GameMaker sprite sizes = performance?

sinigrimi

Member
Hello! The question is about the size of sprites, how big can they be done without losing a lot of performance? I tried pixelart and this is definitely not enough to realize my intentions, but I don’t feel like making a game exclusively for powerful PCs. Share your experience, please
 
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robproctor83

Guest
Unfortunately high resolution art affects performance in a lot of negative ways. For instance, if you are using precise collisions it has to loop over each pixel, not good. Shaders also loop over each pixel, and even though it utilizes the GPU and computers with integrated components it won't be good. Also, texture swaps will be a lot more common unless you want to use higher resolution texture pages which is also much slower. Now, it can be done and depending on the scope of your game and your ability to optimize things it is possible.
 
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robproctor83

Guest
Kezarus, would that give an accurrate assessment? I ask because my understanding is that every image you add using sprite_add is added to it's own texture page, so if you had a 6 frame animation it would create 6 texture pages. I mention that because that would skew the speed results when compared to normal internal sprites.
 

Kezarus

Endless Game Maker
So, it was quite a heated discussion last time I ask this but, in short, Game Maker 2 handles it differently than GM1 and texture pages and swaps doesn't make a noticeable difference in performance on GM2. I understand that internal sprites are better, but run my program and see for yourself. Most machines renders an absurd amount of images before buckling. I made several runs in terrible setups and I was happy with the results (that I don't remember exactly right now).

I will try to post the thread about this as soon as I find it. =]

edit: here is it

edit 2: a post of Russel himself stating that "I do not think you should be as concerned with the texture swaps as we were on GMS1". Post link.
 
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