10-16-2003 04:54

Posted by:
Miles

Location:
Australia

I'm attempting to create a parallax-scrolling platformer, not dissimilar in concept to the Parallax Example in the downloads section. Basically, it just uses sprites to form the background instead of a map.

It works well and looks great, but runs a little slow on my G3 iMac.

So, I'm wondering: Would it be faster to have hundreds of small sprites (one for each tile), or one huge sprite (one for the whole level) for the background?

10-16-2003 20:39

Posted by:
JAS

Small sprites is better because it won't have to draw a huge sprite (even what's offscreen). With that said, smaller sprites will only render what's on screen - which would be much faster.

10-17-2003 00:10

Posted by:
someone

Location:
Quebec ( Canada )

Yeah, the point about my example parallax scrolling is that only sprites onscreen must be displayed. To get better speed, reduce the resolution, the game area size or ask the creators of TNT to enable a 256 color mode, or something like that ;)

10-17-2003 00:26

Posted by:
Miles

Location:
Australia

Ah, I see. Thanks.

Come to think of it, wouldn't drawing tile-sprites save on memory too, because it only has to store the tile graphics and not a huge picture of the level? the game regularly quits with memory errors, and I think I may know why now...

10-18-2003 14:24

Posted by:
someone

Location:
Quebec ( Canada )

Well, an older computer may have problems with parallax scrolling. I'd recommand a G4 for a reasonnable performance and enough RAM.

10-18-2003 17:57

Posted by:
charlie

Location:
norfolk, england

it seems funny to me that you need a g4 and half a gig of ram to do paralax scrolling when my nes could do it !

cheers
charlie

10-18-2003 21:11

Posted by:
DanLurie

Location:
Earth>USA>New Jersey>Clifton>My Chair

Maybe cause your NES was doing it in 32 colors at TV resolution?

10-19-2003 17:58

Posted by:
charlie

Location:
norfolk, england

still, my nes wasnt running at 800mhz with a 32mb graphics card...

charlie

10-19-2003 22:43

Posted by:
someone

Location:
Quebec ( Canada )

1 - A NES has very low resolution and very limitted colors.

2- TNT is an interpreter, wich means:

TNT reads a line of code
TNT makes the code readable for MAC OS
TNT passes the modified code to MAC OS
MAC OS sends the data to the screen
the screen displays the game

A NES would do this:

NES reads from the rom
NES analises data
NES displays data to the screen

this is the second reason why the nes is faster. If TNT became a compiler it would be much faster than now but would probably cost much more...

10-20-2003 18:16

Posted by:
charlie

Location:
norfolk, england

i know that, im just being silly
tnt is great

charlie