Game takes a long time to load.....

[ziyaaf]

hi,

The issue is ,my game takes a along time to load.

When the "play" menu is selected, the game initializes the "Game canvas" class. Inside the "Gamecanvas" constructor i'm initializing 7 different image arrays. each array is used to perform different animations (MIDP 1).
I checked the image capacity , it is around 1kb or 2kb for each image some images are 700b.
[I'm using different canvases for different screens (e.g. menus is in one canvas and game is is one canvas , splash screen is in one canvas etc.) so i have to initialize images related to each canvas one by one when it's initializing . Not all the images at once.]

Initializing arrays... is it the correct way or is there any other better ways ?

(Note: actually i took the jar file of a game and extracted the images and tried to recreate the same game for learning purposes, functional wise the game is OK. But the loading time between my game and the original game is huge.)
The original game's time is 5s and my one is 45s .

Also note that after loading the game it runs smoothly. Only the loading time is the problem.

I have written all the info which might be helpful. Someone please help me.

Thanx in advance :-)

[markusSV]

Is your business logic running in the main thread?

[jappit]

2 random tips:

* try collapsing each image array in 1 single image, and then work with Graphics setClip() to draw only current animation frame (so, reimplementing Sprite animation support). It shouldn't be that difficult, and you can find some implementation already made searching the web.

* try some sort of image preloading: for example, when the user is on menu, you can begin loading some/all the game images, so that when he starts the game, wait time will be reduced.

Pit

[ziyaaf]

Both of u thanx for replying , i searched for what jappit told. And came across this link.So i'm posting it just in case anyone need it.

http://devlinslab.blogspot.com/2007/...ying-only.html

but did not try it yet. Will try and let u know.
(Still i'm working on joining the images and coding)

[ziyaaf]

Thanx jappit :-) ur tip number 1 was very helpful. it made a huge difference. It reduced the loading time by 3 times (from 45s to 15s)
Thanx again !