DirectDrawSurface Overhead?

multiple images on a single surface is a good idea (though making surfaces to large is and as well, especially since some cards dont support offscreen surfaces larger then the primary surface). have a seperate surafce for each frame of animation means more objects that directdraw need to keep track of, this will use more memory (especially since surfcaes are padded so they are DWORD aligned).

instead try to group similar things onto a larger surface. for instance each sprite gets their own surface which contains all their animations. if that creats surafaces that are too big, then split it up a bit more.

like everything, you rarly should go to the extremes.

Thanks for the reply. That''s kinda what I thought, It''s just nice to have feedback at times. Thanks again, man.

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Original post by a person
(especially since surfcaes are padded so they are DWORD aligned).

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That can''t take up more than 3 bytes can it?

I think what he means by padding is that sometimes when you create a surface, it''s actually wider than the width that you specify. I noticed this when I made a surface that was 20 pixels wide. It was actually 32 pixels wide, and I had to use lPitch to render properly. I think DirectDraw does this for speed. For example, to go to line 3, it doesn''t have to use multiplication, like nLineNumber * nWidth ... instead, with a 32 pixel wide surface, directdraw could use bit shifters, which is a lot faster than multiplication.


That''s what I ''think'' he meant, anyway... Thanks for the input, though.