DirectX:Direct3D:Tutorials:VBNET:DX9:Better Game Loop

From GPWiki

A better game loop

The game loop (or message loop/pump) is the loop in which you compute data.

Most game related pumps works as following:

• Initialize game
• Load media
  • Game loop: start
  • Execute AI
  • Get user input
  • Calculate physics
  • Render graphics
  • Game loop: end
• Unload media
• Terminate game

DoEvent is Evil?

Here we will be discussing some options to increase performance in the game loop. For a variety of reasons, using DoEvent's in a loop is totally unacceptable, as DoEvents does some allocations that, due to the nature of a game loop, result in allocations getting promoted and ignored by the GC.

You can observe this by running the following code:

Do
Application.DoEvents()
Loop

If you run the above code and check the system tray, you'll notice that your application is consuming memory.

To explain it in simple terms, DoEvents allocates resources which is not cleaned up by the garbage collector.

In addition to not using doevents in loops; also never enable visual styles when looping DoEvents!

Application.EnableVisualStyles()

Depending on the end-user system, enabling visual styles in DoEvent loops can cause memory loss of up to 1MB/5 seconds.

The solution: PeekMessage

What is needed is an inexpensive way of checking if there are messages waiting in the queue so we can bail out of the loop and let them be processed.

The PeekMessage function dispatches incoming sent messages, checks the thread message queue for a posted message, and retrieves the message (if any exist).

Declaring PeekMessage

PeekMessage is native Win32 API, and not an .NET function. This means that we need to define the functions location and arguments:

<System.Security.SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity()> _
   Private Declare Function PeekMessage Lib "User32.dll" Alias "PeekMessageA" ( _
      ByRef msg As MessageStruct, _
      ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, _
      ByVal messageFilterMin As Integer, _
      ByVal messageFilterMax As Integer, _
      ByVal flags As Integer _
   ) As Integer

• Warning: By adding the SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity attribute to the call, .NET will skip the security-related checks that it would make before allowing your application to make a call out to a native Windows method. This is extremely dangerous and should not be done without carefully considering the security ramifications of making the call. In these cases, you should make sure you declare the function as private.

We also need to create the structure MessageStruct, which is called as the argument "msg" in the function. The structure code is as following:

<StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)> _
   Public Structure MessageStruct
      Public HWnd As IntPtr
      Public Msg As Message
      Public WParam As IntPtr
      Public LParam As IntPtr
      Public Time As Integer
      Public P As System.Drawing.Point
    End Structure

Implementing PeekMessage

Now that we have set up our definition and structure we can begin using it.

First up we will create a function that returns true if messages are waiting, or false if not.

Protected Function _AppIsIdle() As Boolean
      Dim msg As MessageStruct
 
      Return (PeekMessage(msg, IntPtr.Zero, 0, 0, 0) = 0)
    End Function

Using the function: _AppIsIdle

Above we created a function to determine if messages are waiting. To use it, we create a simple sub that should loop a call to your game loop.

Protected Sub OnApplicationIdle(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
      Do While _AppIsIdle()
         '<-- call game loop from here - such as Private Sub Render() from the previous tutorials
      Loop
   End Sub

Handle OnApplicationIdle

We are almost done now. All that's left to do is to make your application to call "OnApplicationIdle", preferably in the sub main before executing the form.

dim app as new form1
   AddHandler System.Windows.Forms.Application.Idle, AddressOf app.OnApplicationIdle

This should make sure that OnApplicationIdle is called when all messages have been dealt with.

Using resources right

Having a good game loop is not just about utilizing the system resources to the max. In fact, sometimes this can be a real bother for the end-user.

If your application is running in full-screen, and the user Alt-Tabs to check an IM, or in windowed mode if the user decides to pause and check mail or something - having the application stuck in the game loop can be dead waste of valuable CPU.

One way to minimize dead CPU usage is to have your application know if it currently has focus. If now, we can rather safely assume that resources should be diverted from executing your application to free processing power for use by the overall system.

'We aren't the active window, so relax a bit and free up the CPU
   If Not ActiveForm Is Me Then
      Thread.Sleep(200)
   End If

Having the above code in your game loop can reduce the CPU usage from >90% to almost null, which you can imagine boost system performance a lot when your application is minimized.

What did we learn?

Read more Drunken Hyena The Code Project MSDN: PeekMessage

• Hopefully how to create a descent message pump
• Suitable measures to ensure speed and responsiveness from our application in relation with the end-user system
• When we should go easy with system resources