Event Sheet & Performances ?

Hello guys,

the little game I'm working on for weeks now is gradually advancing, everything is smooth but...I'm curious about one thing and I would like to have some informations. The project has only one event sheet for now, with almost 400 events organized by groups (sounds, animations, ennemies, movements, pick - throw - drop). It's not a problem.

But for how long ? I'm maybe wrong, but using only one event sheet for a whole game seems...unbalanced. I know we can use several sheets and even use a sheet in another sheet, but I don't need to proceed like that for the moment (and I don't really know in which case it's useful by the way, I guess I'll find it by myself). So, the question is :

Is it really possible to create a "complexe" game with only one event sheet ? And it's ok for the performances ?

If the answer is "yes" I suppose it's absolutely not recommended, right ?

I feel like it's a dumb question, but I need to know that, before continuing anything.

I don't think it will matter performance wise. Organization wise, it seems like it's probably a good idea to have multiple event sheets once your project gets a certain size - it can help to compartmentalize things. Sounds like you're already doing that to some extent with groups which is a good practice.

after it has been exported, the number of event sheets is irrelevant.

so your answer is yes, it is possible, and definitely not a good thing.

however too many event sheets becomes unwieldy due to limitations in the C2 editor, which I believe is one of the things they plan on fixing in C3.

There is advantages and disadvantages. I think the answer is whatever you are comfortable with but I favour using a few long event sheets over lots of mini ones.

Advantage : When using the search box you only have to search one sheet instead of many (when you are looking for a problem this comes in really handy).

Disadvantage : Since you can't actually focus the editor on a particular event (unless you only use bookmarks for this purpose) you will find yourself having to do quite a lot of scrolling which gets more tedious the longer the event sheet is. This is because the search won't display subevents that don't include the search word.

My game only uses one layout as well! The Main layout event sheet currently has 1213 events and it's gonna have about 12 Events Sheets included within it.

I have not noticed any performance issues but ooohhhh boy is organization becoming a bit of a drag.... I also try to place events in the most logical places, make sure my sprite are not very large, the events aren't too complicated, and I keep track of how much objects are or can be in the layout.

So mainly. Organization is terrible, and the more I develop it, the more I have dreams of Construct 3.

Okay everyone, I have my answer now thanks to your own answers, thank you ! I'll continue to work on my current event Sheet and then create another one as long as the previous one...in brief :

"favour using a few long event sheets over lots of mini ones."

Noted ! And I'll be careful on the organization (as far as I can, at least). I see that you're waiting for Construct 3, I have absolutely no information about its features, seems to be interesting and promising. I'll check that latter.

Thanks again !

"favour using a few long event sheets over lots of mini ones."

I don't think that's the conclusion, though - as it has already been said :

"the number of event sheets is irrelevant" [in terms of performance]

so organise your events as you see fit, and prefer maintainability wherever possible. I personally prefer to work with lots of event sheets, 1 per gameplay entity or system (OOP-style). It also means that "searching" is trivial, as you always know where each bit of logic is. My latest finished platformer as ~2500 events, without any logic duplication, all spread across ~75 event sheets

My game has 9000 events just in one sheet (other 700 spread out in few other sheets) and i can guarantee it is irrelevant to the performance.