All game graphics are 8bit but it will convert it to the format used by the front buffer. This can be a performance improvement if the rendering layer doesn't optimize the texture and it's rendered multiple times. At least in minwin's case this already happens in the rendering layer so there is no need to do so in the game layer and a lot of memory could be saved by not doing this conversion early on.
Note this looks to only be the case for 2D textures and not ones used in 3D.
All game graphics are 8bit but it will convert it to the format used by the front buffer. This can be a performance improvement if the rendering layer doesn't optimize the texture and it's rendered multiple times. At least in minwin's case this already happens in the rendering layer so there is no need to do so in the game layer and a lot of memory could be saved by not doing this conversion early on.
Note this looks to only be the case for 2D textures and not ones used in 3D.