Quote: "i would imagine the sprites do but repasting the image each cycle must be somewhat expensive as well"
Pretty much identical in speed once you disable the backsave option on sprites.
One advantage that sprites have though is that you can fade/zoom/rotate them into place or even add other effects to them.
Of course, there's nothing there that couldn't also be done using a 3D plain, and a plain wouldn't have to be resized depending on the screen resolution.
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