mrimer wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean regarding compression here, but DROD recognizes use of JPGs and PNGs for custom room images. A high-detail image at decent JPG quality filling an entire room area takes up <100kB.
I know DROD stores images in their original compressed formats in the hold files and in the database, but I was talking about what happens when DROD wants to use the images. It has to decompress them first. However, I did some testing and found out that this is only a problem in the editor (adding a new image eats additional megabytes of RAM for each image!), and not while playing the game (entering a room with a full-screen custom image does eat ~2 mb, but images aren't cached like I for some reason thought they were (kinda stupid now that I think about it), so this goes away when you enter an image-less room). So, er, never mind about the RAM usage
. (Well, except in the editor..)
Anyway, another plus of multiple custom images per room that I didn't mention above is convenience, or ease of use. If an architect wants to move two custom images in a room relative to each other, he/she currently has to switch to an image editor, change the image there and save it, switch back to DROD, import and assign the new image, and delete the old one. Moving things around (maybe just to see how they would look) becomes a hassle.
With that, I think I'm out of arguments, so I'll shut up now
~ Gerry