recycling techniques

alias_noa

I know that spawning actors runs down the FPS very quickly, and I also have read about recycling actors and have played around with the concept and it keeps the FPS very high. Also I have noticed that if you unlock several actors of the same type, they kind of become different actors, and this also slows the FPS a lot. So the problem I see is that there isn't really a way to get unlimited (or like say 100) of an actor on screen at once because to bring one on at a time it seems like you have to unlock them. What I am trying to do is basically as the user touches the screen it brings a copy of the actor to where they touched. I want it to do this continuously, for 100 or maybe even 200 touches, without losing any of the old actors that they put on the screen.

I have found a very strange way to do this, and I kind of feel like I got so caught up in developing the method that it seems kind of wierd. Its hard to explain, and if I find out it's the best way I will maybe tell tshirtbooth or someone and maybe they can do a video on it or something. Anyway my question is: Is there an easy way to do this yet? Without spawning actors, or unlocking thus making many different types of actors on-screen.

alias_noa

Actually I thought of unchecking "moveable" the same day I put this post up, thought it would make a big difference but the result was kind of odd. It made the fps kind of bounce around more, overall I can't really tell if they are better or worse. What I did is pretty interesting, I have a bunch of copies of the same actor, right now like 40 or 50, all in like a big square spiral, and used rules so that they know where to go to continue the spiral. Kind of like really simple AI. When an actor reaches the end of the spiral they overlap with a square actor, causing them to change X and Y to touch position. Its working pretty well on my Iphone 3G, so I'm gonna throw like 100 in and see how that goes. I also think I can get them to move in the spiral with less rules, using overlapping behaviors instead of a bunch of X and Y checks, so hoping that will help.