Hello,
I have been trying to port an older game of mine to iPhone using OpenGL(for the first time). And I have a question about textures;
The game consists of characters that walk around and do stuff, each animation has been painted in 8 frames (64x64 pixels each) and in 8 directions. Therefore, a single characters walk animation has 64 frames. There should be multiple characters drawn on screen doing multiple stuff. Now, what would be the best way to create spritesheets? Going for one sheet per action means 512x512 textures for a single action and I will have to switch between them binding one another for each character. I believe iPhone can't handle that. I can go for a sheet per direction since the characters won't turn around during an animation (each 8 frame sequence takes 1 second to complete) but I will still do many switches and actually one direction can not be placed in a square texture. Is it too much that I'm expecting from such a device? Should I cut down frames or use smaller frames?
BTW, The game is kind of turn based so I actually know what sprites will be needed during the next 1 minute, so I thought I could create a texture atlas each 1 minute consisting only the necessary frames so there would be no texture bindings for a minute but then I will have to create a huge image each minute and load it to OpenGL and I will not be able to use compressed textures since I will be creating them on the fly, would it really worth it?
I know that these would be best answered by benchmarking but since I don't have my developer account yet and the simulater can not be trusted, I just wanted to ask if one way is obviously better.