New to Corona - Have had a bit of a play & bought/read through one of the manuals - I have some questions now regarding what is the best practice ways to actually use the SDK to construct levels. For the moment I would like to stick to a “no 3rd party tools” concept re this question & learning, so I can best understand…so:
Assumptions:
a. Want to build a game which involves a characters progressing from left to right along the screen - as they move to the right it’s the background scene which is actually moving to the left.
b. How to do using base SDK only
c. Want the background / graphics to look good, i.e. coming from photoshop images
Questions (all focused around how to implement from the SDK level):
Q1 - Images - I assume at the end of the day the screen/level will be really just built up using images correct? i.e. perhaps you might use a sprite manager to help put images onto one larger image for performance, but ultimates it’s just images correct? (assuming you don’t want to try to build a scene by drawing yourself with vector graphics)
Q2 - Scene Moving - What’s the best approach to move the background to the left (to give the illusion of the character moving to the right) - is it just to put all background into a “Group” and move as a group? i.e. is there any SDK programatic technique at a higher layer than this I should be looking at?
Q3 - How big for a level/scene - How do I determine how big/long a scene can be before it should be broken down into diffferent levels for performance? Is there a real performance issue with having too many images?
Q4 - How show relevant bits of a scene - Are there any techniques for building up a whole level scene that is say 5 screen widths wide? Or is it ok to build up something wide as a group such that it won’t be a perforance issue? i.e. in this case you’d have the whole thing in memory but only the bits that are within the screen window area would be displayed (i.e. kind of like a Unity occlusion distance type thing)
Q5 - Changes levels - What’s the best practice approach for changing levels - is it the concept of destroying all objects from the previous level and then going to the new level? Some games seem to undergo a major delay (with change of level splash screen) when a level changes - is this because they’re almost re-setting everything that can be set here?
Q6 - Any best practice coding templates available that (or sample code) that would cover the above? (again assuming no 3rd party tools)
Q7 - Do 3rd party tools change the above - Well perhaps I should also ask for a heads up re whether any of the 3rd party tools would change/impact the above? I would assume no, as they would have to work with the same SDK and would have the same issues, but they could of course supply a library of course to help you out. Unless any of these tools have a way to look into the Corona SDK at a lower level that a typical corona developer couldn’t?
thanks
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