Playground nerd

🤓🛝Why does my Koala Go Playground take so long to load?

The following is a list of answers from Ben Roux (co-founder and lead programmer for Koala Go) to some questions I had regarding how different objects in Playground affect load times and runtime performance. I originally asked in Facebook, but people can’t find it, so here it is:

Q1.  When considering loading time, is a block of grass the same as a block of air? In other words, should I go back and trim unneeded blocks for optimum performance?

A1. The more solid blocks, the longer the loading time. But typically, even in the worst case, it’s still super fast to load the blocks. So I wouldn’t worry about that. The bottle neck is definitely the number of different images. (If you have few images but repeated a lot it will be fine!)

Q2. When rendering, is a flat surface better than an irregular surface? for example should I cover exposed stairs with a nice flat wall?

A2. Yeah for best real-time performance, flatter surfaces are going to perform better because I group blocks that form larger surfaces in a larger box which speeds up rendering.

Q3. I don’t see a message for the sounds loading, are they loaded in the same as images or just when they are needed?

A3. The sounds are loaded on demand. When you click play they will be loaded if they haven’t been played already.

Q4. Are the drawings treated the same as images when loading?

A4. They are not, drawings in playground are fairly lightweight unless you cover your entire playground with drawings

Q5. Do drawings or images take more resources to render, given a similar size of each?

A5. Images are the bigger resource guzzler. Especially if you have a lot of different ones.

Q6. Sticky notes seem to be a special case and a very underrated tool. How much better are they performance wise compared to drawings and images?

A6. Sticky notes Much much better than images! And slightly better than drawings.

Q7. Now for the 3D gem items, are they loaded like images or something more like blocks?

A7. 3D items are their own thing and can be very costly in terms of real time performance (they have a negligible loading time) especially if you have a lot of them.

Q8. How would you rate their render cost vs images and drawings?

A8. For real time (during the playground session):

Blocks < Stickies < drawings < images < 3D objects

For loading:

Blocks < stickies < 3D objects < Drawings < images

Thanks for answering these questions Ben!!