Do MC's that aren't visible create lag?

[nick616]

My game has lots of parts of the enemies all initially set with visible = false in one MC to create lots of variations by mixing and matching what becomes visible.

But before I get to far, I'm worried that this idea is flawed.

If, for example, MC's ManHead1 - ManHead10 are orginally set to not be visible, and I set the property of one element such as ManHead1 to visible, will Flash load those other (invisible) MC's? If so, I'd essentially be calling for all the variations of each enemy with each appearance, right?

I have a grid of 56 enemies and don't want to slow down the game. Is there a better option available? (Attach or something else? I'm not sure how to align images with Attach.)

Thanks so much for any insight you can offer!

[DancingOctopus]

If you're running code on the enemies, they may create lag, especially if you have a lot of them, but since the render ignores anything that isn't actually on screen or with _visible = false, you should be right.

[renderhjs]

look for bitmap data or blitting (also blobs = blitting bitmaps) in this forum. Those can raelly speed up things for you if you only apply moving transformations (.e.g placement). Though you need Flash 8 for this

[MD004]

It might be more convenient to have one MC for all the heads. What I mean is you could put each ManHead in a different frame in a MC then use gotoAndStop() to change the head. This way you don't have to worry about hiding the things you don't need.

~MD