Lately I've been working on an RPG-style game, and just finished programming its level editor. Up until this point, to avoid having hundreds of different unique objects, I've been using a duplicated Active Picture for displaying non-moving, non-animated objects such as trees, bushes, signs, rocks, and such. However, I've run into a huge problem with this method, since I just discovered that the Active Picture lacks fine collision detection.

Since fine collision detection of the objects is absolutely necessary for my game, I'm trying to come up with a different solution using Active Objects instead. The main problem with this approach is that when you use the Load Frame action, every instance of the Active Object is affected, unlike the Active Picture where every instance can load and display a different picture. So what I thought about doing, is loading the entire external image library into a general Active Object as separate animations at the start of the frame. Then, have each instance of the object display a different animation/image depending on a value set to it in the level editor.

My concern about this method is whether hundreds of instances of an Active Object containing 1000's of images will slow down the game, even though they're only displaying one, non-animated image each. I've read somewhere that Active Objects with multiple directions and animations may cause a slow-down. Is this still true even if they contain multiple images, but only ever display one?