How to load animation in background in cocos2d?

Question

I am currently developing one cocos2d game for iPad, in that game lot of animations is there. I have previously used zwoptex for creating spritesheet and adding animations in my project.

In my game 10 Levels is there, and after each level completed one animation will play, the animation is different for each level and animation image size is same as device screen size. so i am not create spritesheet file, instead of i am loading image directly. My problem is while animation it takes too much time for animation playing.

How to i fix it? please any one guide me. is it possible to load full screensize image(1024x768) in plist, because total 10 levels each level has 20 frames for animation, so 10X20 = 200 images need to load spritesheet.

I am using this code for animation

 CCAnimation *animation = [CCAnimation animation];
for(int i=1;i<=20;i++)
 {
  [animation addFrameWithFile:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Level%dAni%d.png",level,i];
 }
 animation.delayPerUnit = 0.3f;
 animation.restoreOriginalFrame = YES;
 id action = [CCAnimate actionWithAnimation:animation];

My Question is it possible to load full screen animations with spritesheet? and animation loading time is differ and it takes too much time how to fix it?

Please help me..

Answer 1

Do the math and figure out the amount of memory you would need for 200 pics at 1024x768 pixels. Way too much memory for any iSomething device.

If you have a performance problem (ie are you running this on a device?), then there are two things you can do to improve image load speed:

• Convert your images to .pvr.gz (i recommend TexturePacker for this). They load significantly faster than .png.
• Use an RGBA4444 pixel format (again you can do this with TexturePacker), and set the texture format in cocos just prior to loading the images. Images will be smaller, take much less memory.

In your code, where you do the anim

    [CCTexture2D setDefaultAlphaPixelFormat:kCCTexture2DPixelFormat_RGBA4444];
    // load your images and do your anim
    ...
    // at the completion of the anim
    [CCTexture2D setDefaultAlphaPixelFormat:kCCTexture2DPixelFormat_RGBA8888];

Answer 2

By Using Cocos2D you can animate sprite sheet images easily.

Try following examples using Cocos2D

http://www.smashious.com/cocos2d-sprite-sheet-tutorial-animating-a-flying-bird/309/ http://www.raywenderlich.com/1271/how-to-use-animations-and-sprite-sheets-in-cocos2d

Try following examples without using Cocos2D

http://www.dalmob.org/2010/12/07/ios-sprite-animations-with-notifications/

http://developer.glitch.com/blog/2011/11/10/avatar-animations-in-ios/

Answer 3

Use NSThread and load your animation in this thread.

NSThread *thread = [[[NSThread alloc] initWithTarget:self selector:@selector(preloadFireWorkAnimation) object:nil] autorelease];
    [thread start];

-(void)preloadFireWorkAnimation
 {
      // load your animation here;
 }