If you have ever looked into the art directory folders (symbols/fills) inside the CC3+ data directory, you may have noticed one thing, there appears to be four copies of every file. Why is that? And why is four files better than one file?
Well, the answer here comes down to quality and performance.
The main issue that occurs when computers need to display an image on the screen is that the image must be scaled to fit the place it is being displayed. And this is not a free operation for a computer, it is actually a bit of a resource-intensive one. If you look at any random overland map, like the example map from the manual shown here, you’ll see that it is full of symbols. But all those symbols are pretty tiny. When zoomed out so you can see the whole map on screen, even in full screen, each of those trees are only something like 25 by 25 pixels on screen. Obviously, the symbol itself is much bigger, because it is not supposed to just look good when zoomed out like this, but also when you zoom in closer. And that means that for every one of those trees, CC3+ will have to take a much larger image, load it in to memory, and then resize it there before putting it on screen. A modern computer can do that pretty fast, but a map doesn’t just have one symbol, it can have thousands of them. And this process needs to be done anew each time you change the map view, like scrolling or zooming.
