First off, these questions aren't exactly urgent (the post is made on a smartphone to pass time), but i'd like to have them answered anyways.
Recently, i've started making a game for mobile platforms that would utilize CocoonJS, however i'm not very optimistic about the performance. Since i read in the manual, that rendering consumes about 90% of the memory used by the applications, i won't concentrate on scripting.
This brings up my first question.
While i can't test on a smartphone, i have an old laptop that should be comparable in performance. It's a Dell Latitide D510: 1,7Ghz CPU, 64Mb VRAM (no shaders, no WebGL), and 512Mb of RAM. Would testing on it yield similar framerates to those of CocoonJS app on a modern smartphone?
Second question.
The game will have a native resolution of 720x480, so it should scale comparably well on most screens, however i was wondering about performance on smaller screens. Say, a 320x240 screen is used - will the screen be rendered in 720x480 in memory and then rescaled, or will it be rendered directly in the screen's resolution?
Third question.
How effective is texture rescaling, vs having textures premade in desired resolution? File sizes aside, i was wondering if the VRAM usage would be the same for a 16x16 textire rescaled to 32x32 and a 32x32 texture (no interpolation), since they should take up the same space on the screen (but then again, they are of different resolutions)?
Fourth question.
Would having multiple settings for texture quality work, if i'd store the different quality textures in animation frames? Are all of these pre-loaded into memory, or are they loaded only upon appearing in layout/ on screen?
Fifth question.
I read that the screen is only re-drawn on mobile if it changes (e.g. a sprite moves). Is this true? If so, could i make a limited framerate by executing movement and other visual changes only in set intervals? Say, nest everything under a "every 0.05 seconds" condition (20 fps). Also, if this'd work, could i use separate "every x seconds" events with the same values to achieve the desired effect (would they synchronize), or would i have to set up calls from a function?
/off the record question.
How strict are Scirra guys about legal policies? Say, can i make prototypes for my game on a pirated copy (because the odds of me completing the project are slim, but i need those features) without getting into trouble? Furthermore, if i can't scrape together the money for purchasing the license initially, would the devs close their eyes if i released from a pirated copy and bought it afterwards?
That's it for now, perhaps more questions coming...