C3 vs C2 Spritesheeting and Mobile Performance

Spritesheeting had a number of upgrades in C3. However it's extremely complicated and involves endless tradeoffs. It's pretty much the case that any change we make at all to spritesheeting, half of games get better in some way, and the other half get worse. We've played this game of whack-a-mole for some time and I don't think there's much more we can do to improve things for everyone.

The key changes in C3 are preview mode also uses spritesheets - C2 does not in preview mode so you have to export to get a fair comparison; and C3 can combine more kinds of objects on to single spritesheets, whereas C2 never does. This means in C2 you often have far more separate image files, which in some cases can slow down downloads and loading, and reduce rendering performance at runtime, however it offers more granularity in memory management. In C3 the objects combined on to the same spritesheets are the ones most commonly used together on layouts across the project, the idea being that when it loads a spritesheet it's most likely all those objects are being used at the same time, thereby minimising the likelihood that a spritesheet is loaded with some content that won't be used. From what I've seen this does tend to scale pretty well to large real-world projects. (This doesn't tend to work so well with dummy projects, because they're not realistic examples of objects being re-used across multiple levels.)

Also, C3 does already provide options to control this. The max spritesheet size setting lets you alter the performance vs. memory use tradeoff. According to my tests with the provided .capx I get:

Exported C2 project: ~26mb image memory

C3 project with max spritesheet size 1024: ~29mb image memory

That's near enough to the C2 memory usage, so it seems that option is already there and working for your case.

Ashley We tried all 3 settings (1024, 2048, 4096), C2 still better at loading time. People don't want wait in mobile game when they try to go shop or game layout.

This just example, I just made it to show how C3's spritesheeting on mobile. Actually you are talking about memory but did you look how many sec layout change?

And don't change any option in my example because I add all asset with C3's "view spritesheets" tool. So layout have only 6 objects but it is loading all assets. If you change that you need add some assets for real test. Like what I do.

So for real 1024x1024 option not good too. We need chose something for project based. If we need improve download speed we can use 4096 option, if we need memory optimisation we can select C2 export style.

If we have something...

It is connected. If you can reduce RAM usage you will reduce loading times. I've had the same thing you describe happen with my game even with Construct 2, As I added more teams, loading times increased, until eventually, one day it started crashing, would not load at all.

Why don't you give us a choice?

And don't change any option in my example

You first asked for an option, then insisted that any options must not be changed in your project. So I don't know what I can do to help you any more.

> Why don't you give us a choice?

> And don't change any option in my example

You first asked for an option, then insisted that any options must not be changed in your project. So I don't know what I can do to help you any more.

Well, I will do one example for 1024 option too. Just wait please.

You can choose what you want. It is good example to show you we don't have any control on spritesheeting with C3.

I'm totally confused because these two sentences directly contradict each other.

If we have animated sprites in project this time it is exporting that frames using max spritesheet size (1024 for C2)

C2's max spritesheet size is hard-coded at 2048 and there is no option to change it. C3 has an option to change it, and smaller sizes tend to use less memory, so C3's 1024 setting can help.

You can say use 1024 option. It is not really help on mobile.

I made actual measurements and demonstrated it got pretty close to C2's memory use.

FYI C2 loads images one after the other, but the C3 runtime loads images in parallel, which is faster. At the time I wrote it I took some measurements that showed C3 could indeed switch layouts faster than C2. But as noted it depends on the memory use, since using more memory also requires loading more memory. Given similar memory usage though, the C3 runtime should be significantly faster at loading.

Ashley

Okay, I do totally fair test example.

How?

C2 and C3 using same objects in layout, C2 and C3 using same exported files - (15 x (1022x1022) png files + 1 spritefont file)

C2 RAM Usage: 66.92 MB

C3 RAM Usage: 59.93 MB

Phone Resolution: 1280x720

Phone: ZTE Blade S6

Test Project

drive.google.com/file/d/1XZWhEduAxyyAGLLkc0e43QEIuL0x4E1Z/view

Results

I do so many tests. I get best result with C3 only 0.954. C2 still better, I get only witch C2 0.827 (max result)

as you said;

FYI C2 loads images one after the other, but the C3 runtime loads images in parallel, which is faster. At the time I wrote it I took some measurements that showed C3 could indeed switch layouts faster than C2.

It is not true. You can test yourself too. You can see my results, C2 still faster and it is using more memory. "C3 runtime loads images in parallel" this not good for mobile. I think mobile CPUs can't handle this, thats why C2 loads faster than C3 on mobile.

Also I used some edits with C3, I do export option 256x256 and do compare layout switch. So C3 export files (256x256).

With my game (So maybe you want see some real project results):

C2 Game Layout switch: ~3 sec. - 70 MB RAM usage - ~150 objects

C3 Game Layout switch: ~5-6 sec. - 76 MB RAM usage - ~150 objects

I'm thinking the problem only this: "C3 runtime loads images in parallel"

or maybe you can explain what is wrong with mobile?

I tested your project on a Pixel 3 and got the following results:

C2: first switch ~232ms, later switches ~100ms

C3: first switch ~170ms, later switches ~100ms

So according to this, the C3 runtime is faster in this case. I don't know why other devices would be different, maybe specific hardware is better or worse in different cases.

Besides, C3 has a new feature that helps you hide this from the user - there's a built in memory management action "Load layout images", so you can load the next layout's images in the background while the current layout continues to run, and then switching layout will be instant. This feature is not available in C2. If I use "Load Layout 2 images in to memory" on start of layout in Layout 1, then it can switch layouts in around 5ms, which is far faster than you can ever achieve in C2.

So as far as I can tell C3 is both faster at loading layouts and it has a feature to help guarantee that layout switching will be instant, which works here.