Query about laggy

[geniephics]

Hi,

Currently my HUD is using a whole screen transparent windows and then attach all the menu into the transparent windows.
for example:

--------------------------
| OO |
| OO |
| |
| |
| |
| OO |
--------------------------

My whole screen is a transparent window. then the 'O' is my menu.
My question, will this actually cause lagness to my game?
And when i hide the whole screen, will it lag too?

[CrazyEddie]

Hi,

I think it's an impossible question to answer.

Technically a transparent window should cost you nothing (although a recent thread here seems to indicate otherwise - I still have to look into that a bit closer). How much time everything else will cost you will depend upon the make-up of the items that you're rendering and how often you cause them to be invalidated and require a full redraw; a button / menu item consisting of a single image will be much cheaper than the same built up of nine images with text. Then you also have the question of the hardware it's running on; it could be fine on some systems and run like a dog on lower-end systems.

IMO there is no simple answer to the question "will it cause lag"

CE

[earthsruler]

More code executing = more processing time = more "lag"

So by some accounts yes it will lag.

However there is a simple solution; Don't run any code! I get such great FPS in my blank screen game .

If you want an interface and want to limit lag, simply do as CE said and carefully manage how much is on the screen at once and use simple widgets.

ER.

[Pompei2]

It will lag if the "transparent background" of your transparent windows is something like one transparent pixel tiled all over the screen. This would cause for example 1280x1024 single quads which is slow.

If instead of this, if the background is something like one transparent pixel stretched all over the screen, this will not cause lagg.

So my hint: in your looknfeel tiles, prefer using "stretched" then "tiled" propreties