What slows down a game?

BackUpAndDown

Does it matter how many scenes my game has or does the slow down just come from how many actors each scene has?

SkyMaple

BackUpAndDown said:
Does it matter how many scenes my game has or does the slow down just come from how many actors each scene has?

How many scenes you have doesn't matter. What matters is what you have in each scene.

Spawning
Images
actors

are all going to slow down your game

BackUpAndDown

Would 48 actors on one scene be enough to slow things down? They all use the same image and there isn't any spawning.

jonmulcahy

If they use physics, yes. If they don't use physics, no (moveable is on)

BackUpAndDown

They are just icons/buttons. Whats considered to be physics?

Sorry, I don't understand the "moveable is on" part. Does that mean if the "moveable" box is checked then they don't use physics?

mangaroo

if its moveable then it uses physics

Asymptoteell

Uncheck movable. It will help.

Photics

BOT has roughly 100 actors per scene... and it runs at 50-60 FPS on an iPhone 4. This is achieved through a combination of invisible and unmovable actors.

By making an actor invisible... or disabling "movable" in physics... less processing power is needed.

I think the biggest thing that slows down a GameSalad game is having large images. There are ways to work around physics. There are creative ways to handle spawning. But if there are too many large images on the scene, the game can lag and even crash.

LumpApps

Penny Shoel (a shuffle board game) starts with 1 actor and has 30 at the end of round 1. At about 20 actors the frame rate starts dropping dramatically but when an actor comes to a halt it only registers collisions and then starts calculating all sorts of stuff. The actors also change in size depending on where they are on the y axis (3d simulation). While I like to have a better frame rate I noticed it does not affect game play and my testers didn't even notice it at all until I told them. One of them used to be a die hard gamer and other just iPhone users. I guess this is because their focus is not on these pucks when they play a lot but on the score display

MERM

o my squash guys! thanks for this thread! my game (for some crappy reason) was lagging horribly til i read this! i quick unchecked movable on almost all the backrounds, menu buttons, score, etc., and the lag has greatly decreased! thank you all!

LumpApps

Not sure if I am right but a nice way to check which actors are movable and which not is to temporarily give the scene gravity. All moving objects will fall from the stage. The non movable ones will stick.