Single scene or sequential ones ?

JamJarRiot

I'm experimenting with my first game and I thought i'd go the old fashioned way i.e re-using actors/no spawning etc. The game itself is along the lines of, say, Tetris in that it begins and plays until the user loses all of his lives. Unlike Tetris, I do intend to stop the game at regular intervals (for example when X amount of blocks have been cleared) and put up a simple "Level Complete" message, followed by the next level with slightly altered Attributes (speed, No of blocks etc). But NO scenes will be deleted or loaded.

Which works better, an ongoing single-level game like this or one that actually clears the last level and loads a new one? Bearing in mind i'm NOT creating nor deleting anything as the game goes on, what's on screen at the start is all there will be, so my query is will an ongoing level like this be ok over extended periods of play for GS's memory, or is a scene 'clearout' every so often recommended ?

JamJarRiot

Nobody with anything on this ?

I probably over complicated the first post, but if anyone in the know can tell me if a permanent in-memory iPhone game that doesn't delete or spawn new objects is not going to cause any memory fragmentation over time I'd be grateful.
Is there any hard and fast rule that says you must clear scenes and load new ones ?

jstrahan

my first game eXp JET is kinda like this the whole game is played on one scene with speed increases and other objects moving more often and faster it is waiting on review at apple now but i worked on it over a few months while learning GS and photoshop i have played it on my phone for about 3 days tweaking different things that i saw and the whole game seams to do fine and the controls stayed good throughout the game

if any of this helps
p.s. images of my game at www.jeff-strahan.com

quantumsheep

I like the look of your game, Jeff!

(one thing I would recommend is making the arrow actor just an image, then have a larger actor that runs down the height of the screen, and quite a bit wider than the arrow. This means the player can use more of the screen to move with, and won't require much accuracy when hitting the arrow buttons - make sense?)

My own 'Project K' has 16 basic levels to it, and each one is its own scene. Along with that there's an intro scene and a 'level clear' scene for every level (which makes almost 50 scenes for what could, essentially, be distilled into 3 scenes).

All enemies (which are very rule intensive) are already on the scene, with the only spawning being enemy and player fire.

It's designed for 3GS and upwards, and I've not noticed any issue with having that many scenes. Indeed, the memory useage goes up and down as you go from a gameplay scene to a 'status' scene.

So, Jamma, I don't know if there's a real advantage to doing it one way or the other. Perhaps Codemonkey or someone at GS could throw some light on the matter?

Good luck,

QS

JamJarRiot

Thanks Jeff and QS. Yeah, it's really down to testing this for myself, so until I get the full version (probably next couple of weeks) I'll continue as is. I don't see any problem and I would hope that the device will get a memory clearout on the game ending and loading up the Start screen.

Ok, I'll be back later with my "Awkward Game Salad Question" #3 !!

jstrahan

Thanks QS didn't think about that after my app is aproved I'll do a update to try and keep it in the new apps cat. If that's how it works

ur welcome jamma I figured mine out by trial and error mostly error on some things and I'm sure I can improve on all of the rules some but I think it's good for my first

quantumsheep

It doesn't work like that anymore, sorry!

And please note - by 'larger actor' I mean a larger invisible actor - one for left, one for right. Just to be clear

QS

jstrahan

Yea I already got it all planned out in my head will fix it after work