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Is shuriken well performing on iDevices? (iPhone, iPad)
Hey :)
I've been searching around for some information on the performance on the Unity shuriken system, and from what I have gathered people do say it's an effective system; although I've been unable to find exact details concerning the iOS platform.
Is there anyone here who have experience with the shuriken particle system on iOS and knows if it is a viable choice for game development to the iPhone and iPad? Is the performance acceptable or would you be better off writing your own simple particle system if the requirements you need is not too complex?
Thank you for your time!
Answer by refardeon · Sep 10, 2012 at 11:37 AM
Hello,
Well, that depends on how many particles you want to use. Newer iOS devices are capable of rendering quite a lot of them, but I've also managed to use them for smoke and fire effects on the 3GS. If you take care with the settings, it should be fine (p.e. set the emission as low as possible; increase alpha and lifetime instead to get a visually similar effect that won't tax the system as much.) Experimentation is key, as well as profiling :)
For custom systems: I've been down this route and tried to create a custom solution using SpriteManager etc., but now I just use shuriken. If you don't overdo it, you should be fine: As far as I can work out, most of the drain is on the GPU in any case - and that'll be similar with other systems. I'd recommend that you stick with shuriken unless you absolutely need some special features it doesn't offer.
Thank you for the informative answer :) Really appriciated