loading the bitmaps? i don''t see how the bitmap size would make any difference if you just load them once. however, once you use surfaces to store them, it would be better to keep theses surfaces at 256 x 256 range or so. obviously that would make them less cumbersome for storage, also i believe there are benefits from square dim surfaces, correct me if i''m wrong.

Less system resources are consumed by using fewer surfaces. e.g. less memory, fewer handles. There is also a computational overhead for creating multiple surfaces and freeing them.

On the other hand there''s a computational overhead when blitting only part of a surface.

So if you have ten bitmaps that you blit every frame for the entire lifetime of the game, you probably want to load those individually. However if it''s a tileset situation then you want to keep the all those on the same bitmap on the same surface.