Your menu loading times (mine are bad)

ChirpinGames

Hey guys,
Just wondering if anyones come up with a similar menu to mine but with better loading times... maybe i'm doing something wrong.

Currently I have a menu system similar to Cut the rope.
It starts with the world selector screen that has 3 worlds that you can swipe across to select. It also has auto scroll animation for when you unlock the next world it will scroll across to the next world. Currently this scene is clocking in at 7.3secs to load on a 3gs.

Then the level select screen that has 25 levels with 4 different states (0,1,2,3 stars). This clocks in at 5.6secs.

All in all it looks great and i'm happy with it except for these long loading times. Anybody else getting better times? I'm hoping GS will improve times in the next version but at the same time I dont want to count on it.

Cheers,

quantumsheep

I'm using tshirts cut the rope menu system for one project - it currently takes 2 seconds to load from the main menu to the world select.

That doesn't help much, I know, but you did ask!

QS

ChirpinGames

Haha thanks QS I'll take a look at TSBs template!
For my reference do you know what slows scenes down... Is it images or behaviors?

AppsRacK

ChirpinGames said:
Haha thanks QS I'll take a look at TSBs template!
For my reference do you know what slows scenes down... Is it images or behaviors?

Hi. From my experience Image size and sound files size greatly affect the loading time of the main scene. Try turning off sound BG music and you'll see the difference in loading time. It might also be because of rules but i doubt it unless your menu system is really complicated and have a lot of moving objects and constrain.

ChirpinGames

Thanks drahc,
I dont have any music but it may be my images... there are a lot for when the level is unlocked (a little padlock unlock animation).

I wonder though if anyone knows do these affect loading times even if the rule doesnt come into play. Eg if levelUnlock = false so the game wouldnt need to play the animation sequence would those images still affect the loading time of that scene?

diegocs

for menus and stuff i just do a change image (i have a background actor) and you play around with the attributes and stuff, i have it set up that way and menus load i less than a second

Awesome iCopter/jetman template for only 10$

ChirpinGames

By tidying up my code a bit (getting rid of some excess code) and replacing my unlock image sequence with an actor that has one image and just grows and fades via interpolate i've managed to cut off 3secs!

It looks as though it was all the images in the image sequence.

Cheers for the help guys. The loading times still around 4 secs so hopefully when the next GS update comes out it will speed things up a bit too. Fingers crossed