Vector graphics?

[Caydr]

Any plans to support SVG or any other vector graphics formats in the future, for buildpics, unit icons, etc?

[Neddie]

Sha-bump.

[Master-Athmos]

What would be the main advantages? I don't see any real one besides a slightly smaller modfile size...

[Neddie]

Less distortion on image scaling, though as discussed there might be an additional computational load.

[Agon]

Unlimited zoom with out this ?bridge effect?.
Faster than pixel stuff. Looks better for icons. Fits better in different resolutions.
Dynamic changing of the 'picture' (Moving, coloring vectors).

[Master-Athmos]

Would those SVGs really remain vectors? Wouldn't it be utterly slow like having a dozen buildpics on screen and each of them would have to be repainted every frame (especially as I guess the CPU "draws" it rather than the GPU)?

I'd have thought the respective files would get drawn into a bitmap when initializing the engine and that's it. Sure would be more dynamical than having one big sized bitmap in the first place (as depending on the settings it would just have to be as big as needed) and so some scaling might work better than stretching a bitmap although with giving a rather big one imo the results would be quite the same...

[Neddie]

In some cases, such as buildpics, they would be rendered once upon initialization, while with others, like icons, they would scale dynamically or at discreet changes in zoom, rerendering as necessary.

[Master-Athmos]

Ok so unitpics really would get "rendered" and saves into a bitmap at startup. So why not having those as bitmap in the first place?

In case of the unit icons (you mean radar icons right?) - is that really a good option performance wise? I can't really believe that hundreds of on-screen vector icons will be possible at a decent performance (while the entire other stuff is going on)...

When doing the icon system for MA I also met no real shortcomings when using bitmaps - they all look fine to me...

[Neddie]

Because being able to size them to match any particular resolution and button set will render better results across a range of computers.

As for unit icons, it depends on the sensitivity for rerender and which units use them. It can be useful, particularly for units which can change altitude, depth, or size via lua. It would seldom be a superior default behaviour.

[smoth]

can we have scaled loading pictures...?