character parts

hey, my characters in a game that's being made are made out of different parts. ie' the head, torso,arms,fore arms, hands. they are all seperate entities joined by pivots via parenting. i was wondering (because i read alot about single surface stuff) if this is gonna be a slow way of going about things? cuase i'd imagine there will be quite a few surfaces. say 16 entities per characters. 8 characters on screen.

Speed isn't the big issue really. The main thing is that the character would have that distinctive and ugly discontinuous look. A single continuous mesh looks better for most characters and uses fewer polygons (since you don't need polygons for the insides of joints.)

but doing it this way also allow me to make up one animation and apply it to all the characters. this might be the trade off i have to make. thanks :)

Why are you using pivots. If you position the limbs properly you can still use a single set of animation on all your characters. In my game Rocket Boards (*see my sig) I used 8 different limbed characters that all had the same animation(s).

ah, i never knew that. thanks :) i've already checked out your game too, very cool :D considering buying the full version