I hear I should keep a close look on draw calls as I design ios games, right?
I know it depends on many other things, but what would be a good limit to go by? 50? 30? 10?
Also, I like animation blending a lot, but I fear that might be cpu intensive. What’s your experience with the iphone and animation blending?
Should I keep an eye on how many animations are blending simultaneously?
*I have a character animated with 10 bones.
Would I be better off not doing animation blending at all?
What about tri count? For what people say I guess animated characters should add up no more than 2 or 3k in scene, am I right?
How many static tris can I fit as scenery?
What about quads with alpha?
Can it blend with additive?
draw calls are really a CPU hit, so if you’re not heavy on the cpu you can fit more in. I’m assuming you’re not targetting 3g / 2nd gen here. If you are then the number massively changes ie keep them under 10 at all costs sort of thing.
For 3gs and above, its still expensive to have a lot of draw calls but not so much so. 20 would be a good max. You can probably go up to 30 on 4g and ipad without it crying.
For animated characters, its just always better to get what looks right and acceptable on the mobile and worry about optimisation later. Nearly always it will be fill rate or overdraw that kills you off.
10-20k static polys for a level seems reasonable. I’ve had 60k+ at 60fps so its more about what you’re doing.
Animation isn’t at all expensive, its bone, not vert based. If you look at the ios docs under bones you’ll see they recommend about 15 bones. Blending those isn’t a massive task for any cpu. Adds up with more bones and more objects though…
Giving someone numbers for ios is impossible. It really is. You have to do tests.
But the overall info you’ve given me is very helpful I have no idea what ranges I should work with. I didn’t know I could fit in so many static polys, that’s great news! I’m also glad I don’t have to worry so much about animations.
I also wanted to know about quads with alpha channel and/or additive blending, I want to work with particles a little.
Bad news about so few drawcalls allowed! I need those drawcalls if I want artistic freedom, I need them badly X)
Knowing I can have plenty of tris in memory will allow me to optimize the drawcalls, my having several meshes share a single material. But I rather target for the 3Gs and above, because I don’t think I’d be able to optimize my game that much, and feel proud of it at the same time :-[