what is the difference between a sprite class object and a bitmap class object

fozbstudios

just as the title says, I'm a total newb!

atilim

Hi and welcome

Mainly, Sprite class is used to contain and group other sprites and Bitmap class is used to display Textures or TextureRegions on the stage.

You can create a Sprite class object by:

local sprite = Sprite.new()

and a Bitmap class object by:

local texture = Texture.new("image.png") local bitmap = Bitmap.new(texture)

Because Bitmap class inherits from Sprite class, you can use all of the Sprite functions with a Bitmap object.

fozbstudios

so for displaying a control use bitmap

atilim

If your control consists of a single image, yes. Otherwise you need to create multiple bitmaps and add them to a parent sprite.

fozbstudios

ok thanks for the help!!!!

fozbstudios

any performance gains to be had from adding all of my controls in the right places then putting them in a single sprite object?

atilim

I recommend to put them in a single sprite object for ease of use. I think the performance difference between two is negligible.

fozbstudios

How is it easier? Sorry for all the noob questions!

fozbstudios

last question can sprites be multi-nested? ex: floor sprite inside building sprite inside city sprite.

bowerandy

@fozbstudios, yes Sprites can be multiply nested.

I think the name, Sprite, is perhaps a bit misleading since I've previously thought of sprites as moveable/animatable graphic images inside games. This is not exactly what they are in Gideros.

A better name might be "Group" (or Layer) because they behave pretty much like group objects inside graphic editor programs like Illustrator. In particular, the width/height of a Sprite is determined by its contents, e.g. an empty Sprite doesn't have a size.

In order to have a size and be visible on screen a Sprite must have some visible contents as its children. These children must be Bitmaps, Shapes or TextFields as these objects are the classes that are directly visible.

best regards

techdojo

I think the name is probably inspired by Flash - as Sprite is used in Flash terminology to represent a group of objects.

When I think of the gideros display hierarchy I imagine it as a tree structure, sprites are the branches and bitmaps are the leaves

fozbstudios

I am totally up to speed now (they're like groups in the other lua based sdk, you know, the one that sounds like nonona)

Magnusviri

I think the name is probably inspired by Flash - as Sprite is used in Flash terminology to represent a group of objects.

The term sprite existed long before Flash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics)

gorkem

Commodore used "sprite" officially to represent an object on the screen. E.g there used to be a maximum of 8 sprites on the screen at once, and this was mentioned in docs.

techdojo

I was actually referring it is use as a container for other objects which mirrors it's use in the flash vernacular

alexzheng

I was actually referring it is use as a container for other objects which mirrors it's use in the flash vernacular

So do I, but I wonder if it is lightweight enough for just act a container?