having one healt-bar object and 10 textures and instead of switching object, switch texture might be a better alternative
My thoughts on that is there is a 256x256 minimum texture, and I could put all the textures on one panel, but that would mean different texture coordinates, so changing textures wouldn't work, unless you know some way to do that. If you did, I could just move the texture coordinates on one health bar on a transparent background. It possible to use smaller textures, but something gets done and it's kicking up errors once in a while for me, though not fatal.
I would simply blit the health bar as a scaled blit on top of the entity (did this in Paradroidz for example). It doesn't have to be a real object nor part of the world IMHO
I'm printing damage stats right now that way, and it's really hard to tell which character they apply to when they are close together. I'm not sure if it would be any better with a billboard or not. I just have a feeling it would as the character further away would have a smaller bar. I guess I'll experiment with the two methods.
Thanks for the suggestions.