for a better compilier, you might want to try PowerBasic -- It's not free, but it generates good code, and when it comes down to it, you can write your own inline asm for the loops if you need.

I would suggest, if I were you, to make a large "bitmap" and then use your own asm functions to blt your images to that, before doing the final bitBlt windows function. I don't know how fast that function would be if you wrote it in VB, seeing as there are no bit shifts, but it still *might* save you tons of time (and score hardcore points with your professor )

Clearly, your blt is the bottleneck, so I would optimize that...

P.S. MUL is not 50 cycles and LSL (which doesn't exist) is also not 5 cycles. mul is about 5-11 (depending on your processor) and shl (shift left register by immediate) is 1 cycle.

For a quick asm reference, you may want to check this gamedev article:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article208.asp
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=20#5

EDIT: lol, cancel that

[edited by - sophisticatedlimabean on November 13, 2003 4:06:45 PM]