Lowering scene load times

CSharpMin

Hi all,

I've got an app that has multiple scenes with a song across all of them. Every time a new scene is about to start the previous scene freezes for 1 or 2 seconds before it progresses. I suspect the load time has to do with how many actors have to be loaded at the start of the next scene, because the bigger scenes take longer to load. I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for getting the scene load times down as short as possible. I've played with preloading the art in a many different ways, but had no luck there.

The scene that loads the longest is a very long side scroller with animated, moving actors and non-movable actors. I'm curious if making them invisible until they are close to the hero/camera might help. Or maybe having the actors spawn as the hero/camera gets close would be better. It will take me a lot of time to experiment with these types of solutions across many actors, so I'm hoping someone else's experience will save me some time.

FYI, I have looked through the 31 optimization tips, but I'm not sure which ones of these would affect the scene load time. Any suggestions along that front as well would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

tenrdrmer

Well the more art you preload the longer the scene takes to load. You can try unchecking preload on everything that is large and not visible immediately when the scene loads.

mounted88

Make all your scenes on one scene. There will be no load time and your music will be played without pause.

CSharpMin

I've tried unchecking preload on most everything in the problematic scene. Also, regardless of the scene load time, the music continues uninterrupted (most fortunately), so that is not a problem. Also, events that time to the music are unaffected by the pause while loading, as they are based on the gameclock which remains accurate throughout.

I'd love to make them all one scene, but with this particular app, that is not possible, as the scenes vary tremendously -- wrapping, orientation, etc. My app is less of a game and more of an interactive music video.

The problem is the load time interrupts the flow, and most annoyingly, freezes at inopportune times, like when the hero is in mid-jump. I probably have lots of experiments in my future to optimize this, but I'd still love any tips to speed up my process. I look forward to sharing my app with you all when it is complete, as I think and hope it is unlike others.

TheGabfather

@CSharpMin
Right off the bat you should optimise your image files. You can use ImageOptim for your PNG files.

Alternatively, you can also try using TGA files instead of your usual PNGs (not sure if this is already out for basic accounts though). This should make loading the images faster ergo a wee-bit less load time. Here's a free converter from GSHelper.

But really, single-scene games/apps is the way to go. Too bad you can't with your title

BasGoodboy

So I was about to start a topic about this. But I have a one screen-game I'm working on, and still loading time is about 6 seconds, with very little art only a background the size of the iPhone5..

How is it possible other apps on the AppStore have like no loading time at all? Is it the GameSalad engine?