Is it bad to create lots of rects?

[HeathLocke 0]

I'm editing a script (releasing soon!) and I want to tile some pictures together. The same picture could be repeated like, from 64 times to more than 200. It should be a 32x32 picture, but I wonder if would be bad to create one rect for every picture, because maybe it could cause performance problems or something like that.

By creating a bitmap/rect I mean (and would probably do) something like this:

#the x and y would be passed on a for loop
bitmap = RPG::Cache.picture("picture")
rect = Rect.new(x, y, bitmap.width, bitmap.height
self.contents.blt(0, 0, bitmap, rect)

So, should I do it like this? Or is there any way to clone a picture or something like that? I haven't got time to look at the stock scripts to see if they have something like this but I plan on doing that tomorrow.

Thanks in advance for your attention!

Edited July 27, 2014 by HeathLocke

[dolarmak 23]

wouldn't it just be easier to assemble them in a painting program and the display one larger image, and just have a few with the minor changes you need?

 

and with that many images yes it will slow the fps considerably.

[HeathLocke 0]

I had thought about that, but the sizes would be user adjusted and I didn't wanted to require the user to edit the background images, if possible.

But you gave me an idea, I could try making one image screen sized and then just adjust the rect so it crops the rest. I'll give that a try and report back.

[Heretic86 25]

In my experience with scripting so far, what causes the most drain on resources is the Redraw. Once a graphic is made, it can be left alone and not redrawn unless altered in some way. Redrawing each and every frame 20, 40, or 60 times a second, that will murder performance. It can be checked with Update, then if it is different, then do a Redraw.

[HeathLocke 0]

Well, it worked! I'm using a 640x480 picture and then adjusting the rect size as I need. Here is a code snippet for future reference:

bitmap = RPG::Cache.picture("pic")
self.contents.blt(0, 0, bitmap, Rect.new(0, 0, gridWidth, gridHeight))

I'll mark dolarmark's answer as solved since it answers the thread question.

 

@Heretic86: That's good to know, thanks! In this code I don't think there are any redraws but I hope I'll remember to check if they're altered on future scripts.

[Moonpearl 32]

To answer the original question in case someone still wondered about it, Rects are just RGSS objects which serve as a reference to identify a region in a picture - i.e. it's essentially an array containing a x, y, width and height values and nothing more, no actual graphic processing is involved in the making of a Rect object nor in its use. So you're basically asking if it's bad to create a lot of arrays, and the answer is: not in itself, but it might be if you can handle things differently. For example, if I understand HearthLocke's situation correctly, gridWidth and gridHeight are constants, so he's actually making hundreds of duplicates of an object which hold exactly the same information, whereas he could use just a single one.

 

Using this:

RECT_GRID = Rect.new(0, 0, gridWidth, gridHeight)

Then calling blits with:

self.contents.blt(0, 0, bitmap, RECT_GRID)

should work just fine, and avoids creating thousands of useless objects which need to be garbage collected later.