OGL is already plenty fast and seems to optimize 2D blits on it's own. I seriously doubt a custom optimized/batched render system via DX7 would be worth it unless you're targeting older gpu's which seems to benefit the most from batching. In Blitzmax rendering from a single texture does speed things up a bit because normally Blitzmax creates a new surface for every image loaded which is alot of texture state changes per update.
I've done several demos on my blog which push around hundreds sometimes 1000's of sprites per frame. On older cards the demos run between 20-60fps, on newer cards, frame rates in the 100's is normal. All this using standard Blitzmax rendering. However....
I realize there's already a DX9 driver floating around, but a stable DX9 driver to me should be the next logical choice for 2DMax rendering. Using the DX9 sprite object, which automatically supports batching, sorting, etc, you would see a nice speed increase in render speeds. THAT would be something I would pay for. Not optimizing the older DirectX versions which run "good enough" as is. ;)
I've done several demos on my blog which push around hundreds sometimes 1000's of sprites per frame. On older cards the demos run between 20-60fps, on newer cards, frame rates in the 100's is normal. All this using standard Blitzmax rendering. However....
I realize there's already a DX9 driver floating around, but a stable DX9 driver to me should be the next logical choice for 2DMax rendering. Using the DX9 sprite object, which automatically supports batching, sorting, etc, you would see a nice speed increase in render speeds. THAT would be something I would pay for. Not optimizing the older DirectX versions which run "good enough" as is. ;)