• • • Anyone tested using jpgs instead of png's? (by updating project files)

StormyStudio · September 2011

Good Afternoon...

Has anyone had great success changing pngs for jpegs.

As Gamesalad only accepts pngs (or converts other image files to pngs when imported) I want to try reducing my loading times and file size by using jpegs instead. I've read ideas on it before, but never hear if it is successful or worth the effort.

The theory:
Chang their images from png's to jpegs by showing the contents of the project file and changing all the images for their jpeg equivalents and updating the xml file so it refers to .jpg files instead of .png files.

So before I test this myself...I just thought I'd ask has anyone tried the above, does it work or does it simply change them back to png's when you next open the project in GameSalad. If they remain jpegs and work do you see any increase/decrease in loading times?

Thanks

Jon

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Visit www.stormystudio.com/templates01.html to grab 'Stormy's Time Machine'. Which is a free template to go into your games to accurately get load times between scenes.

gamedivision · September 2011

obviously the only thing you can change really is images without transparency,and that means backgrounds,i spent a week optimising and indulged in the jpeg swap and found it did infact make a difference,some of my backgrounds where 780kb and with no difference in quality managed to get the image size down to about 200kb,but for some strange reason gradients become more blocky,and soon as you add a small amount of grain the size crept unto 500kb,but don't get me wrong it did in fact make a difference,the biggest performance change for me came when changing sound files to .ogg

MarkOnTheIron · September 2011

How did you do?

I just tried with a simple scene with one actor.

Changed the png on the Image folder with the jpg then I searched on the actor and scene xml and only found a reference to the image name without extension. Is there any other file I should edit?

EDIT: Just found it, it is everything on the assets xml file.

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HoneyTribeStudios · September 2011

Yeah, it can be handy to use jpgs for full screen images. Keep in mind you won't get resized versions of those images if using resolution independence.

(So hopefully sooner rather than later GS will add an update that allows us to import the resized images manually)

And thanks to TSB for his original post on the subject

Shaz
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Rob2 · September 2011

Its all a bit crazy really as the XML file even gets updated with the new file size.

Don't forget JPG files don't get optimised for runtime in the same way as PNGs do so it might be worth do performance comparisons depending on how many and in what fashion your images are being used.

StormyStudio · September 2011

cheers guys... certainly sounds like its worth a go...

olster1 · September 2011

Additional info on how to do it.

Be aware that when using jpg, there is a bug that means the image moves (or the camera moves) there will be a single pixel black line on the edge of the image. If you don't understand what i'm on about check out this post by firemaplegames

It also contains the solution

hope that helps anyone out.

StormyStudio · September 2011

Cheers for the links I'll check those out after dinner

StormyStudio · September 2011

Ok so just tried it out for myself.

I had my scene which currently took 0.510 seconds to load (or there abouts). With a project size of 2 Mb. It is a scene with 6 large background images.

I changed the pngs for some fairly heavily compressed jpegs, and made the backward jump from retina to normal graphics. Loading times gone down to around 0.450 seconds. So not overly noticeable as it was already ok, but should see some bigger improvements as the rest of the game is added. The main difference is project size, down from 2mb to 240 kb.

Cheers again for all the tips and links and success stories...

Quattro4 · October 2011

this assets.xml thing... its not working anymore i guess. is there any other way to reduce the size of app?

gyroscope · October 2011

Hi Quattro4, if you're sticking with pngs, you can make simple colour graphics or images as png-8, that'll save some filesize.

Another member posted a link to png optimising software (sorry, can't credit cos can't remember who...)

There's a really good optimisation roundup on one of FireMapleGame's post somewhere, giving other advice on sound files, etc. Can't find it at the moment, but it's around somewhere...

Anyway, hope that helps.

Bump:

@stormystudio

• • • Anyone tested using jpgs instead of png's? (by updating project files)

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Rumi · October 2011

I love doing this. I once had a project that was 50 megabytes and I just changed all the cutscene images and intro animation images to jpegs and the game went down to 19 megabytes!

keweworkshop · October 2011

I am trying to change some pngs to jpgs but it is not working. I see Quattro4 is having problems too. Can anyone confirm that it does not work anymore, or am I just doing something wrong?

keweworkshop · October 2011

I don't know what I was smoking last night. I tried it again tonight and it worked fine. Disregard my last post!

• • • Anyone tested using jpgs instead of png&#039;s? (by updating project files)

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• • • Anyone tested using jpgs instead of png's? (by updating project files)