Flash game simple performance tricks

Question

I'm trying to make some simple flash games but before I start purring mega bytes of data into the game it's better to seek wisdom from pro coders since I;m totally new to AS3.

1st Question is: what's the best way to load the game faster? since bandwidth is limited like hell for me and loading a flash game takes some time I'm trying to make the game start as fast as possible and load the rest of materials in the gaming process.I saw this on lots of facebook games.

2nd: how to keep the RAM usage low? do you advise to remove the loaded image/movie clip from the stage as soon as its out of the frame? does this lower the RAM usage? and if I load the removed object again does it use the loaded one or it start to download it from the source folder again?

3rd: whats the trick to load the materials into client PC? I saw many facebook games that take some time to load for the first time but next day it loads like its data is stored on the Hard disk. do I have to do something or flash player does it automatically?

4th:Is there a way to load the images/movie clips into flash player while playing? I mean if the level of games are movie clips and player is playing first level the game continue to load next level and on then ad them to the stage as demanded by code.

Lead me with your experience please.

Answer 1

These tricks are not as simple, but yes, all of this is possible.

1. The "best" way to load the game faster is a fiction, you will anyway need at least the main game code to be loaded in order to play the game. If your levels are pretty huge, yes, you can load levels after actually loading the game. You can also load music the same way. For this, you will need a separate SWF or a set of URLs to get these from, and after your game fully loads (without sounds, levels or whatever you were capable of placing aside) you initiate an asynchronous load request (use Loader class for this) and after it completes, you'll be able to play either one sound, or one level, or total set of sounds or levels, depending on how do you organize your external asset storage.

2. The short answer is "reduce, reuse, recycle", that is, you'd better store big assets like a bitmap (an instance of BitmapData class) as a single object, and use references to display numerous copies of it throughout the game. You'd better use an object several times, say a bullet that flied once and expired, hit something, missed and left screen, etc, can be told "go back right here, here's your new parameters" and the object will not be wasted. Other tricks are also possible.

3. This is an automatic action of Flash player, or rather the browser, known as "local cache". If you request something off an URL, the request is passed to the browser, which, after downloading, stores a local copy for future reference. The storage is still limited, and also the copy can "expire" if it was stored for too long, which makes the browser re-download the URL content. Flash player uses browser's URL retrival, thus local caching applies to SWFs or other kind of data.

4. You can make levels into metadata, that is, you are downloading a set of different data via any means possible, then you parse that set, create the required MovieClip (or a Sprite) via code, stuff all the assets into it at intended positions and go with that. A metadata can be fairly large, and can be placed elsewhere as any other file you can share via Internet and download by an URL. Use Loader class to call for URLs and get data retrieved from the net, devise a way to properly store the metadata and a generator+parser to manage those levels as you design the game.

Hope this helps.