Better performance on iOS/ Working for multiple resolutions

[Kinmoku]

Hi all,

I'm testing One Night Stand on iPad and iPhone at the moment. It's a universal build. It works great on the iPad Pro, but on my older iPhone 5S, it's running slow, even crashing, on longer sprite animations.

I had this trouble before on older computers, so I reduced the file size of the PNG/ transparent frames considerably, and this seemed to solve the problem. I believe if I can reduce the size of the sprites to match the iPhone 5S, this will improve the performance. The resolution of iPhone 5S is 1136x640, which is considerably smaller than what they are right now (1920x1080). This is great for iPhone 6+, but not so great for older devices which I'd like to support. However, if I reduce the file size of the sprites and assets, that will also reduce it on iPad, which is something I don't want to do. I could split the builds, but this wouldn't look good on newer iPhones either.

Is there a way to use a different set of assets depending on which device you're using? Or to improve performance on the iPhone 5S? I once looked into using movie sprites, but they didn't work the way I wanted them to so this isn't an option for me.

[Kinmoku]

Lil bump. I think I've figured out how to alter the sizes of some of the assets for device https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/screens. ... n-variants

But I'm wondering if there's anything else I could be doing?

[PyTom]

There isn't really anything built into Ren'Py to allow this, sorry.

[xavimat]

I can think of an ugly workaround:
Define your assets with ConditionSwitch, or better using text interpolation in their names.
Use renpy.get_physical_size() to select 'large' or 'small' assets.

I've done an example for the computer, where the screen can be changed, and you can see the variations, changing the size of the window and clicking. In, Android, the "sz/sz2" variables can be defined in default or init, so that variable won't change.

Code: Select all

image test = ConditionSwitch(
    "sz[0] < 1000", Solid("#f00", xysize=(200,500)),
    "True", Solid("#ff0", xysize=(200,500)))

image test2 = "asset_[sz2].png" # put "asset_large.png" and "asset_small.png" in the "images" folder.

default sz2 = 'large'

label start:
    scene black with None
    show test at right
    show test2

    jump start2

label start2:

    $ sz = renpy.get_physical_size()
    if sz[0] < 1000:
        $ sz2 = 'small'
    else:
        $ sz2 = 'large'

    "[sz]"
    jump start2

[Kinmoku]

I can think of an ugly workaround:
Define your assets with ConditionSwitch, or better using text interpolation in their names.
Use renpy.get_physical_size() to select 'large' or 'small' assets.

I've done an example for the computer, where the screen can be changed, and you can see the variations, changing the size of the window and clicking. In, Android, the "sz/sz2" variables can be defined in default or init, so that variable won't change.

Code: Select all

image test = ConditionSwitch(
    "sz[0] < 1000", Solid("#f00", xysize=(200,500)),
    "True", Solid("#ff0", xysize=(200,500)))

image test2 = "asset_[sz2].png" # put "asset_large.png" and "asset_small.png" in the "images" folder.

default sz2 = 'large'

label start:
    scene black with None
    show test at right
    show test2

    jump start2

label start2:

    $ sz = renpy.get_physical_size()
    if sz[0] < 1000:
        $ sz2 = 'small'
    else:
        $ sz2 = 'large'

    "[sz]"
    jump start2

I wouldn't say it's ugly, just tricky! There are a lot of assets to deal with, but I think this method may help. I'll test a small part of the game using this and see how I get on. Hopefully the performance will be better I'll report back how it goes!

[jack_norton]

I have a lot of problems on mobile, and I'm even not using high-res assets. My games (even on desktop) are 1280x720. I have sprites at higher resolution but not more than a texture of 1024px.
I think honestly optimization like this is not worth the time - thanks to the super-fast mobile cycle, those old devices will be obsolete in 3-4 years max (on Apple is even faster since they stop supporting "old" OSes super quickly).
For example when I started doing mobile ports in 2013-2014 on Android the most popular was 2.2-2.3, while now you can safely ignore anything below 4.1 and will work on most devices