CCSpriteSheet, Many different Sprites - how to handle for smooth performance?

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CCSpriteSheet, Many different Sprites - how to handle for smooth performance?

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Started 1 year ago by javy
Latest reply from javy

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javy
Member

I'm working on a larger project that has many different kinds of sprites (mostly enemies).

What I'd like to know is if having multiple CCSpriteSheets are bad for performance.

For example, if I have a CCSpriteSheet for each:
Background
Soldier
Truck
Tank
Helicopter
Plane
(etc.)
Hero
Special Effects

...and then add these individual CCSpriteSheets to the game - is this a problem for performance?

Are they all drawn with openGL at the same time, or will having different sprite sheets slow things down by making multiple openGL calls?

(I know very little about openGL, so please go easy on me!)

I would hate to write a large amount of code with a bad plan and end up having an unplayable game.

Posted 1 year ago #
bradparks
Member

you should use as few spritesheets as possible... each spritesheet does all it's draw calls in one big batch, so if you had 20 helicopters on screen, then they'd all get drawn in one big call, since they all come from the "helicopter" spritesheet...

but if you have 10 different spritesheets, then there's 10 different batched openGL calls, which will slow things down...

having said that, i've done as you're saying, and have a separate spritesheet for each game character, but i've also got it abstracted a bit so later on I can cram them into as few spritesheets as possible and it'll only require adding an offset per character definition to my spritesheet loading...

i haven't been using it, but I think using Zwoptex (http://zwoptex.zwopple.com/) to build your animations may help out here, as it lets you reference animations and frames by name, and lets your rearrange where they fall in the spritesheet as you see fit without affecting your code....

Posted 1 year ago #
javy
Member

Thanks Brad, that clears things up nicely.

I've looked at Zwoptex and intent on using it!

I will have to create the art/animations and see how much space I need. I may just group certain types of enemies/objects onto a few different sheets and leave it at that.

Thanks!

Posted 1 year ago #

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