Active object vs Active picture

Greetings,

The game I am developing is very large.

If both an active object and an active picture will do what I need, which one should I choose.

I'm thinking that all things being equal, using an active picture is better because it will be stored in an external file and the active picture object is just a place holder for the file whereas the active object stores the image in the frame.

If a background picture will also work, which of the three would be my best choice.

Thanks

Active Objects are faster (they don't lower the framerate as much), and they can load external images. So........ Yea, don't use Active Picture. :eek:

http://blogsap.files.wordpress.com/2...e_you_know.jpg

Thanks sublim. Does anyone disagree?

Hey sublim,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sublim

Active objects -- they can load external images.

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Do you mean that you can paste an image into the Active object using the image editor? If yes, I thought that is why they would be more resource intensive.

Also, can anyone tell me how "load on call" works and whether it is worthwhile do for lots of Active Objects that are external images?

No, you use the "load frame" action for the Active Object in the event editor to load an external image. Pasting an external graphic using the image editor will just make it internal.

Thanks,

I used the "load frame" as you suggested.

I removed the image that I had imported into the Active Object.
I then discovered that I had to have a non transparent something in the Active Object. So I put a small square of color. I guess that was replaced by the image that was loaded.

One nice thing about pasting the image into the Active Object is that I can resize it right on the screen to fit my needs. If I use "load frame" I assume I will have to have the images sized exactly before loading. Also exact positioning will be trickier. Guess I'll just have to experiment.

I have thousands of images in my game, so these decisions are rather important.

Yes, use start of frame.

Also, I was wrong about the speed, I just did a framerate test comparing the Active Picture Object with the Active Object and they are both exactly the same speed. However, Active Objects are much easier to animate so I would still recommend using those.

For backgrounds you should use the backdrop object, because it is by far the fastest, although it can't be animated.

Thanks again, sublim

So staying on topic, is it faster to use an Active Picture to paste
an image into the background, or will an Active Object run faster when loaded and pasted?

I've had troubles with Active Pictures on 20000 x 50000 images. Haven't tried Active Objects yet because I'm off my computer.

The Active Picture object is similar in speed to the Active Object, so it's not good for backgrounds. I have found that the plain vanilla Picture Object is actually much faster for backgrounds. If you want externally loaded backgrounds, it's best to use that.

active picture is sometimes better for external images since its loading action isn't as "bloated" (less dialogs) than active objects' load frame

they might also take up less memory since they don't have to store an image bank like the AOs do, though duplicate AOs seem to share the same bank so a lot duplicate AOs might take up less memory than a lot of APs displaying the same image... not sure

AP supports clipping an image when pasting it as a background (would be nice if an image could also be clipped when loaded), and supports other things such as wrapping, and a movable hotspot during runtime. it also has image flipping (unfortunately only toggle-able, no way to force a flip)

in fact, the thing that really keeps active picture from being a really useful object is the fact that it doesn't support fine collisions, which is weird, because the normal picture object does

Thanks for the responses.

I'm concerned with the file size of my game.

Most of my images are used once in a frame. Other images however, are used in many different frames. If the same image is used over and over again, what is my best choice?

MMF 1.5 only stores 1 pack of images for every object that uses the exact same, so if you have 400 objects with the exact same images on different frames, it will not take up any more space for the GFX than only 1 object, would imagine that MMF2 has the same feature and proably better compression

What is GFX?

Also, I don't think loading speeds are not as critical an issue for my game as file size. So I'm looking to do what I can to minimize the file size.

GFX is an abbreviation for graphics.