Mesh.defaultStyle = MultiTextureStyle bug

[Mintonist]

I updated my game to Starling 2.8 and of course use Mesh.defaultStyle = MultiTextureStyle and default MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures=2
It reduce renders calls! I think it is very nice!

But I notice such flicker bug with only one GUI element in my game:

2026-03-06_15-04-40__.mp4

// you can download video if not shown

Only on Windows, I test AIR 51.1, AIR 51.2, AIR51.3 (debug and release builds).

Without Mesh.defaultStyle = MultiTextureStyle there is no such bug)
I use two texture atlases and one bitmap font.

Any ideas?

P.S. Same on Android (Xiaomi 13t)
P.P.S. With MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures >2 there are more and more gui elements in my gamec become to flick...

[Fancy2209]

There seemed to be some bugs with the current implementation of MultiTextureStyle
Can you try the changes in #1144 ?

[Mintonist]

I try it, but there are a lot of bugs appear(

Can you explain about MultiTextureStyle and chosen profile for Starling. What profile I need to choose?

I use ["baselineExtended", "baseline", "baselineConstrained"] or "auto".
On Windows it becomes "baselineExtended".

May be there are others limits, such as texture atlas size (pixels) or anything else.

I want to notice that flicker bug appears with only one GUI element in one my game. No other artefacts!) And another game has not problems. Seems it is very rare.

[MatseFR]

Hi Mintonist

on baseline profiles, MultiTextureStyle uses AGAL 1 code for the shader and is limited to 5 textures (default is 2 unless you set MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures)
on higher profiles, it uses AGAL 2 (and with my changes it can handle up to 16 textures)

I'm gonna try to reproduce the issues you have

[MatseFR]

@Mintonist can you please try with this version ? https://github.com/MatseFR/Starling-Framework/blob/master/starling/src/starling/styles/MultiTextureStyle.as

I had a stupid mistake with fragment constants and baseline profile

I guess it should trigger the first issue you described though... any chance I could look at why it happens in your app, privately ?

[Mintonist]

is limited to 5 textures (default is 2 unless you set MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures)

why default is 2? What I need to check to set 5 ?

Is any reason to not use "auto" profile? I build my game for Windows, Android, IOS.

[Mintonist]

can you please try with this version ?

I try it. No colors are correct, but flickers bug is present.
I notice, that now we cant set Mesh.defaultStyle = MultiTextureStyle; before starling.events.Event.ROOT_CREATED is triggered.
So may be Mesh.defaultStyle is better to be Starling constructor param?

When I increase MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures - there a lot of new GUI element start flicker (

I dont know how to test it private. Seems it can be reproduced if you show on stage my assets + texts from my texture atlases?
No need game logic for it.

[MatseFR]

why default is 2? What I need to check to set 5 ?

I don't know about the default setting, checking textures to see if it's batchable or not has a cost so maybe that's related ?
I don't know how to get the hardware's max texture units in AS3 but from what I read on desktop 8 should be safe, I would expect mobile to be able to handle at least 4 ?

Is any reason to not use "auto" profile? I build my game for Windows, Android, IOS.

I don't see any reason in your case, I would see a reason the other way : if I have a game or app that requires STANDARD profile or higher then I would specifiy that profile and if it's not availble inform the user his hardware is too old or something

I try it. No colors are correct, but flickers bug is present.

Thank you : much appreciated ! If I understand correctly now with my version of MultiTextureStyle you're back at the issue from your first post, right ?

I notice, that now we cant set Mesh.defaultStyle = MultiTextureStyle; before starling.events.Event.ROOT_CREATED is triggered.
So may be Mesh.defaultStyle is better to be Starling constructor param?

Is this problem occurring only with my version ? I'll have a look

When I increase MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures - there a lot of new GUI element start flicker

Interesting, does this happen with both versions or ?

I dont know how to test it private. Seems it can be reproduced if you show on stage my assets + texts from my texture atlases?
No need game logic for it.

Yeah there shouldn't be any game logic needed. If you can share an example with me that has the issues you mention that would be absolutely great, but I can totally understand if you can't.

[Mintonist]

Thank you : much appreciated ! If I understand correctly now with my version of MultiTextureStyle you're back at the issue from your first post, right ?

yes

Is this problem occurring only with my version ? I'll have a look

Yes, because you check Starling.current.profile

Interesting, does this happen with both versions or ?

yes, with default and your version of MultiTextureStyle

Yeah there shouldn't be any game logic needed. If you can share an example with me that has the issues you mention that would be absolutely great, but I can totally understand if you can't.

I am going think about it.
Did you any tests with many objects from texture atlases + bitmapfonts ?
May be it is important - I use 'scale9Grid' property for Images.

Flickers appear in my second game. But now gui elements are disappear|appear when I trigger a button:

result:

[MatseFR]

Thanks a lot for those infos ! It really helps

Yes, because you check Starling.current.profile

Ah yeah, good catch ! That's a problem, I'm gonna think about that

Did you any tests with many objects from texture atlases + bitmapfonts ?

I tested with thousands of movie clips using atlases but didn't test with a bitmap font. I'll try that when I get a moment

May be it is important - I use 'scale9Grid' property for Images.

Ah yeah that might have some importance, thanks ! It gives me some stuff to try and look at

[Mintonist]

OMG!
I test on other Windows PC with more modern hardware and seems there is no flicker bug there...

So I dont know how to explain it and how to get builds for players. They may have very different hardware/drivers...

Of course I can not use MultiTextureStyle as it was before for many years)
But it makes me sad)

[Mintonist]

but didn't test with a bitmap font. I'll try that when I get a moment

I use textField.batchable = true; while creating TextField from bitmapfonts.
I also use Starling.juggler with simple Tweens and MovieClips

[MatseFR]

I test on other Windows PC with more modern hardware and seems there is no flicker bug there...

Interesting ! What's the GPU on the older PC ? Did you try starting your game with "auto" profile on that older PC ? The shader code is pretty different depending on the profile being baseline (AGAL 1) or not (AGAL 2, where we can use "if" statements). It might be that your GPU has bigger rounding errors than the AGAL 1 code expects

I use textField.batchable = true; while creating TextField from bitmapfonts.
I also use Starling.juggler with simple Tweens and MovieClips

Thanks for the info : juggler and tweens should not be related but batchable TextFields is something I did not test :)

[Mintonist]

What's the GPU on the older PC ? Did you try starting your game with "auto" profile on that older PC ?

GTX 1050TI. not so old) But it is Windows 7 (so not latest drivers). But many players still have Windows 7(
I try "auto", "baselineExtended", "standard" - all the same. So it does not matter.

I use textField.batchable = true; while creating TextField from bitmapfonts.

I test with 'false' and it makes render more and more stable!! Only one flicker element exists (as it was in 1st post)
But it dramatically increase draw count for my games.

So it is a thing that need to be tested! May be you can exclude TextFileds from new algorithm or something else.
It is applicable to both MultiTextureStyle versions.

[Mintonist]

@MatseFR
May I dynamically change Mesh.defaultStyle and MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures properties after Starling launch?

I plan to create remote config for it to change this behavior from my server.

[MatseFR]

@Mintonist

May I dynamically change Mesh.defaultStyle and MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures properties after Starling launch?

Yes but changing Mesh.defaultStyle won't change the style of already existing meshes, not sure what changing MultiTextureStyle.maxTextures will do to existing multitexture styles. I'll try to look into it.

For context I didn't create MultiTextureStyle : while porting it to haxe I noticed there was an error when setting maxTextures to a value > 2 + I had found a way to handle 16 textures with efficient AGAL code so I reworked it

GTX 1050TI. not so old) But it is Windows 7 (so not latest drivers). But many players still have Windows 7(
I try "auto", "baselineExtended", "standard" - all the same. So it does not matter.

I'm on a GTX 1060 and it handles 16 simultaneous textures just fine so yeah 1050 should be ok too !
When you set "auto" profile what profile do you end up with ? Is it baseline something ?

I test with 'false' and it makes render more and more stable!! Only one flicker element exists (as it was in 1st post)
But it dramatically increase draw count for my games.

I'm gonna investigate that + scale9grid