Super fast sprites

RamaBot

I think that with a little work the particle system could be easily adapted to create a nice lean mean super fast sprite system.

I would think that a lean sprite system based on a single texture using texture regions would be faster than the one we have. ( Which is quite fast )

A bunch of sprites would be associated with a single mesh and texture. This would save on primitive draws and texture swapping.

Also moving speed and some sort of gravity settings, as well as acceleration into the system would take the load off lua.

Removing individual sprites from the view hierarchy would reduce processing time. We could have tons of sprites flying all over the place.

thoughts?

SinisterSoft

Do you mean being able to specify the x,y,w,h of the individual particle texture within the main particle texture?

RamaBot

Yup. Setting the uv's of the quads.

SinisterSoft

Maybe @hgy29 could put the in, it's early days for the particle stuff.

antix

You can create a pure lua particle system. If you use a pool of sprites and as you mentioned, texture region swapping from one large texture you can get some pretty good results. My latest particle system can have hundreds of particles whizzing about and very quickly.

Sprite pooling and TextureRegion swapping are the key things that make them very fast.

As a side note it would be good to see the MovieClip class get some attention. Check this example from my game..

local frames = { Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin1.png")), -- 1 Coin Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin2.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin3.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin4.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin5.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin6.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin7.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin8.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin9.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("coin10.png")),   Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star1.png")), -- 11 Star Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star2.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star3.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star4.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star5.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star6.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star7.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star8.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star9.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("star10.png")),   Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart1.png")), -- 21 Heart Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart2.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart3.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart4.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart5.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart6.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart7.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart8.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart9.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("heart10.png")),   Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield1.png")), -- 31 shield Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield2.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield3.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield4.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield5.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield6.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield7.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield8.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield9.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("shield10.png")),   Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x1.png")), -- 41 2x Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x2.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x3.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x4.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x5.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x6.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x7.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x8.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x9.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("2x10.png")),   Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x1.png")), -- 51 3x Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x2.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x3.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x4.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x5.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x6.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x7.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x8.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x9.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("3x10.png")),   Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token1.png")), -- 61 token Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token2.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token3.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token4.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token5.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token6.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token7.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token8.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token9.png")), Bitmap.new(pack:getTextureRegion("token10.png")), }

Creating so many bitmaps just to animate one sprite might work (and it does) but isn't it terribly inefficient? One bitmap and some TextureRegions could accomplish the same goal, whilst being more efficient and quicker.

I haven't installed the latest version of Gideros yet but will have a look at the new particle feature soon

SinisterSoft

Just curious, but why do you do it that way and not with a loop?

local frames={} local files={"coin","star","heart","shield","2x","3x","token"} for loop=1,10 do frames[loop]={} for loop2=1,#files do frames[loop][loop2]=Bitmap.new(files[loop2]..loop..".png") end end

antix

Probably because I wasn't thinking very hard about it )

Thanks for improving it, I'll go and implement that this morning

totebo

For fixed frame rate animations, I use this helper method to load bitmaps in a sequence:

function MovieClip.newFromBitmapSequence( texturePack, base_filename, frame_duration, loop, reverse )   local texture local i=1 local bitmaps = {}   repeat texture = texturePack:getTextureRegion(base_filename..i..".png") if texture then local bitmap = Bitmap.new(texture) insert(bitmaps, bitmap) end i = i+1 until texture == nil   local timeline = {} local first_frame local last_frame local count   if reverse then first_frame = #bitmaps last_frame = 1 count = -1 else first_frame = 1 last_frame = #bitmaps count = 1 end   for i=first_frame, last_frame, count do local start_frame = (i-1)*frame_duration+1 local end_frame = i*frame_duration local frame = {start_frame, end_frame, bitmaps[i]} insert(timeline, frame) end   if #timeline == 0 then print( "MovieClip.newFromBitmapSequence(): Error: Missing file: " .. base_filename ) end   local mc = MovieClip.new(timeline) local total_frames = frame_duration*#bitmaps   if loop == true then mc:setGotoAction(total_frames, 1) end   mc.isLooping = function() return loop == true end   return mc   end

To load a one-shot animation with the filenames "explosion1.png", "explosion2.png", [ .. ], "explosion14.png" with each bitmap showing for 4 frames:

local mc_explosion = MovieClip.newFromBitmapSequence( texturePack, "explosion", 4, false )

SinisterSoft

That was just code I typed in the forum directly, not tested, it should work though.

SinisterSoft

If you want it to be a single array rather than a double array you should put something like:

[((loop-1)*10)+loop2]

antix

Thanks for getting my brain chugging @SinisterSoft, it's been a cold frosty morning here

I boiled it down a wee bit further too..

local frames={} local files={"coin", "star","heart","shield","2x","3x","token"} for i = 1, #files do for j = 1, 10 do frames[#frames + 1] = Bitmap.new( pack:getTextureRegion(files[i]..j..".png")) end end

p.s, I must have forgotten to press "post message" this morning too LOL

SinisterSoft

yes, that is better.