   Huge performance gain using D3DXSprite
  Hi all. I am making a 2D scroller game where a space ships shoots at some bad guys . I decided to switch from DirectDraw to Direct3D. I am using D3DXSprite. I was very surprised to see that with D3D my fps skyrocket.In may game I use a star field for a backgound. It is nothing more than a "few" bitmaps (stars) going down the screen thus creating the effect that the players ship moves up(forward). I can change the star count at runtime and watch what happens to the fps.I increased the count for the both versions of the game until a frame rate of 30fps was reached and here''s what I get:DirectDraw : 2600 stars @30fps (Color Key)Direct3D   : 37000 stars @30fps (Alpha)That is 14 times faster. And that is with no specific Direcrt 3D optimization at all. Just ported the 2d to 3d. And with 3D you get all kind of cool features such as alpha and smooth scaling and it is still faster.I used to hate the idea to use Direct 3D for 2D Games but it rocks man 
  How about a demo?  Don''t forget that there are cards out there that don''t have good 3d acceleration.  In those cases the DirectDraw version is likely to be faster.  It''s getting to be less of an issue, but still a consideration. ;  Oh yes. I am have an ATI RADEON 9600XT. Anyway even a slower 3d Acc. will be faster than the 2d I think. Not 14 times but enough to be well worth it...About that demo... I''ll see what I can do. I''ll post a link soon(I hope). ;  Oh yes. I am have an ATI RADEON 9600XT. Anyway even a slower 3d Acc. will be faster than the 2d I think. Not 14 times but enough to be well worth it...About that demo... I''ll see what I can do. I''ll post a link soon(I hope). ;  I put a demo at http://djwild.hit.bg/demo.rar (883k). But I can't download it now. Maybe it will be available later. If you too can't download it please tell me. Also tell me a good place to host this file. Or I can mail it to somebody so he can upload it. I really hope the link works.EDIT: I've just dolwnloaded the file. Only it is a bit strange. I am using Flashget and the file comes with the name "440". Don't mind just rename this to "440.rar" and unrar. Also the site may report and 440 Error but don't worry the file is there. If you still can't download it tell me.Sorry for all the crap! I am no good at uploading files  [edited by - djwild on February 10, 2004 4:33:31 PM]