Concerning fast rewind + fast forward

[Forestidia86]

In the options menu it says that fast rewind is 1 sec and fast frameskip forward is 10 sec but if I do one fast forward then I can undo that with about 4 fast rewinds, which doesn't seem to fit the time description. (Do I have a thinking error here?)

I noticed in German these keys don't seem to have a description in the options menu but just name the function(?).

I have further the feeling that there are sometimes odd (bigger) jumps with fast rewind but that's hard to assess since it makes jumps by design anyways there.

[Simon]

I noticed in German these keys don't seem to have a description in the options menu but just name the function(?).

Fixed for next version: All English descriptions have German translations. When I wrote the options menu for D Lix in late 2015, I was too lazy to translate all the descripionts, causing the game to display a fallback string.

In the options menu it says that fast rewind is 1 sec and fast frameskip forward is 10 sec but if I do one fast forward then I can undo that with about 4 fast rewinds, which doesn't seem to fit the time description. (Do I have a thinking error here?)

I have further the feeling that there are sometimes odd (bigger) jumps with fast rewind but that's hard to assess since it makes jumps by design anyways there.

The backwards timeskip is only 15 physics updates (= 1 second at normal speed) when your game runs at 60 frames per second. To compensate for the expensive recalculations, at lower framerates, I increase the number of rewound physics updates per skip. I haven't documented that anywhere.

From your recent screen recordings, it looks like your machine runs Lix at 20 fps by default? That's very low, sadly, even though you still get reasonable physics.

After you know this explanation now, do you consider it a bug or a feature to increase the rewound physics updates per skip at low fps? I like how it goes faster the longer you hold the hotkey, but it sure is confusing without explantion.

-- Simon

[Forestidia86]

From your recent screen recordings, it looks like your machine runs Lix at 20 fps by default? That's very low, sadly, even though you still get reasonable physics.

That's really level dependant:
Rule of thumb: big levels 12 fps, middle sized levels around 20 fps, really small levels 30 fps
Maybe that was another reason why I liked the Minatures since I had acceptable framerates. ("Labyrinth of Persia" is funnily a 12 fps level - that is the true Prince of Persia experience.) But fortunately there is a possibility to let the game play faster with forward button and all seems functionable nevertheless.
But you don't need to care about it since I know I mainly use a hopelessly outdated laptop (especially what concerns the grapics card). I'm glad it works at all. There are other retro styled games where it doesn't.
But it's true I tried to reproduce the oddities I thought I enountered elsewhere in the "Canadian Glade" level again, which has about 20 fps.

After you know this explanation now, do you consider it a bug or a feature to increase the rewound physics updates per skip at low fps? I like how it goes faster the longer you hold the hotkey, but it sure is confusing without explantion.

Hm. I actually liked that you only have to press 4 instead of 10 times to undo one fast skip since everything is a bit slower for me. And now I can pinpoint the odd seeming jumps so I can deal with it better.
When I just click the normal (framestepping) rewind the framerate drops further down so I don't like to do that so much.

[Forestidia86]

Could it be that it accelerates at some point so fast that it just restarts the level or do I just get constantly on the wrong key (I really won't exclude that)?

[Simon]

Sorry, this question must have slipped.

Could it be that it accelerates at some point so fast that it just restarts the level [...]?

Yeah, the code looks like you can indeed have massive jumps of 450 or 900 Phyus when displayed frames per second drop to 1 or 0. I haven't capped that, I merely made sure that we don't divide by zero.

-- Simon

[Forestidia86]

I noticed in German these keys don't seem to have a description in the options menu but just name the function(?).

Fixed for next version: All English descriptions have German translations. When I wrote the options menu for D Lix in late 2015, I was too lazy to translate all the descripionts, causing the game to display a fallback string.

That's only a minor thing, but in "Allgemein" the Sound and Music stuff (including descriptions) is still in English and in "Spieltasten" there is still "Unpause on skill assignment" though the description for that is German (I don't know how to change that in the translation file).

I've translated for myself the Sound and Music stuff. Though some translations are debatable like for "sound gain" I have "Tonverstärkung" etc.
I have attached my modified translation file.

Edit: Just noted that in "Steuerung" the description to "Schnelle Beweg. befreit Maus" is English as well.

[Simon]

Good catches. I didn't bother to put these temporary hackjob names into the language files, instead hardcoded them in the program, but they're good names and should go in the language files.

-- Simon