Gark is actually the way I am feeling. I am designing a 2d beatemup in directx, using prerendered frames. Each frame is 320x320. (16 bit). Hence the problem, I cant use so many frames without memory being depleted. Atm I am loading everything into system memory as a worst case scenario. I think after 270 frames it starts eating into swapfile memory and hence the fps drops from 40-50 to 20-30 whenever a less common frame is called. (This is 270 for both the characters in totum, i.e. 135 each so far). This also represents but half of my intended number of frames. Making the sprite box smaller might just be possible - but would incur a resolution drop to keep them looking chunky and meaty to the screen - 800x600 to 640x480 is 320x320 to 256x256. But this wouldn''t allow the needed extra number of frames. 160x160, half the sprite resolution on 640x480 is way too small, as the numbers would indicate. Does anybody have an idea as to what I can do? r. "The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the slightest possibility of traversing the eternal wasteland that is my mind..."

Hey I''m not sure about this but what about going with 8 bit graphics. since there is only 1 byte per pixel youll be able to have twice the frames. right or wrong ?