Type | Size of an unmasked 16x16 grayscale sprite | Additional memory usage | Best choice for | Bench (my TI-89 HW2 calculator, reset settings, timings based on AI5 ticks and rounded to the nearest hundredth) - see demo20 and demo21 |
Normal non-interlaced sprites | 2*32 bytes | 0 bytes | most games, including not so simple platformers and sidescrollers (Phoenix Platinum, Monster, Venus are sprite-based) | usually as fast as normal interlaced sprites (except MASK, which is slower - interlaced MASK are equivalent to non-interlaced SMASK) |
Normal interlaced sprites | 64 bytes | 0 bytes | most games, including not so simple platformers and sidescrollers (Phoenix Platinum, Monster, Venus are sprite-based) | normal 16x16 gray clipped interlaced sprite routine with 2x2 loops (special version of GrayClipISprite16, not inclued: this was done in order to make a fairer comparison, given that the loops in the preshifted sprite functions are completely unrolled): more than 4500 sprites/sec |
Tiles (interlaced or non-interlaced) | 2*32 or 64 bytes | 0 bytes | in conjunction with Scroll... and FastCopyScreen, background of sidescrollers like Phoenix (& Phoenix Platinum), Krypton, Venus; simple strategy games (although sprite functions are often much better since they are much more flexible) | as fast as or faster than completely preshifted sprites |
Semi-preshifted sprites | 64 bytes | 1024 bytes for each sprite (to preshift the sprite) | "always redraw everything" (can be not so smart) | semi-preshifted 16x16 gray non-clipped sprite routine: around 7500 sprites/sec |
Completely preshifted sprites | 64 bytes | 2048 bytes for each sprite (to preshift the sprite) | "always redraw everything" (can be not so smart) | completely preshifted 16x16 gray non-clipped sprite routine (not inclued since a single such sprite takes 2 KB !): at least 8500 sprites/sec |
Tilemap engine | 64 bytes | large backbuffers (5440 bytes per plane) | complex RPGs, platformers for current version; Beta 4 adds support for still tiles (simplified SimCity, Command And Conquer...). Future versions should add support for animated tiles | N/A |