Loading dungeons, preload all or load dynamically at runtime?

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100goats
Posts: 155
Joined: Mon May 04, 2020 9:29 pm

Loading dungeons, preload all or load dynamically at runtime?

Post by 100goats »

I made a separate post here instead of the thread for my game since this question may help someone else with the same issue.

I have an issue of deciding whether to load a mini dungeon within my game when the player enters one or
loading all the mini dungeons before the game starts.

Can anyone comment about the advantages or disadvantages about each method?
What would you personally do in this situation?
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Deckhead
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Re: Loading dungeons, preload all or load dynamically at runtime?

Post by Deckhead »

Depends totally on what devices you intend to target.

Loading all dungeons means loading them all into memory. If you're targeting phones for example, which have lower amount of memory, you probably wouldn't want to do this.

But loading when requiring the dungeon likely means loading screens.

Personally I would just load a dungeon when needed. There's no point in using memory you don't need to until you need it. An exception might be a very small game that I intend to have run super-fast, like a loading screen would be detrimental to the experience (I can't think of an example, but basically if you can't have the player experience a loading screen then you need to load into memory beforehand, or have background loading).
Developer of The Last Boundary and webmaster of IndieGameDev.net
100goats
Posts: 155
Joined: Mon May 04, 2020 9:29 pm

Re: Loading dungeons, preload all or load dynamically at runtime?

Post by 100goats »

Thanks!

I think I will just load the dungeon only when the player enters it since I want to make the game run well on older less powerful computers.
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