"I'm using the 2D command set of B3D, though. I don't have Blitz+. So, what am I missing out on, then?"
BlitzPlus much faster at actually manipulating individual pixels.
My sprite system will render 50 masked spheres moving around at 500fps in both Blitz3D and BlitzPlus. That's when using the standard image commands.
But as soon as I turn on alpha blending, which my system does by reading and writing pixels from the image buffers, the framerate for that same scene drops to 14fps in Blitz3D, and triple buffering has no effect on the speed.
But if I enable alpha in Blitzplus, I will get 65fps with that scene with triple buffering enabled, and 90fps without it.
Btw, triple buffering means I read and write to an image, and then blit that image to the backbuffer. It is slower with scenes with not much blending going on, as in the above example where only the edges of the spheres are actually transparent, but in Blitzplus gives you huge speed gains when lots of transparent stuff is flying around.
Also, Blitzplus has special pixel commands which you can use to get around a 20% speed boost, but to use those commands you have to write seperate blitting functions for 24bit and 16bit video modes.
"I don't suppose you want to let on what your 2D game is about? I have a horrible feeling you may have hit on the same idea as me. Not very likely, I know, but knowing my luck lately..."
Hehe... Well if you want to email me what your're working on, I will tell you what I am working on, but even if it's the same thing, there is plenty of room in the shareware market for similar games, so I wouldn't worry about it. :-)
Oh, and more importantly than the fact that the 2D functions are faster, in Blitzplus I can capture it when the user clicks the X to close the window, and I can allow the window to maximize with a black border around the gameplay area. The reason I want to capture the X click, is so that I can pop up a nag screen before the user exits the game, and I want to support both windowed and fullscreen modes.
BlitzPlus much faster at actually manipulating individual pixels.
My sprite system will render 50 masked spheres moving around at 500fps in both Blitz3D and BlitzPlus. That's when using the standard image commands.
But as soon as I turn on alpha blending, which my system does by reading and writing pixels from the image buffers, the framerate for that same scene drops to 14fps in Blitz3D, and triple buffering has no effect on the speed.
But if I enable alpha in Blitzplus, I will get 65fps with that scene with triple buffering enabled, and 90fps without it.
Btw, triple buffering means I read and write to an image, and then blit that image to the backbuffer. It is slower with scenes with not much blending going on, as in the above example where only the edges of the spheres are actually transparent, but in Blitzplus gives you huge speed gains when lots of transparent stuff is flying around.
Also, Blitzplus has special pixel commands which you can use to get around a 20% speed boost, but to use those commands you have to write seperate blitting functions for 24bit and 16bit video modes.
"I don't suppose you want to let on what your 2D game is about? I have a horrible feeling you may have hit on the same idea as me. Not very likely, I know, but knowing my luck lately..."
Hehe... Well if you want to email me what your're working on, I will tell you what I am working on, but even if it's the same thing, there is plenty of room in the shareware market for similar games, so I wouldn't worry about it. :-)
Oh, and more importantly than the fact that the 2D functions are faster, in Blitzplus I can capture it when the user clicks the X to close the window, and I can allow the window to maximize with a black border around the gameplay area. The reason I want to capture the X click, is so that I can pop up a nag screen before the user exits the game, and I want to support both windowed and fullscreen modes.