What size should the average sidscrolling shooter be

butterbean

What size do you recommend for a sidescrolling shooter that will contain approximately 5-7 levels.
I was going to keep the height at default, but if I adjusted the height, the ship would have more range to fly up and down right?
If so, would I have to create a rule for that?

Also, do I have to keep the width of the level to a minimum since 10GB's is the max allowed space for an iphone game?

Also, what would a general rule be to prevent slowdown in a game, or is it trial and error, because I'm not sure where to go in terms of creating backgrounds, graphics, sprites etc. and don't want to go overboard, but also want to utilize the iphone to it's greatest capacity

Thanks!

CodeMonkey

The camera size is set to 480x320, but you are welcome to make the scene height and width larger than that.
10MB is a lot of space, but having lots of different images may take up a lot of that space.

Slowdown is usually due to having lots of actors with lots of rules checking for several conditions. But we are improving on that.

As for getting art and sprites, check with the FAQ, there is a link to a list of places where you can get some images under the Creative Commons license.

ktfright

its no rule--- at that point you have to put a control camera behavior in the actor you want the camera to look at. the ship would have more range.

for space, it might depend if you use a real background or not. try to have as few actors on screen as possible to prevent some slowdown. hope i helped a bit.

butterbean

Thanks, that does help both Codemonkey and ktfright