Just a few questions :
1) I'm fully aware that surface count is the no. 1 speed barrier in Blitz. However I'm a little unclear on how Blitz allocates new surfaces. Lets say I have 10 particles (sprites). They are all identical - same texture, same color, same alpha. How many surfaces?
2) Now I alter the alpha of 5 of the 10 particles to 0.5. How many surfaces?
3) Now I use EntityColor() to make all the particles DIFFERENT colors. How many surfaces?
4) When I started my project I didn't know about the sizing 'rules' for meshes (1 unit=1 foot or whatever) and consequently all my geometry is very large-scale. Changing it all would be a MAJOR job. It works fine, but I have to have the CameraRange set to 75,55000. My question is : could this have negative effects down the line ie. are there graphics cards / PCs that wont like such a large number and kick up z-buffer / framerate / other problems? NB. my VooDoo3 seems to handle it just fine, and that's some pretty old hardware ;)
5) Does .png have any speed advantages over .bmp in terms of loading times (what with the files being much smaller).
Thanks in advance :)
1) I'm fully aware that surface count is the no. 1 speed barrier in Blitz. However I'm a little unclear on how Blitz allocates new surfaces. Lets say I have 10 particles (sprites). They are all identical - same texture, same color, same alpha. How many surfaces?
2) Now I alter the alpha of 5 of the 10 particles to 0.5. How many surfaces?
3) Now I use EntityColor() to make all the particles DIFFERENT colors. How many surfaces?
4) When I started my project I didn't know about the sizing 'rules' for meshes (1 unit=1 foot or whatever) and consequently all my geometry is very large-scale. Changing it all would be a MAJOR job. It works fine, but I have to have the CameraRange set to 75,55000. My question is : could this have negative effects down the line ie. are there graphics cards / PCs that wont like such a large number and kick up z-buffer / framerate / other problems? NB. my VooDoo3 seems to handle it just fine, and that's some pretty old hardware ;)
5) Does .png have any speed advantages over .bmp in terms of loading times (what with the files being much smaller).
Thanks in advance :)