Game Performance Optimizing?

[Periculi]

I am curious about what strategies I can use when designing large mods. I read that globals can become problems for performance, and realized that I have been using a lot of globals functions to do things that may be better implemented from a different local approach.

For instance- is it better to place all the code to create a list in the custom picker in the screen or use globals?

If I have 40 functions in <Globals> are they a drag to performance?

How much of an impact do design elements themselves have? If a station or a dockscreen isn't being used in the current system is it in the memory taking up resources still? Does typGetGlobalData just look up the design element in memory or on disk?

I had read that systems are stored on disk when not in use, but we still can store and get data on the system- is this looking in a stored file? Or is that data in the memory still?

Another question I have is about Images- can I use loadOnUse for any image? If I had 5 or 10 times as many ship graphics to use, would the game load all of those images or only the images for the objects in the current system?

If an object has a lot of image variants are they all loaded?

Could I get some general guidelines for optimizing mods?

I plan to add a lot of new content- especially new graphics, but I want to avoid creating monsters that can't be played. Any advice on optimizing would really be helpful.

[Arisaya]

don't worry about images. You could have a 512x512 ship with 360 facings and the lag would be imperceptible. (It is imperative you do this in jpb 100% obviously. bmp are simply too large)

There IS a function limit apparently since I got an error when trying to create a bunch of types of ships and assign each group to a single squadron leader- I ended up having to give each it's own group leader in the end- otherwise the game simple wouldn't spawn them.

[Periculi]

I am asking about managing memory- each single little global doesn't of itself cause a noticeable problem, but when stacked together they can, for instance.

I am curious about how image variants are handled more than anything else. You don't see a lot of image variants on ships, Wolfy.

And, how do you know it doesn't cause a lag on other systems?

[Arisaya]

I am asking about managing memory- each single little global doesn't of itself cause a noticeable problem, but when stacked together they can, for instance.

I am curious about how image variants are handled more than anything else. You don't see a lot of image variants on ships, Wolfy.

And, how do you know it doesn't cause a lag on other systems?

I have a "crap"top- it's basically my really bad laptop...
I play transcendence on there too.

I believe image variants are simply images that occur below the facings*imageY section. They'd all have to have the same number of facings obviously.