So we've managed to get rid of all background collision testing by storing an obstacle map on an array and checking actor positions based on it. We did have over a million collision checks per second with enemies testing for obstacles the conventional way. Now we're down to something like 10,000 collision checks a second. I was wondering, with this implement in place, what would be the best we could hope for with framerate (if everything is optimized as much as possible) on an average computer in a resolution of 640x480 with 250 32x32 enemies on screen moving around and such at once. I only get around 20FPS when all these enemies are on screen and my hardware on my computer isn't really weak to say the least. I tested it on my netbook and it was a solid 1 FPS constantly, and thus, unplayable.
Just an update, I tried installing the newest beta driver and my FPS shot up by roughly 10 but I still think it could increase more somehow and I'm still worried about average computers trying to run it.