class, too.

Posted 4 years ago #
Lorenzo Nuvoletta

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Lorenzo Nuvoletta

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Daniel, how exactly works batchable when the BitmapFont is stored in another separate texture, my understanding is that it would call a separate drawCall anyway.

If that is the case, it means I shouldn't be using tools to automate font creation, but store the texture of the font directly inside the big UI texture.

Is there a documented way to go this route, or at least is this what people usually do to save the extra draw call?

@Al_Birdie: Not sure what I am doing wrong, although tried on Android devices it all works fine. I am starting to think that tinting and alpha affect heavily iOS way more than Android.

Posted 4 years ago #
Jeff

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Jeff

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Daniel, how exactly works batchable when the BitmapFont is stored in another separate texture, my understanding is that it would call a separate drawCall anyway.

Correct. But it is pretty straightforward to just include your .png of your BitmapFont into a shared TextureAtlas to avoid this.

When you make your BitmapFont instance you just need to pass a texture from your TextureAtlas instead of making one from a standalone .png. The same .xml should work fine...

Posted 4 years ago #
AngryVix

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AngryVix

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Danieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel!!!! why didn't you mention this "small new feature" before?!?!?! i must have been one of the major Starling 1.4 announcements!

I read this post and in less than 10 minutes i cut my draw calls from 9 to 5, almost 50% improvement! i used it in all my HUD textfields which have between 2 and 10 characters and it worked like a charm!

I'm going to test performance improvements now!
Thanks a lot for the info!

Posted 4 years ago #
Francesco

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Francesco

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I'm with Jeff here, I just went through a round of optimization of my HUD and used bitmap text for all the Textfields, making sure the bitmap font is included in the same texture atlas as everything else. This effectively eliminated any exra calls due to TextField.

Good to know there's a 'batchable' property for TextFields now, I will try it in the future!

Posted 4 years ago #
Daniel

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Daniel

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Danieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel!!!! why didn't you mention this "small new feature" before?!?!?! i must have been one of the major Starling 1.4 announcements!

Ehm .... oooops!

Yeah, I actually totally forgot about that. Must have overlooked it when going through the long changelog to see what's worth mentioning!

In any case, I'm glad it helps!

Posted 4 years ago #
Lorenzo Nuvoletta

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Lorenzo Nuvoletta

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@Al_Birdie: I think I found the reason for the slow FPS ( http://forum.starling-framework.org/topic/setting-the-root-alpha-to-0999?replies=10#post-45435 )

Posted 4 years ago #
Al_Birdie

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Al_Birdie

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Glad you figured it out! 30 draw calls just didn't seem right. Even my oldest device I'm testing on (iPhone 3GS can do those at 60fps). But draw calls by themselves aren't necessarily the best performance metric, since they don't tell what is going on in the background.

@Daniel, I'm wondering how that new "batchable" property relates to "useSeparateBatch" in Feathers.
I've got an ItemRenderer that displays 10 (Bitmap) Feathers.TextFields. Each field can and will get updated very frequently (this is a finance app that displays real time data), which is why I'm using "useSeparateBatch" on those TextFields in order to prevent them being batched which would require an update of the whole batch even if only one single TextField needed an update.
I reckon that new "batchable" (could Safari please stop correcting this to catchable? Thanks!) thing would do pretty much the same as setting "useSeparateBatch" to false, wouldn't it?

Posted 4 years ago #
henke37

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henke37

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There is always the option to just use a normal vector TextField. They might be a little more expensive to draw, but they also support dirty regions.

Posted 4 years ago #
Josh Tynjala

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Josh Tynjala

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I reckon that new "batchable" thing would do pretty much the same as setting "useSeparateBatch" to false, wouldn't it?

Yes, they're similar. In Feathers, at least currently, when useSeparateBatch is false, it will add separate images as children so that they will be added to the main batching. If it's true, then the images are added to a QuadBatch.

I plan to investigate switching over to always using a QuadBatch and simply toggling batchable (Feathers#629). However, I'm not sure if that will affect performance or not.

Posted 4 years ago #

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TextField counting as extra draw call and slow downs

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