I'm making a short Metroidvania game for a game jam. I'm developing it on my well-loved craptop, so naturally I need it to be somewhat well-optimized.

So far I really only have the Player scene, but that already uses about eight Sprites for various things such as body parts and effects. So far I'm not having any performance issues, but eventually I want to include various enemies, particle effects and parallax backgrounds.

This has me wondering: can you have too many sprites? Is there a more performant solution?

  • I recommend you not to worry about it. Use the workflow the best suites you.

    • You can use well packed sprite atlases for current scene.
    • Manage sprites with RenderingServer rather than with nodes.

    Also, try just spawning a bunch of sprites and measure frame time to get a rough estimate of how many sprites your build (editor/export) and machine can handle.

I recommend you not to worry about it. Use the workflow the best suites you.

  • You can use well packed sprite atlases for current scene.
  • Manage sprites with RenderingServer rather than with nodes.

Also, try just spawning a bunch of sprites and measure frame time to get a rough estimate of how many sprites your build (editor/export) and machine can handle.