Which is fastest? Tone or Array?

[orochii]

Hello, well I've been cleaning my code, and now I'm trying to optimize my "daylight system" from my game. Thing is, I've done something like this:

class Game_System
# I put this on a constant because I'm constantly (lol) tweaking it.
  DAY_TONES = [
      [-96,-80,-48,48],
      [-36,-72,-64,32],
      [-18,-36,-32,16],
      [8,0,0,0],
      [-64,-51,-33,32],
      [-96,-80,-48,40],
      [-128,-102,-64,48],
      [0,0,0,0]
    ]
  
  #This gives me the info from the class constant to outsiders
  #It could actually be slow because of returning sub-arrays, but... I dunno x'D...
  def day_tone
    i = 7
    if $game_map.exterior
      if @game_time[0] > 19
        i=0
      elsif @game_time[0] > 17
        i=1
      elsif @game_time[0] > 12
        i=2
      elsif @game_time[0] > 10
        i=3
      elsif @game_time[0] > 5
        i=4
      elsif @game_time[0] > 3
        i=5
      else
        i=6
      end
    end
    return DAY_TONES[i]
  end
end

class Game_Screen
  #And this is probably VERY bad. But what I meant to make was an adjustment
  def update_tone
    d = @tone_duration
    tone_day = $game_system.day_tone
    toun = [0,0,0,0]
    toun[0]=[(@tone.red * (d - 1) + (@tone_target.red + tone_day[0])) / d ,256].min
    toun[1]=[(@tone.green * (d - 1) + (@tone_target.green + tone_day[1]) / d ,255].min
    toun[2]=[(@tone.blue * (d - 1) + (@tone_target.blue + tone_day[2]) / d ,255].min
    toun[3]=[(@tone.gray * (d - 1) + (@tone_target.gray + tone_day[3]) / d ,255].min
    @tone.set(toun[0],toun[1],toun[2],toun[3])
    @tone_duration -= 1
  end
end

Any observation or... almost anything is very appreciated.

Salut,
OZ

[Blizzard]

You should probably use Tone as access of Array elements (both read and write) is usually more costly than accessing an instance variable of a class. But to be sure, you would have to benchmark it.