I apologize in advance if this question has been asked a lot. Right now I have a 2-D rendering engine using the ID3DXSprite interface of DX8. I want to try using a vertex buffer to render textured quads, instead of using the ID3DXSprite. I can render one quad on the screen so far, but I''m not sure how to go about rendering multiple sprites (thousands, actually) without locking/unlocking the buffer at least once per frame. I have played around with transforming the world matrix, but that doesn''t seem to be what I want. I am unsure as to how to proceed. Does anyone have any tips/example code/links to useful threads? Thanks, Mike

Any thoughts?

I believe that if you don''t want to lock the vertex buffer at all, you only choices are to just rerender each object with a different world transform applied (which it sounds like you tried) or to use a vertex shader that applies the transform.. bu that requires at least a geforce3, and some knowledge of writing shaders.

I can'' think of any other way, but then again, I''m new to this too.

-andy

What do all of you people have with dynamic VBs? They are just fine, ya know!

So my suggestion is to learn to use dynamic VBs ( to which you rewrite everything every frame ). There''s a lot on that on nVidia developer site: developer.nvidia.com.

Because really, it''s a lot more optimal than drawing 4 triangles in a call using matrices and static VBs. A LOT more.


Uttar

So how much of a performance loss would I incur for locking/unlocking the VB once each frame? That would be sufficient for what I want to do. Is that what you are referring to when you say dynamic VBs, Uttar?

My goal is to get my game to run well on a Voodoo3. I''m not sure if that will be possible, but right now I''m assuming it is (so no vertex shaders, etc.).

-Mike