Why does this game eat the CPU so hard?

[bobcamel]

My 1,6 GHz 2 core laptop processor (Half-Life 2 runs gladly) also lags when I have a fieldful of creatures or I'm watching my over 100 card storage of deck modification screen.

I think that all those cards eat up much

[chriskang]

Yeah I can't zoom in with firefox either which kinda sucks playing on a huge monitor.

Try to load directly the swf if you want the game to be full screen:
http://www.elementsthegame.com/elementnew.swf
This should remove the need to zoom.

As for the CPU requirement, every flash game is written in actionscript which is a script language (running on a dedicated virtual machine client side). Like every other language of this type, it is MUCH slower than compiled language. There's not much you can do here, except maybe installing the last version of Flash player from Adobe.
I wonder if all those people who ask for a better AI realize that this would make the game even more laggy.

[Demagog]

I'd say the "3-d" of the game is also a factor. The top and bottom rows of cards are "behind" the front row, so I would think this would also slow down the comp. Also, having cards behind other cards is plain annoying.

[Demongod]

At my school, which has some pretty damn fast comps (P4), this game literally makes the CPU go to 100% trying to process it.  Is there some sort of memory leaking going on?

[Demongod]

Then here's some suggestions: how about a low-quality option--that is:

No animations on top of critters after they hit or gain life from feral bonds.
No sound effects.
No flashy mana gaining thing from quantums/fireflies
No card draw animation
No little card disappearing flash
Cards with active abilities still unused should just have a red border around them, not some little light revolving
Life bar replaced by a simple number

And essentially anything that is just glitzy stuff which adds nothing to the understanding of the situation should just be gone.

It shouldn't be a "this is how elements should be run", but an option players can select if they want faster sequences.

[plastiqe]

Yeah I can't zoom in with firefox either which kinda sucks playing on a huge monitor.

[cipher_nemo]

At my school, which has some pretty damn fast comps (P4), this game literally makes the CPU go to 100% trying to process it.  Is there some sort of memory leaking going on?

P4 is not "fast". Pentium 4 CPUs are seriously outdated by let's see, almost exactly 9 years (November 2000).

I've only seen my CPU usage spike when loading your deck and card collection (all cards, not filtered). Otherwise it doesn't use that much for the game itself. I can even play this game on my Asus Eee PC netbook with a weak Intel Celeron CPU, even though it's a bit slow. But it plays just fine on my PCs with a Core i7, Core 2 Duo, and Core 2 Quad CPUs.

[bobcamel]

Yeah, but you can run other games properly and in full detail. My laptop, if I inserted, say, Crysis into it, would jump up, yell at me and bite my head off. Yours wouldn't even start being louder.

[bobcamel]

I have a Core i7 920 overclocked to a conservative 3.4GHz with a GTX 295 Co-Op video card

*starts collecting own jaw from floor*

[cipher_nemo]

*starts collecting own jaw from floor*

I am stealing your computer. Where do you live?

LOL.

http://2geek.org/images/gen_9/cipher_gen9_inside2.jpg
http://2geek.org/images/gen_9/cipher_gen9_outside1.jpg

Well, modding PCs is a hobby of mine, but that sort of goes off the topic of this this. At any rate, even a very fast PC will have lag in this flash game because the game was not tweaked for performance. So don't worry about it if the game crawls on your PC during more demanding moments.

[cipher_nemo]

P4 was never a good CPU to begin with.

Mine runs fine on a core2 duo. But it does slow down when the creature field is full- not too bad, but noticable.

Yeah, the game itself isn't streamlined for efficiency. I have a Core i7 920 overclocked to a conservative 3.4GHz with a GTX 295 Co-Op video card, and Elements gets a little laggy whenever I play a Fire Storm and have a Graveyard or two out. Similar performance on my Core 2 Duo PC at work.

Otherwise, the game flys with everything else on both PCs.

[cipher_nemo]

My core-2 duo totally starts to choke on the game when there are more than 10 or so creatures on the board.

Sounds like a problem with your PC (or a really, really weak video card or GPU). What GPU are you running? A Core 2 Duo PC would fly with Elements.