Should I use regular bitmaps, RLE sprites, or compiled sprites?
Description
Should I use regular bitmaps, RLE sprites, or compiled sprites?
It depends on exactly what you are doing. If your images are totally
opaque, there is no advantage to using an RLE sprite, and it will
probably be faster to use a regular bitmap with the blit() function.
If your graphics contain masked areas, an RLE sprite may be both smaller
and faster than the draw_sprite() function, depending on your CPU
and your bitmaps.
Compiled sprites are in general quite a bit faster than both the
others for masked images, and slightly faster for opaque graphics, but
this is far more variable. They are at their best with small sprites,
on older machines and in mode-X, and may actually be slower than
blit() when using SVGA modes on a pentium (the large size of a
compiled sprite is very bad for the cache performance).
