what should I keep my VRAM usage at

I was looking all around the forums-- and yes, everyone says to keep an eye on your vram-- but nobody says what to keep it at or under-- what does everyone else try to shoot for?

That's something i'd like to know, too. I mean, with my game I'm working on, I have roughly 130 objects on the screen, plus Music and SFX, and my VRAM usually is about 10.33 MB or lower...

I don't know if that's too high, or dandy, or whatever.

Most gamers, have at least 256 mb of vram, but if you want to be even safer maybe 128mb.

Steams hardware survey will help give an idea.

It also kinda depends also what crowd you're aiming at as well - for example, the computers the casual game crowd have tend to have less vram. A lot of integrated cards use system ram as vram though, so vram isn't really an issue for those even though they're generally not very powerful.

Basically, yeah, 128 is a good amount to shoot for. I don't think it's necessary anymore but 64 is really the minimum you should bother try for if you want to be sure older computers can play it too. Keep aware that other things like the operating system have to use vram at the same time, though so you might not have a full 128mb to use on a 128mb card!

Phew! That's a relief-- the level leading up to my first boss battle used 9.55mb-- but then I added all my boss sprites and animations and it jumped up to 30mb and I was getting worried!