How to produce FAST 2D hi-res scrolling engine ?
In software... Yes i think so though im not all that sure(almost all cards support accelerated blitting).
I have a tile engine using 64x64 tiles. I have a old vodoo rush hercules stingray with 6mb of memory(4mb in 2d). I get 75 fps in 640x480x16,800x600x16,and probally at 1024x786(dont know cant run the mode because i have my refresh rate for all modes locked to 75hz and 1024x786 doesnt support it).
I use directx and flipping (with vsync/wait)
I place both the back buffer and primary surface in vid mem(which only takes like 1.8mb video mem in 640x480x16). Right now all my tiles are in system memory(including some animation for a character).
As far as opengl goes ( i know it supports 2d)but i didnt think it was really made for or great for 2d?
I'm very new over here, but I think that I'm going to be using LOTS of time with you guys 
I started designing my own game, which supposed to be very "hardcore" design:
Fast speed without 3D-acc.
Then I started to collect my team up, and right now game has been under design for about half year.
Originally we started to create 2D- tile engine & mapeditor, but then we got problem:
Game didn't look great, mostly because of the lack of resolution (320 x 200). We were thinking that we could make fast (30fps atleast) scrolling engine for 640x480 WITH 16bit colors, but it seems to be that we were "wron". After couple of months, without doing almost anything for project, we started to dream about getting 3D-acceleratioin for help:
Quake & friends are very fast "scrolling" games, and what we were thinking, because of 3D-acceleration.
First we were thinking about adding just OPENGL & Direct-X API to speed the graphics, but then we started to dream full
3D-world... and now... and noww.... I'm dreaming about going back to original idea:
Fast (30 fps) scrolling engine for 640x480 16bit colors.
IS THIS "IMPOSSIBLE" to create ?
Jazz Jack Rabbit 2 did use this resolution and colors (I think), and some other games, Doom ect. can actually draw graphics pretty fast to screen... How is the code optimized ? We have been using Allegro, and we were thinking that Allegro's code is already very fast, but we couldn't figure out how to get smoot 640x480 with rainbow colors...
I have asked this question from many places half year ago, and no one gave me answer... Maybe I have better luck this time 
Thank You
