As the title says.
One of the last things i still have to do for my game alpha demo and at the same time one of the most importand things i have to learn to control are all kinds of beams.
The beam i am currently using for my needs is 768/128. You see its quite long but laos quite thin. From what i remember this 768/128 uses the RAM amount of if it would be 768/768 which is a waste. So i thought to split this sprite into 6 x 128/128 ones to save RAM.
But em i right? Will this help in anything? Correct me please.
A texture will use the next 2^n size, but doesn't need to be squared. For 128 that's 128 (2^7), but for 768 it's 1024 (2^10, 2^9=512).
Your texture would consume VRAM for a 1024x128 texture, which is 0.5 MB.
6 textures with the size 128x128 will consume 0.375 MB of VRAM, plus a little more overhead in RAM, because it is 6 objects instead of one.
That's not much to save, but if you are using dozens of beam objects (not instances) it could help saving VRAM.
But if those beams change size, angle, etc, it does not help, because calculating 6 objects costs more processor time than one object.
Have you thought of using the tiled background object with a repeating pattern of your beam?
If the details of your beam can be stretched on one axis while keeping the detail on the other, the panel object is also an alternative.