Strategies for Reducing VRAM Usage?

[antime]

The frames will probably compress very well even using a simple scheme like RLE. Most of the pixels will also stay the same between frames, so you could use delta encoding as well.

 

[XL2]

Do you know if anything else is using LWRAM? If not I will go ahead and extend my jo_engine heap to use it as well.

Regarding using 3d for the pipe, I like the idea but I believe it will be above my ability to get it working before the end of the contest (~6 weeks).

It shouldn't be hard at all to do it in 3d. You just need to create one half pipe section in say blender, use a converter (like my own) and just reuse the same model to the length of the "map" by simply using matrix translates. You could even do it with untextured quads and manualy create your vertices and polygons.

 

[slinga]

I implemented a technique to stream the pipe images from RAM to VRAM one a time as needed. It seems to be efficient enough to do this on a per frame basis. Doing this combined with extending the heap with jo_add_memory_zone() seemed to do the trick.

It shouldn't be hard at all to do it in 3d. You just need to create one half pipe section in say blender, use a converter (like my own) and just reuse the same model to the length of the "map" by simply using matrix translates. You could even do it with untextured quads and manualy create your vertices and polygons.

I understood a few of those words lol. Maybe for the 30th anniversary contest.

I really do appreciate all the great advice you and Antime have given me. Thanks again.