png8bit or 24bit?

fenix66fenix66 Member Posts: 59
edited November -1 in Working with GS (Mac)
Can someone explain for sure how GS handles 8bit PNG?
I have a scene built from four 1024x768 24bit PNG files, simple calculations give about 3MB in RAM for each PNG, when I change PNG's to 8bit it should drastically reduce RAM usage but nothing happened.
It seems for me that GS converts and displays 8bit PNG as 24bit.

If I'm right it's a huge waste of RAM.

Comments

  • old_kipperold_kipper Member Posts: 1,420
    You are correct I think. The only way to reduce the memory usage if you have images of that size is to cut them up into 512x1024 and 256x1024 which should save you about a quarter of memory the graphics memory of your current usage. Just watch out for the joins if you are moving them. It can be a problem.

    hope that helps

    kipper
  • jonmulcahyjonmulcahy Member, Sous Chef Posts: 10,408
    RAM usage is determined by the dimensions of the image, not by the bit depth. 8bit vs 24bit will give you a reduced file size, but the same memory footprint in GS.

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  • fenix66fenix66 Member Posts: 59
    jonmulcahy said:
    RAM usage is determined by the dimensions of the image, not by the bit depth. 8bit vs 24bit will give you a reduced file size, but the same memory footprint in GS.

    That's why I'm asking how GS handles 8bit and 24bit, because 8bit 1024x768 use 1MB in ram and the same 24bit image use 3MB in ram.
    But it seems that GS converts 8 bit to 24 bit anyway.
    It's a huge waste of ram when you are using images that don't use full 24bit color palette (which is in most cases).
    I think it should be changed in future updates of GS.
  • gyroscopegyroscope I am here.Member, Sous Chef, PRO Posts: 6,598
    fenix66 said:
    It's a huge waste of ram when you are using images that don't use full 24bit color palette (which is in most cases).
    I think it should be changed in future updates of GS.

    +1

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  • PhoticsPhotics Member Posts: 4,172
    It's not a complete waste to use PNG files with 256 colors. I was unable to publish BOT until I reduced the size of the PNG files. The project was like 25% of the original size... and then I was able to upload the project to GameSalad.

    Here's what's wrong... the non-retina display graphics are larger (file size) than the retina display graphics? Why? It's because the Retina Display graphics have a reduced color palette, while the non-retina display graphics do not.

    1 - GameSalad developers should be able to manually specify Retina Display graphics and regular graphics.

    2 - PNG compression should occur when the file is imported, not every time the game is tested and/or published.

    As for the memory issue, is this a GameSalad thing or an iOS hardware thing? Reduced color palette should use less RAM, but is that something GameSalad can control?
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