How may actors can I have in ACTORS TAB ready for spawning (not in the scene)

RedCubeGames

Hi guys!

Quick question

I want to know how many actors can I have in my actors tab (not on the scene) ?
For example can i have 2000 and above actors?
I would use them for spawning, and yes they would bee all different actors.
Is there such thing as too many actors in ACTORS TAB and not on the scene, if is, what would be limit or close to limit?

AlchimiaStudios

@RedCubeGames said:
Hi guys!

Quick question

I want to know how many actors can I have in my actors tab (not on the scene) ?
For example can i have 2000 and above actors?
I would use them for spawning, and yes they would bee all different actors.
Is there such thing as too many actors in ACTORS TAB and not on the scene, if is, what would be limit or close to limit?

I've got about 1200-1500 I think, maybe more. It does slow down the creator a little, but with the ARC builds it's no problem at all. Just a pain in the butt to scroll/sort through them manually.

tatiang

Do you really need 2000 actors? If you're spawning actors with different images, they can still be a single prototype actor as long as their rules are all (or mostly all) the same.

The most complex app I've worked on had actors in the hundreds, not thousands. And even with that project, the first thing I did for my client was to optimize rules and delete unnecessary actors. I'm not saying 2000 actors is never a good idea but I'm hard pressed to think of why you'd need that many.

tatiang

One way to spawn actors with different images is to change a text game attribute value right before the spawn actor behavior and then in the spawned (prototype) actor, change self.Image to that attribute.

tatiang

Here's a demo. Click on the cannon to launch fruit.

RedCubeGames

@AlchimiaStudios thank you on sharing that!

@tatiang So you are saying that i can make one actor with all the rules and than change images of that actor? If that is possible, that would be amazing! and how to do that?

All i am doing now is importing images and then making actor for each image.

AlchimiaStudios

@tatiang said:
Do you really need 2000 actors? If you're spawning actors with different images, they can still be a single prototype actor as long as their rules are all (or mostly all) the same.

The most complex app I've worked on had actors in the hundreds, not thousands. And even with that project, the first thing I did for my client was to optimize rules and delete unnecessary actors. I'm not saying 2000 actors is never a good idea but I'm hard pressed to think of why you'd need that many.

This is true, most games won't even get close to a 1000, but if it's extremely complex it is possible, even with spawning systems/image changing systems in place. :

@RedCubeGames said:
AlchimiaStudios thank you on sharing that!

tatiang So you are saying that i can make one actor with all the rules and than change images of that actor? If that is possible, that would be amazing! and how to do that?

All i am doing now is importing images and then making actor for each image.

Depends on what you are trying to achieve.

Is each actor unique in it's rules every time?

Can the images/rules easily be tied to spawn counter or table system?

Some examples of ways to lessen the actor load would be constraining an actors self.image to an attribute and/or tablecellvalue. This now allows you to change that cell position or attribute to a new value and have the image change with it.

Or a spawn counter system where each time it spawns an actor, the actor changes a game attribute to +1, this keeps count of the actors on screen spawned so far as a total.

You can then use a self attribute on the actors being spawned that change to the value of the game attribute you just made, as soon as it spawns. This now can be used in a ruleset to make each spawned actor unique.

RedCubeGames

@tatiang wooow that is amazing I really appreciate this, thank you very much! this is the reason why this is the best community!

@AlchimiaStudios thank you on your advice, this might sound funny but I am trying to make a game without loading time on one scene and to be universal build, that is my main goal...So I am figurig out on how to do that.

@DRIBBLER 08 good to know

tatiang

Just reposting the attachment because the forums has a bug where when you mark a post as answered it deletes the attachment.