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With all the optimizations to the game physics engine done and all I think it's time to look back at the graphics components.
It's not the first time I've suggested this and it may not matter for vanilla and for most mods.
But I'm certain it is needed and has its uses.
In order to reuse sprites and in order to compose graphics it had been necessary to use many graphics components. The main reason being the limited number of subgraphics components.
One reason is that sprites cannot be rotated to a certain angle by themselves and have to use a whole graphic component for that.
Another reason is the limited number of layers and undesired overlap.
I think it's best to combine a list-like solution for chaining custom subgraphics components or groups of sprites that can be merged or flatten according to their order to the desired layer.
Of course this suggestion aims to not increase memory usage while hoping not to impact processing and causing more lag but make things run faster.

  • Walt

  • Post #2

Lafiel One reason is that sprites cannot be rotated to a certain angle by themselves and have to use a whole graphic component for that.

This is probably pretty easy to support. Added to my list.

Lafiel Another reason is the limited number of layers

Why can't you just add more layers?

Lafiel merged or flatten according to their order to the desired layer.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Are you saying that the layer for a sprite should be determined automatically? I don't think this is possible.

          Walt More layers can have big impacts when more ship classes come into play.

          I imagine it to be something like this

          Graphics
{
	Type = Graphics
	Location = [1, 1]
	Compound1
	{
		Layer = "floors"
		Offset = [0.5, 0.5]
		DamageLevels
		[
			{
				File = "floor01.png"
				Size = [2, 2]
			}
		]
		DamageLevels
		[
			{
				File = "floor02.png"
				Size = [1, 1]
				Offset = [0.5, -0.5]
			}
		]
	}
}

            • Walt

            • Post #4

            Lafiel Allowing a list of sprites within a single Graphics component is probably easy enough, I'll add it to my list. Auto-assigning to ship layers is not possible.

              Walt That's fine the list alone is a huge help.

              It would be ideal to have the sprite list-elements able to inherit the sprite codes from text files (which may have animation code).

                  a year later

                  So as discussed about decals on discord, it would be nice to have a more fine grained rotation option for sprites, too.

                    • Walt

                    • Post #7

                    Lafiel Not sure what you're referring to.

                        Walt A graphics component has Rotation for setting a certain degree.
                        When composing it forces you to use one graphics component for each sprite for each different angle. So having a feature that works for sub graphics components would allow multiple to be used within one graphics components .

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