Shapes or bitmaps?

[AnatolParticipant]

Hi! Just a quick question, in terms of performance (especially Android and iOS), would I rather use shapes (DrawRect etc.) where I can or bitmaps? In my Javascript game dev work bitmaps tend to perform much better, but for Monkey2 and mobile targets I don’t know. Or if bitmaps are better, is there a way to cache the shapes in runtime as bitmaps?

Thanks!

[PakzParticipant]

I have no idea about performance. But it is possible to draw shapes in images that you can create. As far as I know every shape command can be used inside images. You can then use drawimage to draw these images.

[JesseParticipant]

Being that the language is so new and not thoroughly tested, Can you just create some test to determine what is faster?

I suspect that DrawRect is faster than Drawing a bitmap since each pixel is not scanned for color content.

I usually don’t test to see which is faster but just test if what I am doing is fast enough for my purpose. if it is, I stick with it else I find an alternative if possible.

On my game that I am making “Mission patrol” I use DrawPoly and is fast enough to draw all of the backgrounds of the game so I never bother to test if drawing images is faster.

[Mark SiblyKeymaster]

If you’re just drawing rectangular shapes, there’s likely to be little to no difference speedwise. Unless your trying to draw a gazillion things, I’d stick with images just ‘coz they’re simpler and more flexible, ie: you can draw anything you want!

Have a look at the rendertoimage banana for a simple example of how to pre-render shapes to an image.

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