Animated Effects: method recommendations?

SDL Development
1

I have a game I am working on, its tile based. Its frame rate
independent (based on time instead) and runs pretty well right now at
~100 fps. So I have come to a point where I need to start thinking about
special effects, like people casting spells and other things. These
effects will most likely be made by a 3d app, and have a decent number
of frames to them (unlike my sprites which don’t have all that many
frames).

I was thinking that a video format might be the best option (video of
the effect over alpha), Or do you think I should stick with normal
animations from a software surface. Would this YUV overlay stuff benefit
me in this situation? The documentation doesn’t really say much about
what it is exactly. I don’t want my fps murdered by multiple effects
either I want my game to be playable on lower spec computers.–
Matt Pruett <@Matt_Pruett>

2

I was thinking that a video format might be the best option (video of
the effect over alpha), Or do you think I should stick with normal
animations from a software surface. Would this YUV overlay stuff benefit
me in this situation? The documentation doesn’t really say much about
what it is exactly. I don’t want my fps murdered by multiple effects
either I want my game to be playable on lower spec computers.

I don’t think you want a YUV overlay in this case.

However, you COULD encode the effects as some video format, decode it
frame-by-frame and blit it to a portion of the screen surface, just like
you currently do for your sprites that only have a few frames of
animation…the only difference is where you get the animation frames
from in the first place.

–ryan.