How is the support for Playbasic for Windows 10?

[game6789]

Hi, I hope someone could tell me how well Playbasic and programs made by it work on Windows 10.

[kevin]

Hi, I hope someone could tell me how well Playbasic and programs made by it work on Windows 10.

PB doesn't include any specifically windows 10 features at all.   Which shouldn't come as any great surprise given that it was developed in the Windows Millenium / XP era. 

So a better question is how well do modern operating systems support legacy 32bit applications..   Which is kind of spotty.   

[game6789]

Thanks for the quick and info reply. Anything I make would have to be tested
on Windows 10, instead just assume everything would work. Well if selling something, one should probably test for systems it targeting anyway.

[Kman1011]

Been my experience that any os past Windows 7, Slows my programs down.
Where I was getting an fps of 40-50 with windows 7, now getting an fps of like 8-10 with windows 10
Am i missing something? An update perhaps.
Not sure of the Last version. 1.64L Maybe. I had to wipe my PC.
What version would best work with Windows 10?

[stevmjon]

hey kman, haven't seen you in a while.

as far as i know, playbasic needs 'legacy' directx , which is around direct x7 that came with windows XP, which is 'direct draw'.

playbasic is not windows specific. what differs is how your windows deals with this legacy directx. for example, when i ran windows 7, i downloaded directx 9c, and that handled the files playbasic needed. but i think directx 9c has removed legacy support?
so you need to download legacy directx from windows website, or if your using windows 10, it will automatically download the direct draw files that it needs (i think this emulates direct draw?), when you run playbasic for the first time.

the latest playbasic version is v1.65C2. this runs faster than v1.64 series. so, v1.65 series is best for windows 10.

that slower fps using os past win 7 seems like a big speedbump? i noticed a slowdown as well, but didn't realise it was that bad.

just wondering, you made a 3D game demo years ago. have you continued with 3D since? i would like to see any other demo's if you have any.
i have learnt about 3D as well, and i find it interesting.

   hope this helps, stevmjon

p.s. i hope i have my facts right. i guess kev will correct me if i have anything wrong.

[kevin]

Kman1011

Been my experience that any os past Windows 7, Slows my programs down.
Where I was getting an fps of 40-50 with windows 7, now getting an fps of like 8-10 with windows 10
Am i missing something? An update perhaps.
Not sure of the Last version. 1.64L Maybe. I had to wipe my PC.
What version would best work with Windows 10?

   Yeah it's a pain..  In terms of revisions 1.64L is ten years out of date..   Although most of the changes to PB since are all runtime related though, the back end is virtually the same in all revisions.  

  What I've noticed also is that post Windows 7,  so Win8/Win10 and probably Win11 driver support for DirectDraw is all but none existent.  There's fall back support but it's spotty as nobody cares.   I doubt that'll ever change.  

  Generally speaking most of the slow downs occur is buffer locking and async rendering functions.    One example is lots of small blits (Drawimages) on a modern machine is frame rate death..   Generally just switching to an FX surface gets rid of that.  In fact generally everything you draw today be custom.   So moving to compressed raster fonts,  as font rendering blows today.   Then doing batches of drawing behind a locked surface if you have to draw directly to the screen.

  So rendering to FX surfaces, then when complete, draw that to the screen.   Really i've been banging on about this for years..      

  I would recommending running  a V1.65 generation at all times.  But if you want to play with PB2DLL and some of those old example libraries then PBV1.64P  is generally more than fine for most stuff.



Steve,

as far as i know, playbasic needs 'legacy' directx , which is around direct x7 that came with windows XP, which is 'direct draw'.

  PB uses Direct Draw which is the classic 2D only component.   DX7 includes DD as a subset but is actually for 3D.   Anyway after DX8 it (DD) was removed in favor of 3D hardware emulating 2D.  Given the type of video hardware available at that time, it was bit of mess and soon superseded by DX9.  

  We still use those legacy DD calls from basically 20 years ago. How well the functions perform is a direct result of how much somebody cared when writing the DD drivers for a system.

the latest playbasic version is v1.65C2. this runs faster than v1.64 series. so, v1.65 series is best for windows 10.

that slower fps using os past win 7 seems like a big speedbump? i noticed a slowdown as well, but didn't realise it was that bad.

   The impact rages from minimal to shop stopper.     There's any number of old & some new examples that will under perform on newer machines that are a gazillion times faster on their PC ancestors.

    For example I had to modify your raytracer to run here.  The cost of a each buffer lock is so excessive (prolly 20->50 milliseconds), so to render the lines view was taking many seconds per frame.  Wrap some locks around that and it batches fine.

     

p.s. i hope i have my facts right. i guess kev will correct me if i have anything wrong.

   Yep good enough !

[Kman1011]

Hi all!

I'ts good to be back at it again. Programming with PB that is.

I've been out of it for the summer. Been too busy with other things

Big thanks to Steve and Kevin for the info on the newer operating systems how they affect the programs and what we can do to navigate around the issues.

I just got a great deal on a Dell Precision 7760 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz with Windows 11...yeah  :-\

Not crazy about 11 but I'll give it go.

I went to run the 500 sprites demo and got an fps of 1. So I came here to see if I could get some insight on this and lo and behold I did.

So I'm going to try your suggestions and see what happens.

I have done more 3D stuff. I have a 3D shoot up called NEXXUS but still a long way to go. i'll share demo when I can.

Thanks again

[stevmjon]

hey kman

good to see you back. i assume you are in the northern hemisphere just getting though summer? we just got though winter, so spring time and having fun planting new flowers.

new computer, awesome. how is it performing? i updated around a year ago, but was 'recommended' by the computer shop guy to not buy windows 11, so am still using win 10.
how has your experience been with windows 11? when you first ran playbasic did it automatically download the direct draw files it needed, like in windows 10?

doing more 3D projects, cool. i look forward to seeing a demo.

   keep on coding, stevmjon

[Kman1011]

Hey Stevmjon,

   Yes, Your lucky. Were just starting in with the fall cooldown.

The new laptop is great. It works seemless with AutoCad. Hardware acceleration seems to be enabled.  I looked into the Directdraw feature. There was a feature called Direct Play which is enabled(See attacted).

Not sure if this is the same thing or not but when I run any of my programs on Windows 11 I just get a blank screen. Was thinking of trying to run Windows 7 or XP off of a flash drive if that's possible.

Anyway I have a few screenshots of a game I was working on a few years back I can share still then. I hope to record some 3D stuff when I get up and running.

Till then. Talk 2U L8TR

[kevin]

 Awesome screen shots  regardless of what it's made with ..   Cool!