How much does the size of game assets affect overall game performance?

How do I...?
#1

Hello,

My game’s assets are originally designed at 640x360 pixels.

However, my GD game’s resolution is set to 1920x1080, and all of my assets are saved and used at 3X their original sizes.

For example, assets that were originally 20x20 pixels are saved and used as 60x60 pixels.

(I don’t remember why I decided to do that. :thinking:)

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I’m wondering if this significantly impacts the game’s performance.
The entire game is currently 280Mb.

While it runs smoothly on my computer, I’ve noticed a severe fps drop on my laptop, making it almost unplayable.

I tried playing ‘Enter the Gungeon’ on my laptop, and it didn’t show any lag.

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I’m unsure if the asset size is the primary cause of the performance issue.

Should I consider resetting the game’s resolution to 640x360 and using the assets in their original sizes?

#2

I did the same thing. I spent a ton of time making my image elements as small/lightweight as possible. But it’s my understanding that once rendered in a browser, the file size of the objects are as rendered on the screen (so, in your case, 3X their size), and not as uploaded. So, my understanding is that what you’ve done can save time loading the game, but not boost performance playing it.

If you haven’t seen this yet, I recommend taking a look. It was very helpful for me: YouTube — GDeveop Optimization

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#3

Hi, do you mean you exported your original assets at a larger size or you’re using small images and sizing them up 3 times in GDevelop? I don’t know if either impacts performance I was just curious.

Is it pixel art? How many images? What format are you exporting them as? Do you have a background image? How large, what format? What’s the average image size (I mean like kb)?

For lag do you have a lot of images moving around, animating etc at the same time?

It could be events.

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#4

Like Lucky-J, I am also suspicious an event may be the culprit. I have some fairly asset rich games, and one I am currently working on is about the same 240MB, and the only struggles so far are were I messed up in the coding part. Might be worth a look. Do you have a link to the game?

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#5

I exported my original assets as 3X size. It is pixel art and most of them are PNG.

There are lots of images moving around yeahh

I will link the game. hehe

#6

Yeahh I should check the coding part again.

This is my game. Thank you :blush:

Video:

Demo:

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#7

Thank you for the clip!
I just watched it and it was really helpful! :+1: :+1:
However, I’m a little bit confused.

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So there are 2 options.

(1) 3X sized assets >> use it just as it is

(2) Original sized (1X) assets >> render to 3X size in GD

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Do you mean that (1) and (2) are not that different in performance?
But will (2) be faster in loading becuase of the smaller file size?

#8

That’s my understanding after 5 years of using develop and reading these forums. The file size of the image is different from how many pixels it takes up on the screen and the ability of the machine (computer, phone, etc) to move them. Hope that makes sense.

You might have a 32x32 png (1,024 pixels) that’s 10kb. But if in the game you make it 3x bigger, that’s 9,216 uncompressed pixels the cpu/gpu has to process/render.

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#9

hmm I think I understand it!

Since loading time is not really important to me, and there are too many assets to replace already,
I think I will stick to my current resolution and settings.

I gotta try to reorganize my events instead.

Thank you so much! :blush: :+1: :+1:

#10

I just tried the Steam demo out, and I did not have any lag issues, just wanted you to know that. Fun game! I run a 3090Ti, 2 CPU Xeon E5-2690 3Ghz 10Core (x2) , 64 Gb RAM, though. Also downloaded it onto my ancient laptop, it ran fine until the “curtains” at the scene change. These lagged drastically, but not enough to freeze, but no lag on the attack waves… The laptop runs Win7, though, so only will support Steam for about another 50 days. Hope that info helps.

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#11

Oh WOW!! Thank you so much for trying out my demo!!

It is indeed super helpful!!

I will check on the transition(curtains). It seems like something strange is going on there.

I’m very happy to hear there weren’t any issues.

Thank you Snobunni! :blush: :+1: :blush: :+1:

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