Well I gave up trying to make Mikey Kawicks spanlist code work and wrote my own. However now it draws slower when its using the spanlists! He said spanlists would reduce draw time by eliminating overdraw. What a gip! If anyone wants to see my implementation mail me. Bye

It all depends on how and where you''re using it, and how optimised your code is. There''s more than one factor at work. Where are you trying to insert spanlists instead of straight blitting ( or whatever? ). Are you using DirectX, OpenGL, something else?


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
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Whats a spanlist?

Possibility

Possibility - In this particular instance the span-list is used to control overdraw. Meaning, you preprocess your map in such a way that any given pixel, regardless of ''stacked'' tiles or overlays, will only be drawn once. It should increase the speed of the overall drawing cycle, but as stated above, the code must be optimized or it can have a very negative affect.

Davaris - Are you allocating a new spanlist every frame, or re-using a static list? Allocating a new one each time could be a part of any performance problem. Also, are you reading from video memory to do color transformations, or partial fog, or other affects? Minimize those operations where possible, as reading from video memory is SLOW. good luck!

tim

Hi guys well to answer your questions I''m not accessing video
memory at all as all calls to the relevant DirectX function
returns with no video memory or something like that.
So all my draws are currently in system memory. If you
want to have a look at the code you''ll find it here.
I am using the same spanlist each draw.

http://www.geocities.com/david_moffatt_au/

P.S. Try not to laugh too hard at my site I''m too
lazy and busy with my game to bother with it at the moment.

^ AND READ!

Hey,
Your site has more stuff on it then mine.

My slowly growing site!

Thanks for visiting my site if you do!
-Drew Lash