I have seen the usage of plist and png atlasses for the game i am developing. However I've notice a slight performance swiftness(speed up) keeping the 60 fps, and for a side note my app has not crash at the moment.
The thing is I noticed I have used SpriteFrameCache with plist to do CCactions and animations for my characters(sprites). However some of the characters ive been using SpriteBatchnode, but it was on accident, since I am relatively new to deep development of a game, I didnt notice this difference before, they both work, but I feel like both are the same, its just that one has an easier way of implementation than the other, i was thinking that perhaps it was developed in an earlier version....
so my question is. is there a difference between the two? will my game benefit for using SpriteFrameCache over SpriteBatchNode?
Thanks for the help.
FYI: this doesnt slow down my developing, its just a question because I know at the end when my game is finished maybe i would want to optimize performance for my game.
Batch nodes draw all child sprites in one draw call.
Sprite frames hold a reference to a texture and define a region in the texture to draw from. The cache allows you to access sprite frames by name.
Both are different concepts, they are not replacements for each other. You can use sprite frames to create sprites or sprite frame animations. In addition to that sprite batching enables you to speed up rendering of two or more sprites using the same texture.
Note that if you use a batch node with only a single child sprite this will not be any different from rendering the sprite without the batch node, since both create a single draw call so there is no positive effect in using the batch node.
Related
I am new to ARKit. I am trying to add so many new nodes into the sceneview in front of my camera. I wanna add objects like cylinder and sphere with different colors. the problem is my frame speed will drop significantly and my phone starts to lag so much after I add 30 objects to the scene. I searched for a solution so much and I found this function to be helpful. prepare(_:completionHandler:). This was how I was adding my objects to the scene without prepare function.
self.sceneView.scene.rootNode.addChildNode(cylinder)
and now I am using the prepare function like this:
self.sceneView.prepare([cylinder], completionHandler: { (success) in
self.sceneView.scene.rootNode.addChildNode(cylinder)
})
Now frame drops like before, also the app will crash after adding 50 objects to the scene.
I think I am not using it correctly and I don't know how to use it?!
Also, I am thinking what else I can do to better my ARKit app?
How you're adding the objects is independent of the frame rate that you're seeing, and when you use all the memory available. The different method of adding objects can be useful for keeping the UI responsive, but you will need to optimize (or use more powerful hardware) when placing a lot of objects into an ARKit scene.
If you're trying to understand your ARKit performance, the medium article on ARKit 1.5 vs. 2.0 might be useful.
I'm currently designing a game in Swift and Spritekit that calls for bacteria-like graphics for the main player. I have no idea how to approach the physics and visual effects of a node like this. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a visual:
So basically the player is a circle/oval that can completely alter it's shape based on the surrounding structures.
I've tried this by creating a huge array of nodes strung together to create the larger structure, however this is extremely inefficient and lags the computer when I try to scale it up to multiple players. I also want to fudge this the least amount as possible since it requires realistic (or at least expected) physics of something like this with the ability to jump, move, slide, etc.
Thanks!
My project runs at 55-60FPS on an iPhone 6 but anything older is completely unplayable because something is eating CPU.
I think the issue is related to the number of tiles and layers on my map (64x256 with 4 layers) and Instruments shows "SKCRenderer:preprocessSpriteImp(..." taking 5198ms (23.2%) running time.
Does JSTileMap load every single tile's image (visible or not) at once? This post from RW indicates that is the case and that it could be worked around for large performance boosts:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=9479
In another performance note - Sprite Kit checks all it's nodes and
decides which ones it needs to display each frame. If you have a big
tile map, this can be a big performance hit. JSTileMap loads all the
nodes (SKSpriteNode for each tile) when it loads the tile map. So, I
was also seeing performance issues in the Sprite Kit version with my
maps (which are 500 x 40 tiles). I added a check to my version of
JSTileMap that's included in the kit that marks the hidden property of
each tile, then intelligently unhides and hides only the tiles that
enter/exit the screen space. That increased performance on these
larger maps significantly.
Unfortunately that post does not go into detail regarding the steps taken to remedy this.
My first thought was to (I'm a beginner, please be gentle) create an array of nodes by looping through each point and checking for a tile on the specific layer. From there I'd work on adding/removing them based on distance from the player.
This didn't work, because the process of adding nodes to an array simply caused the app to hang forever on larger maps.
Could someone lend a hand? I'd love to work with larger/more complicated tilemaps but this performance issue is destroying my brain.
Thanks for reading!
UPDATE: Big thanks to SKAToolKit: https://github.com/SpriteKitAlliance/SKAToolKit
Their culling feature solved my problem and I'm now running even larger maps at less than 35% CPU.
JSTileMap has some issues handling larger maps but you do have a couple of options to consider:
Break your large map into several smaller pieces and load each new piece as required.
Only load those objects which are in the player's vicinity.
Only load those tiles which are in the player's vicinity.
I personally found it impossible to accomplish #3 with JSTileMap as I could not locate an array holding the map tiles. I solved this issue by using the SKAToolKit which provides easy access to map tile arrays. It is an excellent resource for parsing maps created in Tiled.
I am creating this sort of first person shooter game for the iPhone 6 Plus, but when I introduce any lights to the scene, the frame rate goes from an already barely acceptable 12fps to an absolutely unplayable 2fps. Also, introducing a particle system with more than ten particles in it takes the frame rate to 9fps. I have already made it so that it adds all the walls and doors to a map node, and then flattens it using flattenedClone and adds that. I am unsure what else I can do without switching to Metal. But I am also wondering about this because if SceneKit were so slow, why would it even exist?
Problem solved: get a developer licence!
I am creating an app that represents the pages of a book with animation and interactive areas. There is one character who is constant throughout but each page has them represented in a different look so I cannot re-use the frames very easily. This character has wings, legs and eyes which all need to move differently. What I am wondering is what is the best way to take them from the PSD into the app? The two approaches I can think of is either:
Create a separate png for each frame of the animation and then cycle through them (this would be combined into a single sprite atlas)
Split the character into their parts and then position, rotate, scale and move them in the app manually.
The main reason I am considering point 2 is that if I do point 1 then I will need to create a lot of frames of animation for each page and also create them all twice to cater for normal and retina displays.
Please let me know what the correct approach for this may be and if there is anything I should keep in mind.
Thanks
Option 1 sounds much more feasible. 300 frames is a bit too much, but you dont have to load all of them in the memory at the same time. Divide your frames into multiple spritesheets of 1024*1024 and make sure all the frames of the same animation are on a single spritesheet. So, at any given moment, only a single texture would be loaded in the memory, which I guess is the minimum anyway.
You can also do a bit more optimization maybe, by creating separate animations for things that behave the same in different poses. For example, if the eyes are blinking exactly the same in different poses, you can stop creating separate frames for each pose just for blinking. Just take out the eyes (ouch!), create a separate animation for them, and place it over your character's animation node.
Going with option 2 would create un-necessary complications, both for you and the poor device.