CODEWITHSUNDEEP
actionscript-3spritestage
drpelz
drpelz

Reputation: 811

maximum stage and sprite size?

I'm making an action game and I'd like to know what should be the maximum size of the stage (mine is 660 x 500).

Also I'd like to know how big a game-sprite should be. Currently my biggest sprites have a size of 128 x 128 and I read somewhere on the internet that you should not make it bigger because of performance issues.

If you want to make e.g. big explosions with shockwaves even 128 x 128 does not look very big. What's the maximum size I can definitely use for sprites? I cannot find any real solution about this so I appreciate every hint I can get because this topic makes me a little bit nervous.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1841

Answers (2)

chris
chris

Reputation: 3321

If you're looking for hard numbers, Jason's answer is probably the best you're going to do. Unfortunately, I think the only way to get a real answer for your question is to build your game and do some performance testing. The file size and dimensions of your sprite maps are going to effect RAM/CPU usage, but how much is too much is going to depend on how many sprites are on the stage, how they are interacting, and what platform you're deploying to.

A smaller stage will sometimes get you better performance (you'll tend to display fewer things), but what is more important is what you do with it. Also, a game with a stage larger than 800x600 may turn off potential sponsors (if you go that route with your game) because it won't fit on their portal site.

Most of my sprite sheets use tiles less than 64x64 pixels, but I have successfully implemented a sprite with each tile as large as 491x510 pixels. It doesn't have a super-complex animation, but the game runs at 60fps.

Bitmap caching is not necessarily the answer, but I found these resources to be highly informative when considering the impact of my graphics on performance.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/mobile/WS4bebcd66a74275c36c11f3d612431904db9-7ffc.html and a video demo: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-evangelists-paul-trani/optimizing-graphics/

Also, as a general rule, build your game so that it works first, then worry about optimization. A profiler can help you spot memory leaks and CPU spikes. FlashDevelop has one built in, or there's often a console in packages like FlashPunk, or the good old fashioned Windows Task Manager can be enough.

That might not be a concrete answer, but I hope it helps.

Upvotes: 1

Jason Sturges
Jason Sturges

Reputation: 15955

Cited from:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/display/DisplayObject.html

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/496/cpsid_49662.html

Display objects:

Flash Player 10 increased the maximum size of a bitmap to a maximum pixel count of 16,777,215 (the decimal equivalent of 0xFFFFFF). There is also a single-side limit of 8,191 pixels.

The largest square bitmap allowed is 4,095 x 4,095 pixels.

Content compiled to a SWF 9 target and running in Flash Player 10 or later are still subject to Flash Player 9 limits (2880 x 2880 pixels).

In Flash Player 9 and earlier, the limitation is is 2880 pixels in height and 2,880 pixels in width.

Stage

The usable stage size limit in Flash Player 10 is roughly 4,050 pixels by 4,050 pixels. However, the usable size of the stage varies depending on the settings of the QUALITY tag. In some cases, it's possible to see graphic artifacts when stage size approaches the 3840 pixel range.

Upvotes: 3

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