   Rotating sprites
  I have a rpg game with sprites. Its completely top down so every sprite will look the same in all directions, just rotated. So when I draw the sprites, they're going to face downwards (south) and then I rotate them in the program. The method Im going to use for the rotation is the rotozoomer found here: http://www.ferzkopp.net/Software/SDL_gfx-2.0/Now... That thing supports free rotation but Im just going to rotate in the basic four directions, up down left right. How fast do you think that is? You think Im fine if I keep the animated sprite always facing south in the animation std::map and rotate it in the direction the sprite is facing when its drawn? Or, the faster  variant, when the sprite is loaded, ever animation bmp is copied, and rotated, four times and then saved into the animation std::map? And if I do that, I just add a little _n _s _w _e on the end of the animation name to be able to seperate them.The sprites are 16 x 16 pixels in size. Which way will be the best?   
  With images that small, the performance hit is going to be tiny either way.  I would recommend storing only one image and rotating it just before you draw it.~BenDilts( void );   ;  My opinion: Use rotated bitmaps.I've found with DirectDraw that the fastest way to have rotated objects is to manually rotate the bitmap for every angle that you need. Its kind of a pain, but I'd rather let adobe photoshop do the few seconds of processing it takes to compute the new rotated pixels then to have the game spend cycles processing what a rotated bitmap would look like.I'm sure its much different with Direct3D where you can just rotate a plane with a textured bitmap, which would make things much easier.   ;  OK here's what I also desperately want to know !!In photoshop when i prerotate an spite it's all antialiased , which is a pain , because now i have to go and erase and the "fluff" all around the bitmap for my tranparency to be perfect.What program can i use to rotate something without it be antialiased ?PUH-LEASE!!   ;  use the normal canvas rotate thing.But you can also write a little function which rotates the images after loading and then the rotated images are kept in memory (saves cpu time when the game is running)Wrote a similar function for my game and its loading very fast so that shouldnt be a problem.All you need are the 2 Pixelacces functions (can be found in the SDL wiki)   ;  It won't hurt to check out The Gimp.  Its free and its great!   ;  Set your image mode to Indexed color instead of RGB. Chances are you won't need more than 256 colors for your 16x16 sprites. (actually you really won't because there are only 256 pixels total!) With Indexed Color mode, you can stretch, rotate and skew without anti-aliasing the picture.   ;Quote:Original post by Just ChrisSet your image mode to Indexed color instead of RGB. Chances are you won't need more than 256 colors for your 16x16 sprites. (actually you really won't because there are only 256 pixels total!) With Indexed Color mode, you can stretch, rotate and skew without anti-aliasing the picture.you dont need to use indexed mode to rotate without antialiasing.   ;  oh ! I never thought about pre-rotating it INGAME !cool , i`ll do that ! thanks for tip !   