Question for people who have made a shooter with GS

HoneyTribeStudios

Hi, for anyone that has made a shooter I have a question regarding bullets.

With this latest GS update, ver 0.9, are you able to spawn and destroy actors (bullets) indefinitely without the accumulative effect to memory usage that people have talked about with older versions of GS.

Or should I still use alternatives to spawning and destroying? i.e have a finite number of bullets that are changing positions and alternating between being hidden and visible to give the illusion of infinite bullets?

Cheers

magic101hi

just go with spawn

-Josh

quantumsheep

shaz said:
Hi, for anyone that has made a shooter I have a question regarding bullets.

With this latest GS update, ver 0.9, are you able to spawn and destroy actors (bullets) indefinitely without the accumulative effect to memory usage that people have talked about with older versions of GS.

Or should I still use alternatives to spawning and destroying? i.e have a finite number of bullets that are changing positions and alternating between being hidden and visible to give the illusion of infinite bullets?

Cheers

It's an interesting question.

My Retro shooter will be 3GS and up only right now as GS can't handle the number of bullets I throw at it!
Even on a 3GS, it slows down in places.

Now, with some creative spawning, I can ensure that the slowdown is minimised or completely removed. But it's a hassle really.

I started *another* shooter on the iPad. I have no way of testing it, but in general the iPad, as a base machine, is a lot more powerful (obviously!) and could handle a full-on shooter more easily.

Otherwise it will be a case of using 'tricks' to get round the spawning.

Hope that helps,

QS

HoneyTribeStudios

Hi QS, when you say 'creative spawning' what does that mean?

And on a related note, do you know if its possible to have actors off screen if the x and y of your scene is set to wrap?

Cheers, Shaz

quantumsheep

shaz said:
Hi QS, when you say 'creative spawning' what does that mean?

And on a related note, do you know if its possible to have actors off screen if the x and y of your scene is set to wrap?

Cheers, Shaz

'Creative Spawning' is just timing spawns so that you don't have too much on-screen at once. For example, in the retro shooter you have mines appearing and then battleships that shoot 24 bullets over a 3 second burst.

If you have two of these battleships on-screen, and the mines, + all the bullets the player is spawning... well, it slows down a hell of a lot!

So getting the timing right, so that the mines are gone before the battleships appear, or making sure there's only one Battleship on-screen at once, especially if there's a lot more going on in-scene, will help.

It's a cheat really - I'd much rather spawn as much as I can in one place, but it just isn't possible!

As to your second point, what I've started to do is make my scenes bigger either side - that way, if there are any problems with wrapx or y, it shouldn't be visible on the main screen.

hope that makes sense!

QS

HoneyTribeStudios

Ok thanks for that. Well if you are spawning and destroying that many actors then I should be ok with my game which has far less going on at any one time.

Cheers