Hey all,
As I've been going through AGS, I've run into a lot of warning about how certain options will really impact performance. For example, the auto outlining of text so that it shows up against all backgrounds.
Are these performance issues really something to take into account? I can't imagine that a 2D game could possibly eat up too much of a system's resources, but I could be wrong.
Anyway, that's my question. Thanks in advance!
DonQuixoteMC
Quote from: DonQuixoteMC on Sun 16/02/2014 18:53:19
As I've been going through AGS, I've run into a lot of warning about how certain options will really impact performance. For example, the auto outlining of text so that it shows up against all backgrounds.
I don't think that font outlining should be an issue. Maybe that was some older forum thread from the times when it were?
AFAIK most impact to perfomance is done by a) doing lots of operations in script every game tick, b) dynamic drawing operations, especially with alpha translucency - this starts to be important if your game is made in high resolution and uses large sprites.
Quote from: DonQuixoteMC on Sun 16/02/2014 18:53:19
Are these performance issues really something to take into account? I can't imagine that a 2D game could possibly eat up too much of a system's resources
This all depends on how program is made. AGS is a pretty old program, which was started somewhere in the late times of MS-DOS, and some solutions do not work very well on modern machines, because they do not benefit from computer progress so well as newer programs.
For example, software gfx driver does most drawing without use of graphics card, therefore all pressure is applied on central processor. Hardware mode (Direct3D) uses graphics card, but there are still some operations that are done on "software" side.
It is true that the manual is quite out of date with a lot of these performance warnings (at least in my experience). While AGS might be inefficient, the average computer is much faster than it was when many of those warnings were written.
Thanks for the responses, guys. For now, I'll ignore the warnings, but I'll slim things down if performance becomes a problem.
Thanks again!
DonQuixoteMC