Large Backgrounds - Memory Space Questions
Tosanu
Member, PRO Posts: 388
I have a couple of questions about using backgrounds larger than the camera size. I've seen on searching the forum that its generally advised to cut oversized scene backgrounds into tiles and apply them that way for RAM purposes, so that answers one of my questions, but is there any other problems with that? Is there a wise limit to how much memory space image files can take up, and if so, is there any good optimization for basic PNGs?
The game being made is a platformer that has camera movement on both axes. I cannot use parallaxing or repeatable backgrounds because the purpose of the background is to make a unique environment that blends into the platforms and obstacles, so it has to be specially drawn. Is there a recommended "limit" to memory space used on imagery?
Comments
Backgrounds (or any image) cannot be any larger than 2048x2048. That is all that I know. Anything that is larger than 4 or 5MBs should really be reconsidered. That is also something I've learned.
Your game has now caught my interest...
As its not a personal project but has secondary support, i try not to say much about it for now. Its a battle platformer (i.e. megaman style run and gun/weapon) with a holiday theme.
We can keep the images below that size. Our real fear is the TOTAL file sizes, of the entire game's image directory. Is there a limit to that? I guess the real fear is "are we going to size this app right out of downloadable/marketable range?"
Well, that's totally up to you, really. You'd probably want to stay away from the 200MB+ for a 2D game though. Even 3D games don't take up that much space at times.!
I'm not sure if there is an actual limit or not, but the higher, the worse off you are, especially anywhere after the 100MB region. You've got me wondering where my game is in terms of download-size now!