Speeding up this handler

[Shari]

>On a different note, does your game require scrolling?  I'd be interested to
>know how your app performs when scrolling 99 objects.  I remember doing
>game/scrolling experiments years ago in SuperCard, and trying to move groups
>of image objects around inside a smaller window.  It worked, but the
>performance was nowhere near acceptable commercial game quality.  I wound up
>creating a "jump" treatment for the background: when a character moves from
>one screen to another, the background instantly updates with a new image, as
>opposed to continually scrolling the background to match the character's
>position.
>
>Regards,
>
>Scott Rossi

Scott,

Actually, I am following the standard that was set in Realmz and the 
Exile series of adventure games.  Where the "man" is the center of 
the map, and doesn't move.  As he "moves", the map changes to reflect 
where ever he is.  I wanted to avoid moving the man, and just 
changing the map when he moved to the edge into a new section.

The current 65 millisecond handler changes the map around the man as 
fast as I can move him, which was the goal.  It is visually 
instantaneous.

At one time, I had thought to have a very large stack (the size of 
the one I use to create the world, which fills my 21" screen).  And 
resize the stack to something small, with the rest of that section of 
the world hidden.  And I would have used scroll to move the man 
around.  This was my original plan.  Though I've not attempted it.  I 
thought to save memory, it would be best if the actual play screen 
map were much smaller.  The small game window stack will have about 
500 objects once it is done.  If I'd tried to have a big stack where 
most of it was hidden and use scroll, the game window stack would 
have about 5000 objects.  (In order to layer your objects, so that 
you can have a main terrain image, an overlay image such as a desk, 
or rug, or bookshelf, then another overlay image in case there is an 
item to be found, and another overlay image in case a monster exists 
there... you get the idea.  Many things can exist in the same space 
in this type of game.)

My map creator stack, which is huge, take up a big chunk of memory 
when it is running.  The stacks that I will use to create the game, 
and the stacks players will use to run the game, will be very 
different, the latter being much smaller and taking up much less 
memory (I hope).

The biggest test of all will be when each move sets the icon of about 
5 objects per square, or about 500 total objects, instead of the 100 
I am working with now.

Shari C
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