How long a Layout can or should be?

Hey All,

I'm curious about few things related to a Layout but I'm not sure how Construct works with it and if it will be fine or maybe too much to handle: Memory, CPU, loading time etc..

I'll try to describe it in general:

Imagine a game from right to left, if it's a platformer (Mario Bros.), fighting game arcade (Final Fight / Streets of Rage etc..) or a spaceship (R-Type) in general scrolling from right to left with the camera.

So, for a simple spaceship for example, I'm aware to the option of "faking" the unlimited scrolling using background wrapping in a loop, stars, etc.. while the layout could be on the same size.

But that's not what I'm looking for or asking about, I had to give these examples to be clear.

I imagine that the more sprites on the layout the bigger the file size and the loading, but I do have more questions:

My questions related to this subject are:

1

. How big can I make the layout, wide / height, am I limited by Construct to a maximum size of the layout?

2

. Will a HUGE layout take much memory even if objects does not appear on the screen yet (unless they reveal to the camera / viewport? or as long as they sit on the layout they will use the memory?

3

. Did anyone have an experience with making a really long scroll-game and have issues?

4

. What if the layout is very long while the viewport of the game is 1920x1080 (Full-HD) will it slow down the game / fps ? (I'm aware that I can use 16:9 lower resolution and stretch but I'm curious how it will work).

All my questions are directed using NW.js or for PC .exe in general as I'm more interested,

but if you also have answers related to Android I'll be happy to learn about the limits as well.

Thanks ahead and sorry about my bad English.

The layout size is infinite, you can scroll forever, and it doesn't affect performance. You should only really be concerned about the number of objects, especially the objects that use large images and take up a bunch of memory. Objects that are off screen are not rendered and hardly affect performance. Just take into account the total memory usage for that layout and try and keep it under 100mb. I would say best practice though is to do what you're trying to avoid and mimic the scrolling, creating a large level isn't too useful although you can make use of the tilemap object that helps to keep memory usage down when drawing a level.

Thank you this information is very helpful, I should mess around and do some experiments.