How big is too big? (scenes)

shuttercraft

I am over 100 hours into making a ball based platformer and in one of the bonus levels you are being chased across the level by a much bigger ball. I made a 5000 px long scene that you have to navigate through wile being chased.

This game is for the ipad and my questions are:

Will this scene slow down the game on a Ipad because it is to large?

I am keeping my actor count below 20 to make this game faster. Will this scene really make that big of a difference?

AfterBurnett

Have you used one big png? Not sure about iPad but with iPhone, you can't use an image bigger than 1024x1024, so you need to build bigger scenes out of smaller images The smaller you can get away with, the better, as gfx eats memory!

shuttercraft

I did not use a image bigger the the ipad screen size. But there is a lot of duplicates of the same actor in the scene (the platforms). To reduce the number of actors I am also changeling the actor image to resemble different platforms within the scene without editing the prototype. I am doing this Instead of making a new actor for each platform when possible. Will this help with speed?

AfterBurnett

Yeah, that seems to be the way to go ;-)

shuttercraft

Thanks for your help!

AfterBurnett

No worries... I didn't really do much! LOL.

sebmacfly

Hi ShutterCraft!

For my Crazy Labyrinth HD Game (labyrinth with a special ball spin) i have some big scenes...
(10.000 x 3.000 about)... i used small tiles (80x80, 100x100, etc... and 1024x768 for background)
The game run smooth on the device...

You can download it to see (if you want)
iTunes link : http://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/crazy-labyrinth-hd/id373499164?mt=8

Ask me for any question

scitunes

Yeah, make your image so that it can tile (look for photoshop tutorials on how to make your own pattern). Then in the actor attributes panel under graphics set it to tile and just drag the actor as wide as the scene and the image will repeat. This will get rid of the need for dragging multiple actors into the scene.

ORBZ

Scene size can be huge. I have a game that is 100,000 x 100,000

The actual size means nothing to the CPU. It's the objects in the scene that effect performance.

Scene size is just a number.

sebmacfly

ORBZ said:
Scene size can be huge. I have a game that is 100,000 x 100,000

The actual size means nothing to the CPU. It's the objects in the scene that effect performance.

Scene size is just a number.

You're right, you can make a huge scene, but warning on how much actors and elements you have in...

JohnPapiomitis

sebmacfly said:
You're right, you can make a huge scene, but warning on how much actors and elements you have in...

shuttercraft

Thank you for the replies! GS would be nothing without the community!

Will a lot of the same actor (simple platform) lag it out?

Also, I have a border outside of the scene stretching across the full scene to keep the actor from jumping out. It was mentioned above that you can not have backgrounds bigger then the px size of the ipad. Doe the same apply to the borders I have made?

shuttercraft

No help? *bump*

sebmacfly

Test on your device, if your border or background graphic is white, that means your picture is too big.