rendertarget_noclear(3)

💅 rendertarget_noclear — the Arcan Lua API one, bestie

okay so real talk, this is rendertarget_noclear(3), straight out of the Arcan Lua API, and it's lowkey one of those tiny functions that does one thing and does it iconically.

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✨ NAME ✨

rendertarget_noclear — turn the "clear the rendertarget before a renderpass" behaviour on or off. That's it. That's the whole vibe. 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

success
rendertarget_noclear( vid, noclear )

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so by default, every single pass for a rendertarget starts by clearing the buffer it's about to draw to. like, every time, no asking, just yeet the pixels.

and that's fine! except 👀 it can waste memory bandwidth if you already know the entire rendertarget is gonna get fully populated by the objects you're drawing anyway. why clear a thing you're about to completely cover? exactly. that's the moment rendertarget_noclear walks in.

it changes that behaviour — you set a true value to a vid that's connected to a rendertarget, and boom, the clearing dips. slay. ✨

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👑 NOTES 👑

1. setting WORLDID as vid will change the clear behaviour for the standard output rendertarget. main character energy, honestly.
2. okay this one's important, no cap: if the background is not actually covered by valid VID s, you will leave trails of previous frames behind. that's the MAIN example below, and it's giving ghosting. mind the trails. 💀

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🔥 EXAMPLE 🔥

function rendertarget_noclear0()
      rendertarget_noclear(WORLDID, true);
      a = color_surface(64, 64, 255, 0, 0, 0);
      show_image(a);
      move_image(a, 128, 128, 10);
end

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🙈 MISUSE 🙈

function rendertarget_noclear0()
      rendertarget_noclear(BADID, "potatoe");
end

not the "potatoe" 😭 bestie, BADID and a string of all things. this is what we in the business call not it. 💅

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🌈 that's a wrap 🌈

this page came to you courtesy of targetcontrol, dated October 2026 — and it's the rendertarget_noclear(3) manual page, so go forth and clear responsibly (or don't, that's literally the point 🫶). 💖