"So, if your 800x600 is 15kb"
"These are hand drawn 800x600 fullscreen backgrounds... There are no tiles or tileing in my game... most of them need to be loaded at all times."
Where did you get 15kb? Even at 1bit (ie. 2 colors) an 800x600 image is 60kb. At 32bit color depth it is 1.8MB. Multiplied by 10 is 18MB. Add the front and back buffers (assuming the game itself is 800x600) and you're looking at around 20MB. APE, barely anyone has enough memory for that. You are going to have to redesign your game so that it uses less video memory. Yes that mean compromising your vision but design is compromise. Frankly I think you will need to just accept the 1 second load times here and there because having all those background images loaded in all the time is a killer. 1 second is really not all that long; even without the load time you'ld want to give your players a little time to rest between levels.
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OT, was "Once Twice Thrice" developed in Blitz? If so I didn't realize that. Up until they stopped taking outside submissions I was at Dexterity.com a lot so I am familiar with your game.
"These are hand drawn 800x600 fullscreen backgrounds... There are no tiles or tileing in my game... most of them need to be loaded at all times."
Where did you get 15kb? Even at 1bit (ie. 2 colors) an 800x600 image is 60kb. At 32bit color depth it is 1.8MB. Multiplied by 10 is 18MB. Add the front and back buffers (assuming the game itself is 800x600) and you're looking at around 20MB. APE, barely anyone has enough memory for that. You are going to have to redesign your game so that it uses less video memory. Yes that mean compromising your vision but design is compromise. Frankly I think you will need to just accept the 1 second load times here and there because having all those background images loaded in all the time is a killer. 1 second is really not all that long; even without the load time you'ld want to give your players a little time to rest between levels.
******
OT, was "Once Twice Thrice" developed in Blitz? If so I didn't realize that. Up until they stopped taking outside submissions I was at Dexterity.com a lot so I am familiar with your game.