Tiles vs. Backgrounds

Photics

As mentioned on my website... http://photics.com/back-to-the-drawing-board ...I'm working on an RPG for my next GameSalad game. It's a huge project, so I'm still thinking of the best way to manage all the content.

That's when I wondered about environments. Which do you think would be better for a top-down RPG... one giant background or lots of little tiles/squares?

Here's what I'm thinking...

Tiles
+ Smaller game size
+ More traditional RPG look
+ Easier to manage collision detection
+ Environmental effects... like reduced movement through mud

I'd probably just make a bunch of tiles, but my concern is performance. If I make the tiles 64x64, and I make a level 1024x1024, that's 256 actors on the screen. If I make the tiles 32x32 that's 1024 actors on the screen... just for the game's environment. I'm not sure GameSalad could handle that without significant reduction in frame rates.

Which do you think would work better? Tiles or Backgrounds?

BarkBarkCo

Why not compartmentalize the levels in to smaller areas on the overall board. Each area could be a separate scene? When the player passes through a threshold a change scene is executed.

Photics

Smaller scenes has another problem... more load time. If I make the scenes smaller, like 512x512, not only will exploration feel less grand... that little loading icon will appear a lot more.

JamesZeppelin

Both

I often end up using images that are around 128x128 but tiled with 32x32 (or smaller) images
Especially for walls and ground

firemaplegames

I would use large backgrounds (they can be visually made with small tiles in a graphics program to retain the look) and I would overlay invisible actors for walls and different terrain (like the mud you mentioned).

Since GS is not a bitmap tile engine, all those different tiles would need to be individual actors.
The load times would be astronomical, and I don't think an older device could handle all those collision calculations.

Something else to consider is the tiling capabilities of the graphics attribute of each actor.

So you could make a 64x64 actor, turn its tilingX and tilingY to true and stretch out the actor in the Scene.

Photics

Wow... I think I see what you mean. Pieces would work... but that would be tedious. Heh.

For example, if I have a grassy field, I make the artwork 64x64, but I make the actor 512x512 and I have the grass.png repeat inside the actor. That hybrid approach would significantly cut down on the amount of actors on the screen.