Limit Speed Of Gameplay On Different Computers

Question

I'm creating a 2D game using OpenGL and C++.

I want it so that the game runs at the same speed on different computers, At the moment my game runs faster on my desktop than my laptop (i.e. my player moves faster on my desktop)

I was told about QueryPerformanceCounter() but I don't know how to use this.

how do I use that or is there a better/easier way?

My Display function

void display()                                  
{
static long timestamp = clock();
// First frame will have zero delta, but this is just an example.
float delta = (float)(clock() - timestamp) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;

glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);

glLoadIdentity();

createBackground();

int curSpeed = (player.getVelocity()/player.getMaxSpeed())*100;

glColor3f(1.0,0.0,0.0);
glRasterPos2i(-screenWidth+20,screenHeight-50);
glPrint("Speed: %i",curSpeed);

glRasterPos2i(screenWidth-200,screenHeight-50);
glPrint("Lives: %i",lives);

glRasterPos2i(screenWidth-800,screenHeight-50);
glPrint("Heading: %f",player.getHeading());

for(int i = 0;i<90;i++){
    if (numBullets[i].fireStatus == true){
        numBullets[i].updatePosition(player);
        if (numBullets[i].getXPos() > screenWidth || numBullets[i].getXPos() < -screenWidth || numBullets[i].getYPos() > screenHeight || numBullets[i].getYPos() < -screenHeight ){
            numBullets[i].fireStatus = false;
            numBullets[i].reset(player);
            numBullets[i].~Bullet();
        }
    }
}

player.updatePosition(playerTex,delta);

glFlush();

timestamp = clock();

}

My Update positiom method

void Player::updatePosition(GLuint playerTex, float factor){
//draw triangle
glPushMatrix();

glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);    
glEnable(GL_BLEND);
glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA);
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, playerTex);
glTexEnvf(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_REPLACE);

glTranslatef(factor*XPos, factor*YPos, 0.0);
glRotatef(heading, 0,0,1);
glColor3f(1.0,0.0,0.0);
    glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
        glTexCoord2f(0.0, 1.0); glVertex2f(-40,40);
        glTexCoord2f(0.0, 0.0); glVertex2f(-40,-40);
        glTexCoord2f(1.0, 0.0); glVertex2f(40,-40);
        glTexCoord2f(1.0, 1.0); glVertex2f(40,40);
    glEnd();

glDisable(GL_BLEND);
glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);
glPopMatrix();

XPos += speed*cos((90+heading)*(PI/180.0f));
YPos += speed*sin((90+heading)*(PI/180.0f));
}

Answer 1

Most games use a frame time-scaling factor. Essentially, you find the length of the frame your physics and movement are set at and divide it between the actual length of the frame the game is running at (1/fps). This produces a scalar factor which you can multiply by changes in movement to keep all movements consistent while maintaining the benefits from increasing the FPS.

A good example is here.

Answer 2

As a rule, you want to do all gameplay calculations based on a time delta, i.e. the amount of time that has passed since the last frame. This will standardize speed on all machines. Unless you want extreme precision, you can use clock() (from <ctime>) to get the current timestamp.

Example:

void main_loop() {
   static long timestamp = clock();
   // First frame will have zero delta, but this is just an example.
   float delta = (float)(clock() - timestamp) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;

   calculate_physics(delta);
   render();

   timestamp = clock();
}

void calculate_physics(float delta) {
   // Calculate expected displacement per second.
   applyDisplacement(displacement * delta);
}

void render() {
   // Do rendering.
}

EDIT: If you want higher precision, you should use your OS timer features. On Windows, the most precise method is using QueryPerformanceCounter(). Example

#include <windows.h>

void main_loop(double delta) {
  // ...
}

int main() {
  LARGE_INTEGER freq, last, current;
  double delta;
  QueryPerformanceFrequency(&freq);

  QueryPerformanceCounter(&last);
  while (1) {
    QueryPerformanceCounter(&current);
    delta = (double)(current.QuadPart - last.QuadPart) / (double)freq.QuadPart;

    main_loop(delta);

    last = current;
  }
}

Answer 3

The best solution to your problem is to only update the positions of your objects once every 10 ms (or something similar) but render the objects as often as possible. This is called "fixed time step" as you only update the game state at fixed intervals. This requires you to decouple the rendering code from the update code (which is a good idea anyway).

Basically (in psudoe code) what you would do is something like:

accumulatedTimeSinceLastUpdate = 0;
while(gameIsRunning)
{
  accumulatedTimeSinceLastUpdate += timeSinceLastFrame();
  while(accumulatedTimeSinceLastUpdate >= 10) // or another value
  {
    updatePositions();
    accumulatedTimeSinceLastUpdate -= 10;
  }
  display();
}

This means that if your computer is running super-duper fast display() will be called a lot of times and every now and then updatePositions(). If your computer is ultra slow updatePositions may be called several times for each time display() is called.

Here's another good read (in addition to Mason Blier's):

• http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep/