Before people ask about SB Load, here is a quick rundown:
2D games are usually limited in performance by how much they draw to the screen. The more transparency involved in a scene, the more times a pixel needs to be drawn. For instance, if you have a fully opaque background, and then draw a triangle over it, the pixels with the triangle need to be drawn twice to account for any blending. Not only this, but the fully transparent pixels in the triangle's image (the ones you can't see) also cause the pixels to be drawn again, even though they are doing nothing it still adds load to your graphics card.
The SB Load multiplier shows you how many times the full osu! screen area is being drawn to by your storyboard + background elements. For instance, if you have a single 1024x768 background, this number will read 1x (i call this 1x overdraw). If you have a fullscreen sprite drawing over this, it will become 2x, etc.
I am going to say for now that you generally want to aim for a number below 5x. The SB Load indicator will turn red if you exceed this. This target may change over time as PC specs increase, but let's go with this for now. If you are exceeding this, consider the following tips:
2D games are usually limited in performance by how much they draw to the screen. The more transparency involved in a scene, the more times a pixel needs to be drawn. For instance, if you have a fully opaque background, and then draw a triangle over it, the pixels with the triangle need to be drawn twice to account for any blending. Not only this, but the fully transparent pixels in the triangle's image (the ones you can't see) also cause the pixels to be drawn again, even though they are doing nothing it still adds load to your graphics card.
The SB Load multiplier shows you how many times the full osu! screen area is being drawn to by your storyboard + background elements. For instance, if you have a single 1024x768 background, this number will read 1x (i call this 1x overdraw). If you have a fullscreen sprite drawing over this, it will become 2x, etc.
I am going to say for now that you generally want to aim for a number below 5x. The SB Load indicator will turn red if you exceed this. This target may change over time as PC specs increase, but let's go with this for now. If you are exceeding this, consider the following tips:
- Make sure you aren't displaying almost-invisible layers (make sure their alpha is 0 when not needed).
- Split up any images that have huge amounts of transparent pixels in between actually visible portions where possible
- Combine layers into a single image where possible using graphics editing software.