My project requires 190mgb+ memory? Why is that?

[Samer]

Hi,

So I'm working on an android game and I've reached the point where I'm adding my remaining background images. However, after I added my images my memory requirement sky-rocketed from 63mgb to 190mgb. And I only added 6 extra 1440x1920 images. Why is that? Surely android devices should handle images that size with ease? I mean, they can run 3D shooters for crying out loud. After this addition of images, the game lags quite hard on my Samsung Galaxy SIII. I also tried different emulators and have been getting the same results.

Am I seriously limited to that extent or am I doing something incredibly wrong?

I've tried adding the images to an active backdrop object rather than an active object and the memory usage was only reduced by 30mgb. It would still lag quite heavily on my phone.

My .apk is only 8mgb in size? So why is this happening.

Please bare with my experience, which I clearly lack. This is my first attempt in creating an android game, so I'm still learning this stuff.

Here is the attached project.

http://speedy.sh/4Wtam/nano-array-android.mfa

Any help would be massively appreciated.

Thanks.

Samer.

[DaveC]

6x 1920x1440 bitmap images in full colour is expensive.. remember you're not just displaying those images, you're running Fusions runtime which also uses memory. I can't look at your file right now, but why do you need 6 1440x1920 active objects? if you reduce the colour of your app that will help also. There are a million and 1 optimisation techniques, but developing scrolling games in full HD with full HD backdrops will cause problems for the Android runtime.

[Samer]

Hi DaveC,

I'm trying to make my game compatible with all screen sizes. The only solution which I found is creating the biggest screen size (1440x1920), supposedly's tablet 10", and make sure the rest are fit to the outside. Reducing the colour of the app takes away from the visual quality I'm trying to achieve. And what do you mean by optimisation techniques? How would you create picture clear backgrounds without them being 1440x1920?

Thanks for the quick reply.

Samer.

[DaveC]

you don't need to make the window 1440x1920 to support full screen on a 1440x1920 device. You could make it at 720x960 and that'd save a lot of memory. I'm making a few games at 240x160 (pixel art style) which scale up and look perfect on HD devices. (smooth resizing must be turned off)

Simflare compiled a nice collection of a number of things you can do:
http://community.clickteam.com/entries/598-How-to-Optimize-Your-Games
http://community.clickteam.com/threads/62295-Guide-to-faster-games-with-less-memory-usage
http://community.clickteam.com/threads/84930-how-to-work-out-if-an-image-is-to-the-power-of-2?p=620400#post620400

[adeb]

for your pictures use photoshop and save image for web and mobile device without metadata in format png 8 :
example : simple picture png 24= +1mb after using photoshop i have 33ko in good quality

[Simon]

If you could post a link here to an example of one of your images, we would be better able to suggest ways of achieving the same thing more efficiently also

[Samer]

Hi,

DaveC, thanks for the great suggestions and your links are extremely useful even in future projects.

Adeb, I never thought about exporting my images like that, you're right, they turned out to be smaller without losing one bit of quality!

Simon, here are examples of 3 backgrounds:







Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm beginning to understand that creating games for smartphones isn't as simply as it it, and that RAM is an important resource that must not be abused. With all the combined optimisation techniques, I might be able to pull this off, afterall.

Thanks again, all help is massively appreciated.

Samer.

Ps. The images uploaded are quite noticeably compressed. In the actual version, they are a lot smoother and far less pixelated.

[Simon]

An immediate suggestion there, create a grayscale version and use the rgb coefficient to recolour the single image. Use a smaller image and resize it at run-time, gradients should scale very well.

[Perry]

Thanks for those links...
Found a handy one, since I couldn't figure out why...

"•Enable "Wake_Lock" under the permissions to help keep the phone backlight on"

you don't need to make the window 1440x1920 to support full screen on a 1440x1920 device. You could make it at 720x960 and that'd save a lot of memory. I'm making a few games at 240x160 (pixel art style) which scale up and look perfect on HD devices. (smooth resizing must be turned off)

Simflare compiled a nice collection of a number of things you can do:
http://community.clickteam.com/entries/598-How-to-Optimize-Your-Games
http://community.clickteam.com/threads/62295-Guide-to-faster-games-with-less-memory-usage
http://community.clickteam.com/threads/84930-how-to-work-out-if-an-image-is-to-the-power-of-2?p=620400#post620400

[Samer]

Simon.....you absolute genius....

Thank You.

Samer.