Animation Frame Rates

Getting Started Newbie Questions
#1

Hey guys. Question for those of you with more experience with this than me.

I’m getting ready to add some sprite based animations to my game and was wondering what frame rate do you suggest doing the animation at? I know traditional animation is done at 24 fps, but wasn’t sure if this translates well into Corona.

Also, when using sprite animation, do you find that it makes a difference to run the hardware at 30 fps vs 60 fps?

Thanks all! [import]uid: 43083 topic_id: 18510 reply_id: 318510[/import]

#2

One difference between 30 and 60 FPS that I’ve seen is that it is much harder to optimize my code so that it does not have a negative impact when FPS is set to 60.

You can write code that gets called a lot, like enterFrame functions that get called every frame, functions that handle dragged objects, collision detection when lots of objects are colliding. When you switch from 30 to 60 fps, that code basically has to work twice as fast or it will become the bottleneck which is causing the FPS to drop below the set value.

When I test on an iPhone4 or iPad2, I don’t see the FPS slow down until I add a large number of sprites to the screen ( > 50 ). The slowdown isn’t always noticeable to the human eye, but Apple has a tool that lets you test the FPS of the app as it is running on the device.

[import]uid: 67839 topic_id: 18510 reply_id: 71005[/import]

#3

Also good to remember that some supported hardware is pretty laggy in performance and simply cannot keep up with higher frame rates - like some phones, Kindle Fire, etc.

Also, Apple keeps updating iOS with new features and that really degrades the performance of older phones. iOS4 on an iPhone 3g is simply unusable as an example.

Generally use the lowest frame rate possible before other side effects appear in your app.

Just my $.02 worth,

-David [import]uid: 96411 topic_id: 18510 reply_id: 71081[/import]