CPU usage

its ok that your game uses up to 99% of CPU time. Take a look at games like Quake (Win95-version), Quake II, Quake III Arena, ... (not only id-software games). The clue is that these games reduce CPU usage when they are not currently active. in this case they suspend their thread by some time (and wait for incoming messages?). Take a look at the Q2-Source somewhere at ftp.idsoftware.com. In the file named sys_win.c should be some stuff to show how to suspend a thread by some time.

[edited by - sphinx23 on February 24, 2003 9:50:29 AM]

That''s the whole point - I''m cool with games using top notch graphics running at a high CPU usage level - what I have in mind is simple Windows GUI applications with barely anything to do...

Crispy

the point is the game loop:

while (1)
{
if (PeekMessage (...))
{
TranslateMessage
DispatchMessage
}

Update_Game ();
}

this game loop, in a whatever-you-want-to-have-game gives you ALWAYS 99% of CPU-Usage, because its a never exiting loop. Most, if not all, of today''s games (and most old) use this. What you possibly want to have is:

while (GetMessage (...))
{
TranslateMessage
DispatchMessage
}

This are the main loops app''s like ''notepad'' or the most of all out there use. they are not time-consuming, since they only react if a message is posted by windows or any other application

Ok, I see - thanks for the reply. What about Windows console applications - is there a way to set the priority given to those?

Crispy

CPU usage := 100 - time_spent_in_os_idle_loop / total_time
Even a low priority thread will eat up 100% CPU time if it can.

Guys, he''s talking about (console) apps.

For a Win app, you just use GetMessage; in a console app, you need to sleep periodically (Win32 and POSIX calls of the same name).
Example:

while(1)
  check_input
  ...
  sleep(1)
 

(only does stuff once a second => low CPU usage)

HTH
Jan

500x4

Thanks Jan - didn''t think of that. Works nice now. It''s just that some computers might have such applications as Prime95 (calculates Mersenne numbers), one of those cure-for-cancer type of programs and such running in the background and I don''t want my teeny weeny little console app to eat up all of the resources it can find (especially considering it doesn''t need them at all).

Crispy

grr@500

quote:

---

Original post by Jan Wassenberg
sleep(1)
(only does stuff once a second => low CPU usage)

---

sleep takes an arguement of milliseconds (in C/C++ anyway)

for (int i = 0; i < 21; i++) {
	RequestPost();
	cout << "Error 500" << endl;
	Refresh();
}
Post();
cout << "No joke, it took this many tries!" << endl;
 

quote:

---

Original post by Thunder_Hawk
sleep takes an arguement of milliseconds (in C/C++ anyway)

---

The dos function sleep(), defined in dos.h, takes seconds, the windows version Sleep() takes milliseconds. Otherwise both work identically.

Crispy