Is there a downside to using Active Pictures for sprites?

[mike893476]

In the past I've run into memory problems from using too many sprite images that I've loaded from spritesheets into Active Objects. I read on here that's because the images are stored as uncompressed data, which explains why I quickly saw the debugger's memory display filling up as more characters appeared.

But I recently discovered that the memory total remains very low when, instead of using Active Objects I use Active Pictures and just load a different (compressed .png) image each frame.

Can anybody tell me whether there is a downside to this, in terms of efficiency?

My concern is that if I have a 20-image animation, instead of reading each frame from the HD once, then subsequently reading them from memory, it is instead accessing them from the hard drive over and over again. So instead of reading from the hard drive 20 times then re-reading it from memory, it is instead reading it from the HD thousands of times per minute.

[Del_Duio]

Honestly the only thing I ever use active pictures for at all are collision detectors and something to spawn stuff at.

Example:

Set active picture's X position to Random (screenwidth)
Set active picture's Y position to Random (screenheight)
Create Enemy active object at 0,0 of active picture

It's possible active pictures did save space when computers were less powerful than they are now. I'd just use active objects for sprites

[mike893476]

That wouldn't help. My computer's pretty up-to-date but I still need to find the most efficient way to display graphics in order for my game to work as required. I have dozens of 256x256, 150-frame sprites to include, not to mention lots of other static images.

Fortunately, Active Pictures seem to consume considerably less memory, at least if the debugger is any indication. The only drawback (as far as I can see so far) is the one I've outlined above. So if anyone is able to offer any insight into this it would be a big help.

[mike893476]

Bump. Can any of the staff shed any light on this please?

[danworth]

If you wanted to check to see if it constantly reading the images use process monitor (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...ssmonitor.aspx) and filter your application and maybe the image file extensions. If the files are being loaded multiple times you'll see it.

[mike893476]

I meant to update this sooner, and thanks for your response. I tried it with Process Monitor and if I'm reading it correctly it does read the file from the HD/SSD every time, so it's probably not a good way of doing things (at least in my case anyway).