| bdbdbd said: @SamuelRSmith: What you basically are meaning is, that the more built-in hardware features there is, the less you need to write code for it? Since outside data compressing that's the only way i can see the save in space required (and of course, more powerful processor decompresses faster). |
Yeah, the more powerful the hardware, the less space is required. What I mean about procedural graphics is that instead of storing a texture file, you store the commands needed to render a texture file.
I don't know how far your understanding of bitmapped graphics go, but essentially, it's done by storing the colour of each individual picture.
If, for example, you had a 32*32 pixel graphic, and it's broken into four squares of individual colour (each square being 8*8). A bitmap would need to store information on 1,024 pixels - which would require 8,192 bits (assuming 8bits per pixel which is what is required for 256 colour) which is 1mb (1,024 bytes)
Now, instead of having 1mb used up storing this graphic, you could just store an algorithm which says "render a square of 8*8 in colour A, then colour B, colour C and colour D" - which would save space.
This really starts to add up when you start taking more complex textures into consideration.
