Color Overlay (Lighting)

[Jdsfrog]

Hey people,

A few friends and I are working on a top-down pixel-art RPG game with Fusion 2.5. We are planning to have an in-game time system, in which the lighting of the day changes as time goes on. I was intending for this to be a color overlay (for night, sunset, etc.) over the whole frame, covering my friend's pixel art. I went about doing this with active objects of different colors spanning the entire frame, placing them in a layer above the player's layer, then messing with their semi-transparencies during runtime (relative to the in-game clock) to achieve a more or less noticeable color effect. The only problem, is this seems to bog down the FPS quite a bit, especially when two or more semi-transparent objects are visible at the same time. I've looked into The Overlay Object, and while it seems to work a little better, the FPS drop is still pretty noticeable.

Is there any way I can pull off the color-lighting overlay effect with little to no FPS drop? I'm just looking for any way at all to simulate the effect.

Thanks.

[piscesdreams]

I am assuming this is for the Windows runtime and not a mobile platform?

[Jdsfrog]

That's correct.

[piscesdreams]

What is your resolution and what is the size of the object(s) you are using to colorize?
If it is a full screen active object for coloring (i.e. sized at say, 640X480), you could achieve the same effect with a 16X16 active for coloring and just scale it up.

[Jdsfrog]

At the moment we're using a test frame sized to 1920X1080, which is also the resolution of the window. Are you saying I should start with a new active object at a smaller size like 16X16, color it, then resize it to cover the frame? Or are you talking about using the "scale" actions in the event editor to resize it that way? As it is, all I've done is created a new active object, resized it to fit the frame, then cleared the diamond sprite and filled it in with the color I wanted.

[piscesdreams]

Yeah, use the event editor to scale an active object that is normally 16x16 to fit your 1920x1080. This will use MUCH less memory than having a native 1920x1080 coloring active. That should increase your FPS drastically. Also, are you using semi transparencies or alpha blending? Semi transparencies get the same effect for you're trying to achieve but more efficient.

[Jdsfrog]

Okay, I gave that a shot and while it seemed to help a little, it's still a pretty big FPS drop. Currently I have each color active object at 16X16, being scaled at the start of the frame to fit properly. With no color overlay, the debugger says 60fps. When the first overlay becomes slightly noticeable in its fade, I'm at 45fps, but the big hit is when a second overlay comes in with the first overlay, bringing it down to 25fps. I tried scaling the color active objects to smaller sizes to see if that does anything, and a smaller size did help help the FPS slightly, but the FPS drop wasn't much different than when fully scaled. I made sure the V-Sync option for the objects is toggled off too.

And yeah, I've been using semi-transparency coefficients.

[piscesdreams]

This might be a silly question, do you have Direct3D9 or 8 activated?
I'm not sure how many objects you have in your frame, etc but general tests for me with interweaving two different colors doesn't touch my FPS at all.

I'm running...
Windows 7 Home Premium
AMD Athlon II X2 240 Processor at 2.80 ghz
4GB Ram
ATI Radeon HD 3450 @ 256mb

[Konidias]

Yeah how many objects are there during runtime? Seems weird that it would be dropping fps like that. Also yeah, if you aren't running Direct3D then it's going to not do so well. :P

[Jdsfrog]

Well you know what, it turns out the display was set to standard, and yes, when I selected Direct 3D, the entire game ran perfectly! I actually didn't even know that existed. Thanks a lot for your help guys!