Rob2 said: Hold on ... Photics did you only index your ground tiles (no alpha) ?
It's mostly ground tiles. You can still have transparency, but then the edges can get screwy. I turn off anti-aliasing on certain tools to get clean edges.
I use Pixelmator... File > Export For Web > Format: PNG Indexed
It's like old-school game design... like the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis used less colors because of limited resources.
I wasn't really challenging "Your" (FMG's actually) useful information merely pointing out that Xcodes use of pngcrush might be overriding the indexing when it does its crushing.. and I'm still trying to ascertain what is going on. And considering that everything ends up in 32bit space and the whole point of pngcrush is to optimise performance at runtime who knows...
Rob2 said: I'm still trying to ascertain what is going on.
I think Xcode might be ignoring the images from GameSalad. They're inside the .gameproj.
GameSalad does the "pngcrush"... which is a waste of time... as it does it EVERY TIME. That's why ImageOptim has such little effect on GameSalad projects.
GameSalad should let us create our retina display / non-retina display graphics manually... or at least create them once, so we can go back and edit the files manually. The same is true with compressing images. It does it EVERY TIME you test on a device or publish. That's not optimal. This stuff should be managed when the file is imported into GameSalad... but then the software wouldn't look as impressive when doing a drag-and-drop demo at a tech convention... unless the compression was run as a background task.
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
You make a new topic late at night. Go to sleep, get up, do a full normal days work and check the forum on the way home on the train.
This thread got busy. :-)
Cheers for all the comments, the arguments, apologies, images that I missed :-( and more.
At photics, yes I always profile the colours in my images. It's annoying to do as you see the quality degrade but saves a decent amount of space.
Weirdly whilst doing my tests I seem to only gain a small amount Of loading time when I completely remove my large main images. I'm still on the hunt for the main culprits. Music could be a bit shorter and loop but I don't want it to loop to noticeably.
The test scene is a six sided room that you swipe around with more images for close ups etc etc. so the loadin time exists due to rules images and more of the same.
Other than that, the picky optimizations seem to suck the joy out of developing...
Yeah but it's what you gotta do.. unless you have some genius idea of an app that requires hardly any images, sounds or game logic but is still magically appealing and contagiously addictive. That's the GS dev dream... to make a 5 min app that was loved the world over
Did a blank new game project always take up 10mb of RAM? Or is that a recent thing - It can't be just me getting that?
Shaz
Look below the line for my shameless link to our (magnificent!) first game. BEHOLD! ------------ "...the resulting sonic effect is almost mesmerising." Pocket Gamer Sound design and music service available: http://tiny.cc/MusicService www.HoneyTribeStudios.com
If it helps, here is a post I made a year and a half ago about PNG-8, loading times, and an image glitch I was seeing. Not sure if it is still relevant, but maybe it will help.
When I made Grisly Manor, I noticed that using Change Image and the Animation behavior were preloading all of the images in a Scene so it was killing the loading times. Using the Change Attribute fixed the Change Image problem.
For the Animation behavior, I created my own which bypasses the preloading. It also gives you a little more control like the ability to play forwards and backwards and change the speed dynamically. I made a demo showing what I did:
It's been a while and I am not sure if it still works, but might be worth checking out.
To slash the loading times, I made everything I could PNG-8 and did not use Retina Display graphics. This had the advantage of drastically reducing the file size - allowing the game to fit under 20MB, and also it is much more pleasant to deal with for testing, uploading, etc.
I also read that you can actually use jpegs in GameSalad, which are even smaller than PNG-8. You need to edit the xml files to do it though, not sure how. I'll see if I can find that post.
But yes - regardless of the file type - when you import graphics into GameSalad, they will get translated into 32-bit textures. That is how you are able to rotate images and fade them in and out without them getting all jaggy. If they were still PNG-8, that wouldn't be possible.
I also used as few Actors as I could. Grisly Manor was made with 12 Actors in the Library, which really seemed to help as well. Everything was done in the instances. I couldn't tell for certain, but it seemed like all of the Actors were being loaded for every Scene, whether they were being used or not.
I think loading times are the biggest issue with GameSalad right now. I know there is lots of talk about new features and roadmaps, but loading times and overall performance would be most important to me.
I was able to get the loading times between Scenes down to a second or two, but seeing that spinning wheel drove me nuts.
So with importing jpegs it's very simple right click open package contents,open image folder drop your jpegs in there,delete the pngs open your HTML file with an editor find the png names of the images you want to change to jpegs and just change .png for .jpeg save done,I also found that converting the sound files to.caf Made a big difference and reason why is because it's an uncompressed format hence the larger size,so gamesalad doesn't have to uncompress before it plays it,so it uses less processing power the disadvantage is larger file size.
@firemaplegames I think loading times are the biggest issue with GameSalad right now. I know there is lots of talk about new features and roadmaps, but loading times and overall performance would be most important to me.
When I first came to GS, everything was about the money ways to make it. Now it is still the same way, but there is a sensation that continues to grow over me. It is the need to make something GOOD and enjoyable for all. We can't have this if all they do is watch that annoying little wheel. #1 on my list is performance (That alone is worth the $2000 subscription, even though I am still a free member :P).
Photics said: It's mostly ground tiles. You can still have transparency, but then the edges can get screwy. I turn off anti-aliasing on certain tools to get clean edges.
I use Pixelmator... File > Export For Web > Format: PNG Indexed
It's like old-school game design... like the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis used less colors because of limited resources.
chaley said: firemaplegames... when I followed your link to the animation demo, all I could do was play an animated sequence. Is there also a tutorial there?
you search the title of the demo in the new section of the gamesalad creator and u can open the project and look at everything, pretty sure theres notes in it too
ok...decided to make my game again from scratch...
I won't need to remake my artwork just all the game rules... may take some time.
but I'll keep running my loading times 'timer' to keep track of it.
I've made most of the main game mechanic for swiping around the room already in a much mch wiser way (I originall made it about 6months ago..I've learnt lots since then). Currently loading times..is about 0.3 seconds.
Thats without images, music and a lot of other stuff....
Comments
I use Pixelmator...
File > Export For Web > Format: PNG Indexed
It's like old-school game design... like the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis used less colors because of limited resources.
GameSalad does the "pngcrush"... which is a waste of time... as it does it EVERY TIME. That's why ImageOptim has such little effect on GameSalad projects.
GameSalad should let us create our retina display / non-retina display graphics manually... or at least create them once, so we can go back and edit the files manually. The same is true with compressing images. It does it EVERY TIME you test on a device or publish. That's not optimal. This stuff should be managed when the file is imported into GameSalad... but then the software wouldn't look as impressive when doing a drag-and-drop demo at a tech convention... unless the compression was run as a background task.
And for the record the images were in no way offensive.
You make a new topic late at night. Go to sleep, get up, do a full normal days work and check the forum on the way home on the train.
This thread got busy. :-)
Cheers for all the comments, the arguments, apologies, images that I missed :-( and more.
At photics, yes I always profile the colours in my images. It's annoying to do as you see the quality degrade but saves a decent amount of space.
Weirdly whilst doing my tests I seem to only gain a small amount
Of loading time when I completely remove my large main images. I'm still on the hunt for the main culprits. Music could be a bit shorter and loop but I don't want it to loop to noticeably.
The test scene is a six sided room that you swipe around with more images for close ups etc etc. so the loadin time exists due to rules images and more of the same.
Cheers for everyone's feedback
Jon
@tenrdrmer That Ronald McDonanld photo was great - don't think I've seen that one before
@Stormy
Did a blank new game project always take up 10mb of RAM? Or is that a recent thing - It can't be just me getting that?
Shaz
Look below the line for my shameless link to our (magnificent!) first game.
BEHOLD!
------------
"...the resulting sonic effect is almost mesmerising." Pocket Gamer
Sound design and music service available: http://tiny.cc/MusicService
www.HoneyTribeStudios.com
managed a night away from my new addiction.
Instead I've spent it making a website (updating a template) for my wifes new business idea.
nearly as much fun as repeatedly testing the same scene... :-)
Now I'm going to watch 'Thor'....
http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=9378
When I made Grisly Manor, I noticed that using Change Image and the Animation behavior were preloading all of the images in a Scene so it was killing the loading times. Using the Change Attribute fixed the Change Image problem.
For the Animation behavior, I created my own which bypasses the preloading. It also gives you a little more control like the ability to play forwards and backwards and change the speed dynamically. I made a demo showing what I did:
http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=10155
It's been a while and I am not sure if it still works, but might be worth checking out.
To slash the loading times, I made everything I could PNG-8 and did not use Retina Display graphics. This had the advantage of drastically reducing the file size - allowing the game to fit under 20MB, and also it is much more pleasant to deal with for testing, uploading, etc.
I also read that you can actually use jpegs in GameSalad, which are even smaller than PNG-8. You need to edit the xml files to do it though, not sure how. I'll see if I can find that post.
But yes - regardless of the file type - when you import graphics into GameSalad, they will get translated into 32-bit textures. That is how you are able to rotate images and fade them in and out without them getting all jaggy. If they were still PNG-8, that wouldn't be possible.
I also used as few Actors as I could. Grisly Manor was made with 12 Actors in the Library, which really seemed to help as well. Everything was done in the instances. I couldn't tell for certain, but it seemed like all of the Actors were being loaded for every Scene, whether they were being used or not.
I think loading times are the biggest issue with GameSalad right now. I know there is lots of talk about new features and roadmaps, but loading times and overall performance would be most important to me.
I was able to get the loading times between Scenes down to a second or two, but seeing that spinning wheel drove me nuts.
Have Fun, Be Safe
Michael
Oh, and yeah--performance is #1.
I won't need to remake my artwork just all the game rules... may take some time.
but I'll keep running my loading times 'timer' to keep track of it.
I've made most of the main game mechanic for swiping around the room already in a much mch wiser way (I originall made it about 6months ago..I've learnt lots since then). Currently loading times..is about 0.3 seconds.
Thats without images, music and a lot of other stuff....
Fingers crossed this is worth the effort.