Active overlay is REALLY slowing things down...

[CASEY]

Alright, so I'm using active overlay to make a massive black block of 'darkness' that's above everything in my game. There's a lantern which, when moved around, sets the background overlay the active overlay is reading from to draw a transparent circle at 0,0 from the lantern's position.

This all works just fine, but it's REALLY slowing down my application. Around 23-25fps to be precise, when 'light' levels (ones without the layer of darkness) run just fine at 50. (The number I set the framerate to in my game's preferences.)

Is there a way to make this overlay slow my game down a bit less? Just for the record, I'm on a decent enough machine (1GB of ram, Nvidia 6600GT video card, 2.17GHz processor speed) but my friends with better computers don't get much, if any slowdown from running my app.

[Brandon]

Instead of using an active overlay, you could just make a very large active object and make it totally black, except the center which you can use different layers of transparency for. Then, you can just set the active object to follow the mouse or whatever.

[CASEY]

Instead of using an active overlay, you could just make a very large active object and make it totally black, except the center which you can use different layers of transparency for. Then, you can just set the active object to follow the mouse or whatever.

Unfortunately, I can't do that, because there are also lamps that cause circles of light to appear around them.

[MetalGeo]

Ok, this is going to sound really dumb. But isn't there a trick to do the very same effect with the use of Ink Effects? My memory tells me I've seen such examples for MMF1.5.

[CASEY]

Ok, this is going to sound really dumb. But isn't there a trick to do the very same effect with the use of Ink Effects? My memory tells me I've seen such examples for MMF1.5.

I thought the same thing back when I started making it... I played around but to no avail. If anyone knows, that'd rock!

[DanielRehn]

Is the overlay covering the entire frame or just what's visible on screen?

[CASEY]

Is the overlay covering the entire frame or just what's visible on screen?

Just what's visible. It's a 640x480 active overlay set to always be at -320, -240 from an object that dictates the center of the window's position in the level.