I am really sorry but I do have a few differnt questions. I''ve been trying not to post them.. I''ve been holding off working on them myself but.. I figure I guess I''ll just ask these. 1) I''m working on a game that uses a isometric tile set. The images that are made into tilesets are actually real 3D renderings. So would it be better to use the tilesets or just convert the 3D images into *.X files and use them with Direct3D for my game? 2) How should I load my images? In all these examples I see and from the stuff I''ve read they all pretty much load all the images when the program starts. But I''ve going to be doing a full game with upwards of 150megs of images. Loading all the images at once wouldnt work very good with that amount of images so what would you say I should do? Also images have the be exturnal and not resources because the game will updated a lot and I dont think everyone would like to keep downloading such a big file. Thanks for any help you may have to offer, Kyle

quote: Original post by KyleL
1) I''m working on a game that uses a isometric tile set. The images that are made into tilesets are actually real 3D renderings. So would it be better to use the tilesets or just convert the 3D images into *.X files and use them with Direct3D for my game?

If your looking for speed use tilesets. A 2d sprite rendered as a 3d primitive has to only transform, and light 4 vertexes. While your model could have many more.

If your looking to be able to rotate and zoom, you may want to keep the 3d model, this way the image will look correct from multiple angles.

quote: Original post by KyleL
2) How should I load my images? In all these examples I see and from the stuff I''ve read they all pretty much load all the images when the program starts. But I''ve going to be doing a full game with upwards of 150megs of images. Loading all the images at once wouldnt work very good with that amount of images so what would you say I should do? Also images have the be exturnal and not resources because the game will updated a lot and I dont think everyone would like to keep downloading such a big file.

While dx (im thinking 8) has a very good texture resource manager, 150 is way too much. I would break your area into 128 x 128 sections, and load the textures require for it, and the 8 areas surronding it. When you move into a new section, youll have to drop one 128x128 region and load another.

HTH
Leprosy

Thank you for your help. I was thinking about doing the rotate for it so if the user moves behind a wall the camera could move so the user could be seen still. but this would add more problems than it would fix. I''ll have the wall the user is behind become like semisee through or something. The second answere you game me really helps a lot. Thanks a lot.