Cutscene sprites

[Sargonnas]

Hey I've been having some issues with sprites, but I'm wondering if I've missed something. Can different frames of a sprite animation exist on a different texture page?

 

[obscene]

They definitely can. Every time a texture group fills up a texture page, a new one is generated. You can see this in action if you go into Game Options -> Windows -> Graphics and click the Preview button. In a few seconds (or minutes) the folder will open and you will see the madness. So if you're doing large sprites (which it sounds like you are) you definitely want to have them in their own texture group and possibly break it up into multiple texture groups if it's really gigantic.

 

[kburkhart84]

So if you're doing large sprites (which it sounds like you are) you definitely want to have them in their own texture group and possibly break it up into multiple texture groups if it's really gigantic.

The only time I can agree with this is if you know the VRAM isn't going to keep up...although at that point you are better off just implementing video playback instead. Splitting a single sprite/animation into different texture groups would only need done if there isn't enough VRAM...and in those cases, to make use of multiple groups in this fashion, you are going to consistently be having to swap pages in and out, which is going to kill performance, and be a massive hassle to code as well.. I'd better recommend you see just how much VRAM usage we are talking about with these sprites, and if you can't switch to some form of video playback, consider raising minimum system requirements for the game so that you can ensure there is enough VRAM.

 

[Sargonnas]

They definitely can. Every time a texture group fills up a texture page, a new one is generated. You can see this in action if you go into Game Options -> Windows -> Graphics and click the Preview button. In a few seconds (or minutes) the folder will open and you will see the madness. So if you're doing large sprites (which it sounds like you are) you definitely want to have them in their own texture group and possibly break it up into multiple texture groups if it's really gigantic.

Thanks! I haven't messed with texture groups yet and it looks like I really should.