How many loops should you put in a view?

[SilverSpook]

I'm thinking about performance issues here, if it would be better to split a character's animation loops up into multiple views so that scenes load faster.  I have about 33 loops in the player character's view right now and the resolution is fairly high (250x250+ sprites). 

Would it be better to add another view to break up the loops or would it not really make much difference or cause other problems to do that?

Thanks

[Gurok]

It does sound like you're piling a lot of loops into one view. I don't know about performance issues, but isn't it easier to have these animations in separate views just from an organisational perspective?

The first 8 loops of a view correspond to walking directions. If you need a grabbing animation, it makes sense to organise the 8 dirs for that motion in one separate view. That way, to play the grabbing animation while the character is standing, you just change views, run the loop and change back. No need to remember +/- offsets for a particular segment of the view's loops.

I use views to define each action (walking, grabbing, squatting, running) and each costume change (e.g. walking in fancy clothes), and I think that's how most people do it. If you have a bunch of one-off animations, it might get a bit tedious to have them in separate views. Even so, I would probably do so because it would mean I could refer to them by name.

[Crimson Wizard]

I'm thinking about performance issues here, if it would be better to split a character's animation loops up into multiple views so that scenes load faster.

AGS does not have sprite preload mechanism. The sprites only load when they are put into use (e.g. displayed on screen). You may have 1000 sprites in a view, but only current frame will load up at a time. This is also a reason why smooth hi-res animations can cause slowdowns (some people invented "preloading" techniques to fight this issue).

[SilverSpook]

Hm, ok thanks for the input Gurok and Crimson Wizard

[SilverSpook]

I guess one issue I have is I have a lot of one-off animations that only happen once so I don't really need all of the up-down-left-right loops of the same anim.