How many atlases?

Ninjadoodle

Hi guys

Just wanted too see what your guys experience with this is?

How many atlases would you recommend loading at the same time?

This seems to be a bit of a double edge sword. If I load 2-3 2048x2048 atlases, my device might crash, yet if I separate this into a few smaller sheets (as needed per level), I'm loading more images, yet the device will be able to handle it.

Any help would be awesome

Thank you in advance!

Tom2012

Hi @Ninjadoodle

The largest number of atlases I've tried is:

3 x spritesheets 1024 x 1024
2 x 512 x 512 images

DOUBLE these sizes if the device supports retina etc... so 3 x 2048 etc...

The main problem I faced was increased load times, as each atlas adds x seconds on.

You CAN get the number of atlases you need down by creating a separate set of atlases for each level. For example, making an atlas for level one that doesn't contain anything from level 2, 3, 4 etc... may reduce the size of the atlas down. The downside of creating lots of tailored atlases is it pushes up the size of your app. Anything over 100mb on Android will require expansion apks. Not a huge problem though.

As for load times, it can help, as we discussed in that other thread, to have one atlas loaded from the start and not unloaded. For example the interface elements, or the hero character's limbs etc.

You certainly can, in my testing, get away with a few large atlases no problem. And with technology advancing so fast, by the time I'd finished my game, a lot of the Atlas problems weren't an issue any more.

Ninjadoodle

Hi @Tom2012

Thank you for the reply

amin13a

Preload frequently used textures as atlases in the beginning, and load other textures whenever you need those and free them whenever you don't (you don't need atlases for them).

SinisterSoft

I preload the textures and preallocate render targets.