I have a question. A very long time ago, there were a lot of people saying that MMF2 has problems with changing frames and to prevent this problem from happening, you need a redirection frame. This is a frame that is empty but through a global value gets told where to jump next. I don't know where that came from and if it is true or whatnot, but I've used that in GunGirl2 and nobody ever had any problems with it (at least nobody reported any).
However, I'm making a new game right now and there seems to be a problem with that method now, because every time it goes to that empty frame, the game freezes for like 10 seconds. I have no idea why or how this is even possible :/
My question is: do I really need that empty redirection frame? Is it common knowledge to use stuff like that or is it ancient past or even an urban legend? If this redirection is necessary, can anyone tell my why it's locking my game for like 10 seconds?
I've never needed a redirection frame for global values. The only time I ever heard of one of those was in an article Named wrote long ago, which said that if your game was replacing backdrops with active object sprites at runtime, a redirection frame would prevent that.
The only redirection frame I've ever used is in Hasslevania 2 right now. Basically, when you leave a planet to go back to the galaxy map screen it has to make a bunch of checks for cutscenes or quest updates. Before, I had it check all this at the start of the galaxy map screen but what would happen sometimes is it'd start the map music or show the map for a spilt second and then jump to the cutscene and etc. and it looked like crap. The redirection frame is only there to check global values (or the global array) and if certain values are right it jumps the player to one of many different frames and goes from there. If everything is false it jumps to the galaxy map screen like normal.
Using the redirection frame DOES give me a noticable pause however it's very slight and much better than split second images or music that gets suddenly cut off to jump to a cutscene IMO.
Edited by Del Duio
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This is the article.
As I see it, if you're making a 'big' game, there's no harm in doing it. But if your game's smaller, then there really is no need to.
However, it shouldn't make that pause. Are you sure it's not a pause in the jump to the desired frame? If MMF is loading a hugh frame it's bound to take some time.
I'm with Eternal Man, you sure it's not the "next frame" that's taking the loading time, coz' there is absolutley no reason for it to get stuck on a blank frame for no reason. If it is the "next frame" then if you want to get rid of the loading times it could be down to either the way the level is being created (maybe your using files to build the level and fastloops to place it on the screen) maybe a music file is being loaded at the start of the level that takes time to load, or big active objects maybe? Hope you figure something out.
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Edited by Del Duio
