Ignite

I’m not good at annotations and in english, so there will be only a useful tips. All of this has been discovered through the development process of my roguelike game – Ignite.

1. Use next combination of parameters:

CompositingQuality.HighSpeed and SmoothingMode.None will give you 1-2 fps.

TextRenderingHint.SingleBitPerPixel I don`t think that any fps improvement can be achieved by this parameter. TextRenderingHint.SingleBitPerPixel will make your fonts to look crapy.

2. While double buffer – apply parameters from above to main buffer too. This will give you a good improvement.

3. Do not use Graphics.DrawImageUnscalled(…)! Instead use Graphics.DrawImage(Image, Point, Size) OR even Graphics.DrawImage(Image, Point). Make sure that dpi resolution of your image are same as resolution of your layer.

4. Always use 32bit (PixelFormat.32bppPArgb) images for maximum drawing speed of your application. You can convert to 32 bit image runntime using this code:

// Convert to 32bppPArgb for speed.

// = 32 bits per pixel, premultiplied alpha

if (sourceImage.PixelFormat != PixelFormat.Format32bppPArgb)

{     

SImage original = sourceImage;     

SImage backImage = new Bitmap(original.Width, original.Height, PixelFormat.Format32bppPArgb);      using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(backImage))

      g.DrawImage(original, new Rectangle(0, 0, original.Width, original.Height));      

sourceImage = backImage;     

original.Dispose();

}

Make sure thal all your surfaces(main surface, double buffer etc.) are 32bppPArgb too.

By changing image PixelFormat i went from 20 fps to 65 in my application.

6. If you have something that is invisible to player – do not draw it!

7. Do not rotate or scale images at runtime. If you need to, try to do it in another thread.

8. Do not draw a part of an image. If you want to animate some image, have a new image for every frame.

9. When you get tired with “GDI+ perfomance” use directX or OpenGL for your projects (: