Hand swapping...

[Quantum]

Yes, I have to be THAT guy. At first I didn't notice it, and eventually I tried to just ignore it, because it is only visual. Now I just have to say it. Why in the world do weapons and shield magically hand swap?

I semi understand why from a coding perspective. Basically the weapon is always in front of the character, so that you can just tell the weapon to always be on top. But at least to me, I'd like to see the weapon stay right handed.

 

[Alan_SP]

Explained numerous times, but once again:

Problem is memory usage of 2D graphics, where you need to load sprites in memory. Having all sprites (to have all hands with all weapons, all shields, all everything) would ask for too much memory. Hence we have sprite mirroring. And ability to make this game (and many other 2D games) work on many more devices, i.e. devices with only 1GB of RAM.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... rousSprite

 

[Quantum]

While I understand the concept, only 3 of 8 images are swapped. Does adding 3 more sprites really take up that much? On another note, my game absolute drains my battery, not while standing in one area in a city watching npcs move around, but by running through areas. So I guess I don't understand how a few more sprites make that much of a difference.

I will say that it really isn't a massive issue to me, I enjoy the game regardless.

 

[DavidBVal]

While I understand the concept, only 3 of 8 images are swapped. Does adding 3 more sprites really take up that much?

Yes. And this is why almost nobody does 2D isometric RPGs anymore, much less for phones.

Sprites are held in RAM memory, and in many low-end devices, that means uncompressed, as bitmaps. The game already doesn't work in devices under 1Gb, and struggles in a few samsung devices with 1gb with certain graphic chips, showing the sprites as black squares.

In this scenario, a 40% increase of sprite ram usage is a no-no.