I’ve run into a new roadblock with my game. Related to sprites and memory usage, which has been an ongoing frustration for me. The way I’m setting up sprites works, but seems to waste VRAM by placing the graphic tiles in an inefficient way. Still so much to learn about programming in C 🧠💥🪦 #SGDK - ThreadSky

mechazone.bsky.social • 7 days ago

I’ve run into a new roadblock with my game. Related to sprites and memory usage, which has been an ongoing frustration for me.
The way I’m setting up sprites works, but seems to waste VRAM by placing the graphic tiles in an inefficient way.
Still so much to learn about programming in C 🧠💥🪦
#SGDK

Comments

spacebruce.bsky.social•4 days ago

Unsolicited advice, perhaps, but if you add up how much VRAM you're using when you load the level (simplified napkin example here), you can call SPR_initEx with FONT - USAGE to calculate free space and it will fill spare VRAM entirely with sprites, no assets stepping on each others toes.

mechazone.bsky.social•4 days ago

However now I have a new issue LOL. The sprites all load into VRAM just fine the first time you play a level, but something goes wrong when you reload a level and some sprites disappear 🫠

matteusbeus.bsky.social•4 days ago

Are you using defrag?

mechazone.bsky.social•4 days ago

No, I don’t think I am for VRam. I recently added a Mempack line when I load a new level, I think it was. But pretty sure that’s for regular ram.

Hmmm I did have this screenshot from the Discord saved. Maybe I should try this??

matteusbeus.bsky.social•4 days ago

That's the alternative :) That takes longer than a sprite reset but if you're doing it between level loads it won't be bad. I'd personally try SPR_defragVRAM() after releasing your sprites.

spacebruce.bsky.social•4 days ago

Dumb question, but does defragVRAM do anything that restarting the sprite engine doesn't?

mechazone.bsky.social•4 days ago

Great, thank you. I’ll give it a try first chance I get.

mechazone.bsky.social•4 days ago

I discovered the cause of my issue was how I was initializing the enemy sprite pool and then re-defining them as I added the individual enemies with specific stats. It was creating a set of empty reserved tiles and then using new tiles below when re-defining

mechazone.bsky.social•4 days ago

Thank you, this is great advice!
I’ve used SPR_initEx for one of my interface screens that uses a lot of sprites, but your method really optimizes the process.

zabu-team-stifu.bsky.social•1 day ago

If you have not already, mess around with all the different rescomp settings and see what seems to work best for you (opt_type, opt_level). Also consider preloading gfx instead of streaming them.

mechazone.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thanks, I’ll do that

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply