60K+ Sprites on the 360?

Question

Hey everyone, Just wondering - throwing ideas in my head - about starting a new XNA project for the 360. I would like it to be retro-old school, and emulating scanlines and color palettes and such.

As part of this idea, what I would ideally like to do is manually draw each and every pixel of the screen. So, worst-case scenario I would have to draw about 60K sprites on a 252x240 resolution (I think thats correct). 60K sprites on the screen at a time.

So, before I even attempt to code this - would the XBOX 360 be able to keep up with this even? That is a lot of sprites, but they aren't big sprites, and the texture data needed would be non-existant. However, I guess how this project would be implemented would make it or break it, but all I was thinking was coming up with a 2D array and mapping which color value would need to be drawn at that point.

Of course, this is watered down talk right now. But what you all suggest?

EDIT: Each sprite would represent one pixel. E.g., a sprite at 0,0. Another at 0,1. etc.

Answer 1

Instead of using 60K sprites, which is unlikely going to work, I suggest you draw primitive squares and give them the colors you need.

It's actually a part of 3D programming, but you drop the Z axis altogether and specify an orthogonal camera.

As a matter of fact, a square is a simple combination of two triangles. I'm not saying the solution is quick and easy, but I think this is where you should start your research.

60K sprites is not a good idea.