iPhone performance issues got you down? Build it for iPad instead!

BeyondtheTechBeyondtheTech Member Posts: 809
edited November -1 in Working with GS (Mac)
Can I tell you - the iPad's new A4 processor is blazingly fast. Faster than the one in the iPhone 3GS. The graphics chipset is no slouch either.

Out of sheer curiosity, I added a bunch of actors to a scene, all with behaviors and timers, and the iPad didn't skip a beat (or drop a frame). While I could always appreciate engine tweaking and performance increases by the GameSalad devs, us devs should really take advantage of the speed increase as well as the screen resolution that the iPad has to offer.

If you were building a game for the iPhone and it was disappointingly sluggish, you might want to consider building it into an iPad version first. There's only one generation of device out there for the moment, so let 'er rip with all the trimmings when creating a game.

Then, if you then want to make a version for the iPhone, then "water" it down a bit while keeping its entertaining value. This way, you could really figure out what's worth keeping, while tweaking your programming skills to accommodate the "smaller" device.

For this, you might end up with 1.5 to 2 times the sales for almost the same work!

Comments

  • adadoadado Member Posts: 219
    So for your test, were the images iPad sized actors or just quick imports of existing iPhone app actors? I would love to know more. I would imagine with the new processors it is indeed speedy but with 4x+ the screen real estate, how it could eat up some of that extra power.
  • BeyondtheTechBeyondtheTech Member Posts: 809
    Many of my images were 128x128. One scene puts you in the middle of a nebula (cloud), so I had a transparent 512x512 tiled sprite in a 1280x1280 actor, overlaid on all the other sprites, spinning slowly around ever so smoothly.

    God, I love this new toy. I'm sure I'm bound to get a performance hit sooner or later, but I just keep adding to it and the engine is purring right along.
  • adadoadado Member Posts: 219
    Sweet!
  • JamesZeppelinJamesZeppelin Member Posts: 1,927
    My game has a ton of 1024x768 images all around 200k each and it is smooth
  • quantumsheepquantumsheep Member Posts: 8,188
    Sounds great BTT - I don't know if I'll be able to get one of these at UK launch, but it does sound like it's a more natural fit for the kinds of games I have in mind!

    Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
    Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
    Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io

  • QuinnZoneStudiosQuinnZoneStudios Member Posts: 452
    This is good news.
    I had to split my game into two. A simple version for iPhone and the iPad gets the Deluxe version.
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