Overlay or non DTS

[Gianpiero Colagiacomo]

Hi guys,

Whats more efficient; using a flash sprite as an animated overlay or adding
it to the stage with the 3d member's dts turned off?

I want to create a UI for my game and currently use the DTS turned off
method but it slows down performance considerably. I tried the overlay
approach but found that the quality of the image was less than perfect and
it affected performance too. :(

What do you guys do when creating a UI that appears on top of a 3d sprite?
Barry's FPS demo is a perfect example of what I want - the scoring and map
grafix are basically what I'm trying to achieve too.

BTW I'm using Flash for my UI because I know it - I'm learning Director as I
go along!

Cheers,

GP

[Karl Sigiscar]

For overlays:

- Use textures whose size is a power of 2 : 32 x 32, 64 x 64, 128 x 128 for
crisp display

- Use a texture with an alpha channel (e.g a PSD or a TIFF) if you need an
opacity mask (i.e to see through the shape of your interface elements)

- You can export your Flash animations as a series of bitmaps that you
import into Director instead of importing the SWF. Making the SWF playhead
move overtime in Director to update the animated overlay is not a very good
approach as it is slow.

Should you want to animate an overlay from a series of bitmaps, you can use
the Overlay Tweening behavior from the Chrome Lib:
[url]http://membres.lycos.fr/karlsigiscar/shockwave3d[/url] and copy/paste the Lingo
code if you want to adapt to your game.

Karl.

[Gianpiero Colagiacomo]

Karl,

Unfortunately exporting my Flash elements as bitmaps is not an option - the
flash UI isn't animated using the timeline, it's animated using actionscript
receiving input from Director so the main timeline only has 1 frame.

Apart from already knowing flash the other reason for implementing a flash
UI is because most of the UI elements were already in existance as I'd
started work on a Flash only version of my game last year - never got to the
end of the project due to other commitments (the game was more of a hobby
than work) however.

Am I just going the wrong way about this? Should I scrap my Flash UI and
concentrate on learning to replicate these elements in Director? The
reduction in FPS is quite noticeable - without the UI I'm getting near 50
fps, with it the FPS drop to around 30 (non DTS 3d sprite with flash sprite
on top).

Cheers,

GP


"Karl Sigiscar" <karl.sigiscar@laposte.net> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:bn8il3$1vg$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> For overlays:
>
> - Use textures whose size is a power of 2 : 32 x 32, 64 x 64, 128 x 128

for

> crisp display
>
> - Use a texture with an alpha channel (e.g a PSD or a TIFF) if you need an
> opacity mask (i.e to see through the shape of your interface elements)
>
> - You can export your Flash animations as a series of bitmaps that you
> import into Director instead of importing the SWF. Making the SWF playhead
> move overtime in Director to update the animated overlay is not a very

good

> approach as it is slow.
>
> Should you want to animate an overlay from a series of bitmaps, you can

use

> the Overlay Tweening behavior from the Chrome Lib:
> [url]http://membres.lycos.fr/karlsigiscar/shockwave3d[/url] and copy/paste the Lingo
> code if you want to adapt to your game.
>
> Karl.
>
>
>
>

[Karl Sigiscar]

Yes, you have to develop your own overlay based interface elements such as
buttons, radio buttons or menus using some bitmaps and Lingo codes.This is
the only way to go if you want a high framerate.

Karl.

[Agustín María Rodríguez]

Karl Sigiscar wrote:

> Yes, you have to develop your own overlay based interface elements such as
> buttons, radio buttons or menus using some bitmaps and Lingo codes.This is
> the only way to go if you want a high framerate.

He can use Toxi´s overlay button script: [url]www.toxi.co.uk[/url]
--
Agustín María Rodríguez | [email]agustin@OnWine.com.ar[/email] | [url]www.OnWine.com.ar[/url]

[Karl Sigiscar]

The Chrome Lib is primarily a set of 60+ 3D behaviors but also contains 3D
parent scripts for developers.

New parent scripts have just been added:

*** Overlay contextual menu parent scripts !!!
*** Overlay buttons parent scripts !!!
*** Billboard parent script !!!
Fog Tweening parent script.
W3D Loader.
XMLParsingReliable (handler callback after parsing)

[url]http://membres.lycos.fr/karlsigiscar/shockwave3d[/url]

[Gianpiero Colagiacomo]

Lovely! Thanks for that Karl...

GP


"Karl Sigiscar" <karl.sigiscar@laposte.net> wrote in message
news:bnjjvp$cng$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> The Chrome Lib is primarily a set of 60+ 3D behaviors but also contains 3D
> parent scripts for developers.
>
> New parent scripts have just been added:
>
> *** Overlay contextual menu parent scripts !!!
> *** Overlay buttons parent scripts !!!
> *** Billboard parent script !!!
> Fog Tweening parent script.
> W3D Loader.
> XMLParsingReliable (handler callback after parsing)
>
> [url]http://membres.lycos.fr/karlsigiscar/shockwave3d[/url]
>
>
>

[Karl Sigiscar]

You're welcome.

On the Chrome Lib homepage, click on the screenshot on the right to
download.

The download link points to director3d.de and the version there has not been
updated yet. It will be tomorrow.

Cheers,
Karl.