Hi all I am currently working on a fighting game, and I am running into a bit of a problem. Right now all my sprite images and backgrounds are all in .bmp form. Now that is great for programming, but really hefty on size. Right now, I only have one background and two characters and the installation is already over 10 Megs! Any ideas? Are there any other formats I could use that are smaller? Kevin =)

Go to http://www.wotsit.org and take your pick

I think PNG (Portable network graphics?) is probably a good choice, though I''m sure other people will correct me.

Thanks!

But does that mean I have to write my own loader for the png format, or can I still use the DDUTIL Libraries?

Kevin =)

No, you''ll have to write your own loader, unless you find a library that someones already written. I have seen one, but I forget the name - sorry.

Oh - you have saved your bitmaps as compressed - haven''t you?

You mean by compressed, you mean in a zip file, or some other compression utility? If so yes, the files in the installation are in a zip, but the program does not uncompress them and then use them, that is something a bit out of my realm at this point.

Kevin =)

No I mean RLE compressed inside the .bmp file. Check the file size of the bitmap, the uncompressed will be the width*height*bytesperpixel plus a few extra bytes.
Compressed this will usually be a lot smaller - unless the image is really complicated.

To be honest, I never really looked at that. I will take a look. As for PNG, and other formats, I will look into that too. Thanks.

I know this sounds really dumb, but where do I check that?

Kevin =)

Edited by - grasshopa55 on November 6, 2000 1:14:22 PM

Your art package should have the option to save as compressed, or look up bitmaps in the MSDN where it explains the file format and compression

I thought that you could only do RLE on bitmaps with 8 bpp or less???