I seem to remember the number being about 10,000, but I want to be sure. I was planning to create one huge VSP to save time and make updating my tiles easier, (plus most maps would use many of the same basic tiles with only a few specials) but I just started converting my project to 640x480, which means double the tiles, so I'll certainly end up with more than 10,000.

Thanks,
-Devon

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--- Square's making money. We're making art.

If I remember correctly, the last time I checked the Verge source code, Verge used either an unsigned int or an unsigned long to index the vsp array...that either means that you can have 2^16 (65536) or 2^32 (4294967296) tiles. As Pontifex indicated, having several thousand tiles can eat up memory, especially if you're using 16bit tiles (256 pixels * 2 bytes = .5k of memory per tile...for people with older computers, this can add up to a significant fraction of their RAM)

As a side note, the vsp[] array in VC is set up so that each array element is a single pixel...the maximum number of tiles that you can index through VC is 1/256th of the maximum number of tiles that Verge can handle (assuming I remember the source code correctly, of course ;)

I'm curious though...you say that 640x480 will mean double the number of tiles in your vsp...I can't see how that is though. If you don't change your vsp at all, you will come out with the same number of tiles that appear to be 1/4th the size of the original. If you remake your tiles to appear the same on the screen as they did at 320x240, it will take 4 tiles, with each tile being 1/4th of an old tile. If you're redoing your tiles to appear the same as they did in 320x240, you're probably better off staying in that resolution...the only improvements would be to chrs and stuff drawn through VC, while the tiles would look grainy in comparison.

--Feyr

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I'm borrowing my brother's account again because my computer is unavailible at this moment and the MB doesn't seem to allow me to switch to another login on this machine. (Darn cookies)

Thanks for the info. 65,000 should be plenty. I do want them all loaded at once though. Otherwise each of my tilesets would be mostly duplicated tiles, (the 'basic' landscape and detail tiles already number over 600 in low res) and then I'm just wasting HD space and making more work for myself to update the same tiles in every set. I don't see 5 or even 10 or 20 megs of RAM as a waste. Most computers have 64 as a minimum these days (assuming about 48 availible after Windows) and I want this game to take advantage of all the computer power it can. I want it to look as good as it plays. My tiles are designed so that they fit together on two or three layers to create one final tile, that way I can create more detailed maps without having to draw 'inbetween' tiles for every possible meeting of two basic tiles.



Sorry, Feyr, I miscalculated. I was just quick thinking 640x480 = 320x240 x2. Yes, it's four times as many tiles. I'm not just changing the resolution though, I'm completely redoing the tiles to look similar to the low res versions, but to be high res. I held on to low res graphics for a long time, but the thing that finally changed my mind was the Dreamcast. Seeing all those games in high res (never mind that I'v been playing 1024x768 PC games all this time) really made me realize that 320x240 is pretty much dead.

I'm not sure that I'll bother with the VSP[] array. I can always manipulate xwin and ywin and use Grabregion if I need to do something with off-screen tiles, and the way my tiles are set up, copying just a few of them out of the VSP wouldn't do much good. They need to be layered properly, which is best done in Maped.

Thanks for the help though.

-Devon

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"You better believe they're good reasons! All digitally remastered reasons are good reasons! And all of my reasons are digitally remastered reasons! I am, After all, the Hand of God." - Locke, TWGtHaiALF:CYGWIDL?