Is it better to cut and store all sprites needed from a spritesheet in memory, or cut them out just-in-time?

Posted by xLite on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by xLite
Published on 2012-06-03T22:30:33Z Indexed on 2012/06/03 22:48 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 201

Filed under:

sprites

|

spritesheet

I'm not sure what's best practice here as I have little experience with this. Essentially what I am asking is...

if it's better to get your single PNG with all your different sprites on it for use in-game, cut out every sprite on startup and store them in memory, then access the already-cut-out sprite from memory quickly

or

Only have the single PNG with all the different sprites residing in memory, and when you need, for example, a tree. You cut out the tree from the PNG and then continue to use it as normal.

I imagine the former is more CPU friendly than the latter but less memory friendly, vice versa for the latter. I want to know what the norm is for game dev. This is a pixel based game using 2D art. Each PNG is actually an avatar's sprite sheet with each body part separated and then later joined to form the full body of the avatar.

© Game Development or respective owner

Related posts about sprites

Combining multiple sprites vs separate sprites

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I have a character which can hold ten types of weapons. Should I: Create ten sets of animations for the character with each weapon Create animations for each weapon, and programmatically draw them on the character Option 1 is simpler in general, but requires more work on the artist, and results… >>> More
Emulating old-school sprite flickering (theory and concept)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to develop an oldschool NES-style video game, with sprite flickering and graphical slowdown. I've been thinking of what type of logic I should use to enable such effects. I have to consider the following restrictions if I want to go old-school NES style: No more than 64 sprites on the… >>> More
Error in code of basic game using multiple sprites and surfaceView [on hold]

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I am a beginner to android and i was trying to make a basic game with the help of an online video tutorial. I am having problem with the multi-sprites and how to use with surfaceview.The application fails launching. Here is the code of the game.please help me. package com.example.killthemall; import… >>> More
SDL2 sprite batching and texture atlases

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I have been programming a 2D game in C++, using the SDL2 graphics API for rendering. My game concept currently features effects that could result in even tens of thousands of sprites being drawn simultaneously to the screen. I'd like to know what can be done for increasing rendering efficiency if… >>> More
Create a trailing, ghosting effect of a sprite

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I want to create a trailing, ghosting like effect of a sprite that's moving fast. Something very similar to this image of Sonic (apologies of bad quality, it's the only example I could find of the effect I'm looking to achieve) However, I don't want to do this at the sprite sheet level, to avoid… >>> More

Related posts about spritesheet

Dividing up spritesheet in Javascript

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I would like to implement an object for my spritesheets in Javascript. I'm very new to this language and game-developement so I dont really know how to do it. My guess is I set spritesize to 16, use that to divide as many times as it fits on the spritesheet and store this value as "spritesheet"… >>> More
Spritesheet per pixel collision XNA

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
So basically i'm using this: public bool IntersectPixels(Rectangle rectangleA, Color[] dataA,Rectangle rectangleB, Color[] dataB) { int top = Math.Max(rectangleA.Top, rectangleB.Top); int bottom = Math.Min(rectangleA.Bottom, rectangleB.Bottom); int left = Math.Max(rectangleA… >>> More
Exporting the frames in a Flash CS5.5 animation and possibly creating the spritesheet

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
Some time ago, I asked a question here to know what would be the best way to create animations when making an Android game and I got great answers. I did what people told me there by exporting each frame from a Flash animation manually and creating the spritesheet also manually and it was very tedious… >>> More
Tool for creating Spritesheet? and Tips

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I am looking for a tool that I can use to create sprite sheet easily. Right now I am using Illustrator, but I can never get the center of the character in the exact position, so it looks like it is moving around(even though its always in one place), while being loop through the sprite sheet. Is… >>> More
How do I animate a spritesheet in cocos2d Android

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I'm trying to animate a sprite in a spritesheet, the goal is to make the character walk from left to right. I subclassed CCSprite: CharacterSprite. this is my code: CCSpriteFrameCache.sharedSpriteFrameCache().addSpriteFrames("WalkAnimation.plist"); CCSpriteSheet spriteSheet = CCSpriteSheet… >>> More