GL performance with animated sprites

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GL performance with animated sprites

(15 posts) (6 voices)

Started 2 years ago by Karl
Latest reply from PhilM

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Karl
Member

I'm writing some sprite tests to see how much the iphone can handle, and I'm a little concerned...

With 10 animated sprites (90x90, RGBA4444, 16 frames, all from a single sprite atlas) running around to random locations on the screen, the performance is jerky at best. Is this really the best the iphone can do? What are other peoples experiences?

Looking at the debug code, the only deallocations are from the MoveTo, Sequence, FastAnimate and RepeatForever actions. So the AtlasSpriteManager, AtlasAnimation, and AtlasSprite objects are all sticking around. According to instruments, CPU usage is steady at 12%, but my FPS fluctuates between 25 and 60 when running in release mode on a real iphone.

I'd really appreciate some advice on how to get good sprite performance because I was hoping to get 20 animated sprites onscreen at a time...

Posted 2 years ago #
Karl
Member

Hmm I just turned animation off, and the performance didn't change at all.

What number of simultaneous moving sprites should I expect to be able to make while maintaining 60fps?

10 sprites feels sluggish, like Zenonia. 20 sprites is just horrible (fluctuating from 3FPS to 60FPS)

Posted 2 years ago #
bradparks
Member

Make sure you have debugging turned off when trying to evaluate performance....

http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/1542#post-9619

and build for release as well....

also, make sure you're app is NOT compiled for "thumb" (thanks @jd for pointing this out!)

http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/94#post-389

Posted 2 years ago #
jd
Member

@bradparks Wouldn't compiling for ARM make it more efficient but bigger code size?

@Karl You won't be getting 60fps on the device with that many moving sprites. What is your animation interval set at? If you can get your app to run at 30fps without much variance, the end user should not notice any lag.

Posted 2 years ago #
Karl
Member

I have the interval set to 0.03. Maybe increasing that and reducing the number of frames would help...
I am running in release mode, so that's not the problem. I'll try changing to thumb and see if that helps.
Would FastDirector have any effect on performance?

I did notice that even the AtlasSpriteTest program would start to slow at about 25 sprites or so.

Posted 2 years ago #
bradparks
Member

@jd - Thanks for pointing that out! I meant to put NOT compiled for thumb.... At least the post I pointed to was correct ;-) Thanks though! and since it's within the hour i did the post, I edited my post above to have the correction!

Posted 2 years ago #
Karl
Member

BTW, on my build, GCC_THUMB_SUPPORT is set to NO. Does that mean it's building for ARM?

Other websites such as http://blog.sapusmedia.com/2008/12/compile-for-thumb.html show a checkbox with "Compile for Thumb" but I don't see that in my build info.

Posted 2 years ago #
jd
Member

In xcode build tab, you have the option of English type descriptions or the backend type descriptions (I just made both terms up). "Compile for thumb" might be called something else depending on how you have parameters displayed. Regardless, I wouldn't worry about it. I bet you won't notice much difference between them. If you do, let me know :)

I think it's all the actions and animations running at the same time that's hurting your fps. I'm not sure what the impact of deallocations are, but I bet those slow things down too.

Posted 2 years ago #
Karl
Member

Yeah. I'm considering creating a custom re-usable action which does movement and animation at the same time.

Either way, it looks like this is an iphone limitation issue rather than bad code. I'm going to write a few barebones test apps to be sure, though.

Posted 2 years ago #
redsky
Member

i'm probably the least qualified newb on here. but its a slow work day and i was bored. i made a barebones example.

Get the Flash Video

36x36 sprite with 10 frames of animation (megaman!). here were my test results on my 3g device. i'm not sure what the texture format was [ not even sure how to check :( ]

250 atlassprites 60 fps
300 atlassprites ~50 fps
400 atlassprites ~39 fps
800 atlassprites ~21 fps
1000 atlassprites ~17 fps
1500 atlassprites ~12 fps

(told you i was bored)

disclaimers - i don't claim to know anything about anything and i don't know how reprehensible my code is. however, if someone is newbie-er than i and wants me to post the source id be glad to.

- sorry, just noticed after all this you were using actions. my example is not.

- don't sue me capcom, thanks

Posted 2 years ago #
Karl
Member

What were you using, if not actions?

Posted 2 years ago #

i created the sprite, added each frame to an atlasanimation, then added the animation to the sprite. then in the game loop i change the active frame

in my sprite init...

sprite_ = [AtlasSprite spriteWithRect:CGRectMake(1,1,36,36) spriteManager:[aManager retain]];

frames_ = [AtlasAnimation animationWithName:@"running" delay:0.2f];

[frames_ addFrameWithRect: CGRectMake( 1, 1, 36, 36 ) ];
[frames_ addFrameWithRect: CGRectMake( 37, 1, 36, 36 ) ];
//etc

[sprite_ addAnimation: frames_];

elsewhere...

[sprite_ setDisplayFrame:@"running" index: frameIndex_++ ];

and frames_ is a static AtlasAnimation so all instances use the same data

Posted 2 years ago #

Kaizen
Member

Hi redsky... I´m having problems with performance too. I tried turning off thumb code but that doesn´t help so much.

I tried with 70 sprites and I´m getting 30 FPS so something is wrong for me. Can you send me a copy of the project that you made to test AtlasSprites?

my mail is: kaizen.sv (at) gmail.com

Thanks!

Posted 2 years ago #
redsky
Member

sent!

Posted 2 years ago #
PhilM
Member

@redsky: do you wrap the 'setDisplayFrame' call with a check on the delta time, to keep the animation running at the desired speed (0.2f in your e.g.)?

I'm currently using standard animations (running via the FastAnimate class from another user here). But looking to perhaps go with this method (been meaning to test it for a while).

Posted 2 years ago #

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