General rules for the best performance practices

JB makin' a game

All around these forums and tutorials people offer an "easy way" and a more complicated way for better performance. I was wondering if there are some general rules that can be applied in various situations for the best performance.

For instance, I've read multiple examples of people saying:
The easy way is Change Scene + some behavior/attributes, but the best way is [insert lots of rules/behavior/attributes here].

Fine by me, but I can't figure out why performance is better that way. If you could help me with some golden rules to follow at all times, it'd be great. However, a very specific rule to follow about just one part of the game, is also very welcome!

tatiang

I know you're asking for a general list of recommended practices but at least as far as your specific question goes:

The easy way is Change Scene + some behavior/attributes, but the best way is [insert lots of rules/behavior/attributes here].

If you're changing a scene, the only way is the easy way unless there's more you haven't included in your example.

Cutscene Entertainment

There are two main things that decrease performance. Images and code.
I know that sounds vague, but it really comes down to that. The more high resolution images that GameSalad has to load, the worse the performance is going to be. But even more so is code.
If you have a ton of objects flying around onscreen at once, each with enough advanced AI in them to run for congress, that's going to slow down performance in a major way.

Now I don't know too many ways to mitigate this issue aside from simplifying your ideas, but here are a few things I do to help myself.

• go 8-bit. Most indie games are 8-bit for a reason, and that's that they don't have the rich people processors needed to make games like The Last of Us run smoothly. In GS, 8-bit won't decrease the file size because there's no way to turn off anti-aliasing, but it will decrease the amount of frames needed for animation because of the way 8-bit characters move.
• go silhouette. Silhouette images on a white background can be put into GS as JPEG files with a multiply filter on the actor to give the same transparent-background effect at nearly half the file size. If you're down with the dark, silhouette style for your game, it will drastically help your performance.
• use black boxes as building blocks to create your environments. I know this is only for silhouette, but instead of having giant images for your environments, you can use colored actors in Gamesalad with different levels of transparency to design your environments for much better performance. My first game, Cell-Block, had backgrounds made entirely of block actors and it looked pretty good.
• Use tables. I can't tell you too much about the in-depth power of tables, but they can encompass and consolidate thousands of complex attributes into a single one, and they will save an insane amount of processing power. If you don't use them already, you should learn how.

I'm still struggling with the performance issue myself in my upcoming game, so I'm learning as I go. But hopefully those things will help you. I'll be using all of them in this next game. Good luck to you JB.

Twayne2

What game ya working on?