ENIGMA Development Environment

Hello there, guys. I have a question regarding the ENIGMA funcionality about graphics.

If you find any leak of information, please advice me. For I'm what I have learned from experience and not reading books, I may be wrong in many, many ways...

You see, I've noticed that when you go into a sprite/background properties, there's an indicator called "Memory", next to "Zoom" and "Height". I want to figure out what does it really mean, and what's its impact in the use of computer resources.
From deduction, I'm thinking this refers to the amount of video memory usage done by that one graphical resource.

This should tell me that the best method to save VRAM is to avoid huge images. In the case of backgrounds; trying to use tile-able ones (this is my current). For instance, the least video memory-consuming background (besides single colors) would be a 1px-wide gradient.
However, repeating the background drawing "screen-width" times should have a negative effect in the processor side; more operations per second.

There's this other method, which would be using more hard drive space and video memory, but as I'm concerned using less processor as well. It's the background image being as big as the screen size. It only needs to be drawn once per frame, but it would relay on more video memory, since it needs to be allocated for a fast read.


These are my conclusions. Can you tell me if I'm right about all of this? Is it really a good idea to keep my backgrounds as reducted as possible?
Thanks in advance.

PIT² is a platform game I'm currently developing under ENIGMA.

I released a little preview of the game.
It's in a very early state, but it's playable.

You can download it here.



You can also see screenshots of how it progresses over time.


May 3: The very first tileset I ever made, some spriting and the basics of gameplay coding.


May 4: Set my color palette to Atari. GIMP simplifies a bit my job, since it helps a lot with auto-dithering.


May 9: Done loads of research, worked on my school side, and then came back to this. I'll be working on a Sega Mega Drive/Genesis ambient: 320x224 screen, using a 512 colors palette, with a 64 screen color limit (I don't know if I'll be able to accomplish that limit thing), and 50fps (there's no real reason for this framerate, I simply like it). Also, made a new gradient, nearly from scratch. I put real effort on it and took great amounts of time, but it came out good enough to my likings! Also, incomplete new tileset because the old was too hard to draw and keep track on its color count without looking terribad.


May 13: Not something to show, but to say. Yesterday and today I've been working, arranging the first game obstacles and gimmicks (which are basic power-ups).

May 18: First public release. It's a very basic game, but it's progressing and I think I'll get something good out of it. Worked out a signboards system to help understand the gameplay.

May 20: Messed up some more with coding and got a new object working, finally: platforms.

I don't find the logo amusing to look at, at all. You should think of a new design, or find a way to improve the current one. That's my opinion.

I used to have Ubuntu as OS here, but as as a gamer I couldn't keep myself playing games at -20FPS, or not being even able to play some of them...
However I did like the system and maybe I'll be back in the future.
By now, Windows 7 is my only alternative; I just can't like 8.

Woah, that's so ridiculously messy.
Thanks for your hard work anyway, mate; keep it up!

Uhmmm, before the update, those buttons were "working" (they didn't do anything, but they were clickable at least).

@Ben, its not buggy, you have to restart after changing the themes

Darn...
Thanks, man

... Ben, I don't know how you did that, but I thought I never added that functionality o_O for me the image editor just loads paint dot net.

That's weird; for me it used to load the default MSPaint...
This works as much for GIMP or any other image editing software than PaintDotNet (I say so because I tested it).

Robert: That is part of LGM's original functionality. I have no idea what compelled you to map that properties file to a UI dialog without mentioning, "by the way, %s indicates the filename and, odds are, your program will want to know that."

Thanks for sharing, Ben.

Yeah, I read about the %s parameter somewhere and figured out how to use this thing, though I don't remember where I did.
I think someone wrote it within these forums