Using an overlay wouldn't work very well since it would slide around with the player instead of staying stationary where the building or whatever is.Yea it would slide around with the player but you can't notice it because the overlay and the mob's icon are the same.I ll demonstrate it with the release of my game. ;)
And the transparency should apply to any turf or turf-type objects that are above layer 5, shouldn't matter if they're a .png or not.o.O, I guess it was my mis-observation, cause I didn't see the effect with the Hercule City Walls.
My system shouldn't be causing any lag at all really. Except for a few seconds at start up when it has to load everything. The in-game lag from it is caused by BYOND be too retarded to render alpha efficiently, and would happen regardless.
I guess you didn't get me,Your system should be very good but with BYOND, its kinda in-game-laggy.I ll tell you why I say that(it may/may_not be true) -DS will have to render alpha for the many turfs that you place.but on the other system it will have to render alpha only for the mobs in the game which is very small in number as compared to the number of turfs.The more the alpha content needed to show the more CPU it needs.
However this is just my guess-work.For more detailed information I need to consult the BYOND Devs.
I could create objects all the time and set them up, but that would be rather inefficient. All of the icon procs run horribly, so constantly creating new transparent ones would just be a massive waste of CPU.
And the transparency should apply to any turf or turf-type objects that are above layer 5, shouldn't matter if they're a .png or not.
My system shouldn't be causing any lag at all really. Except for a few seconds at start up when it has to load everything. The in-game lag from it is caused by BYOND be too retarded to render alpha efficiently, and would happen regardless.