Blitting

Solar2D Daily Builds and Public Releases
#1

Hi

I just completed my first game with Corona and it was a fun experience. However it is seriously lacking the ability to manipulate texture memory. It is the reason Lime and tile based games have slow performance.

I couldn’t see it on the roadmap so I would like to suggest it. The functionality is straightforward. I imagine an interface like this:

  1. newTexture(width, height) - this creates a blank image in texture memory, and returns a texture id

  2. texture:newImage(“image.png”, x_pos, y_pos) - this loads an image file in to the texture memory at the coordinates provided

Why this is so important
Consider a platform made of 20 identical blocks. Each block is a separate image, stored in a display group. That’s 20 images. I know from experience that for a typical platformer type of game, around 70 tiles will slow down performance significantly (with parallax scrolling, animated sprites and game text as well).

With the interface suggested above you can instead copy those 20 blocks to texture memory temporarily, and have a single image. This is 20x as fast as the GPU & Corona work with one set of coordinates instead of 20. Then you can remove it after you have used it. With a dynamic loading system the programmer can design a tile engine that works super fast.

For my just released game, I was able to boost my performance from <30fps to 60fps by using rectangular strips of tiles to decrease object count. It meant there were less objects on screen. Ideally, these strips could have been automatically generate during the loading phase of the game, but Corona does not have this interface.

My next game is more complicated and the rectangular strips solution won’t work.

I can honestly say that not having this feature will force me to use an alternative SDK for my next game (believe me I don’t want to!). Corona is great for some styles of games (“Cut the Rope”) but I urge you not to neglect action games which are also really popular on the iphone too. I really enjoy using Corona so I hope that this feature can be included in the roadmap…

Otherwise, great work so far Corona team! :slight_smile: [import]uid: 107380 topic_id: 22247 reply_id: 322247[/import]

#2

Thanks for the feedback, just wait until you read what’s on the roadmap.

Do you have a link to your game so that i can download and play it

C. [import]uid: 24 topic_id: 22247 reply_id: 88684[/import]

#3

Really? Can’t wait. Is there any beta program for features like this? I’d be happy to test when they’re available… Regarding my game it was approved for the app store yesterday but isn’t visible yet. Here’s a video. (The screen cap software makes it not look smooth, but actually it runs at 60fps on a device).

http://youtu.be/kEbxujp7NmI [import]uid: 107380 topic_id: 22247 reply_id: 88752[/import]

#4

That is really awesome! :slight_smile:
I’m sure my daughter would love to play that game!

Also, no beta testing available unless you work for Ansca :wink: [import]uid: 10389 topic_id: 22247 reply_id: 88764[/import]

#5

Great to hear this is on the radar Carlos. Been sketching up a potential idea for our next game and had just the same concerns as mikizee. [import]uid: 87138 topic_id: 22247 reply_id: 88821[/import]