Rendering all sprites to a texture or as separate quads?

Question

I'm wondering what the most effective way to render sprites using Stage3D is? Do I render them into one texture (kind of like rendering everything into a BitmapData buffer), or do I render them into separate textured quads (Using starling, for example)?

I will probably end up with quite a lot of sprites, since I plan on writing a tile map engine, that can probably have layered tile maps etc.

Best Regards, Tomas

Answer 1

From what I understand you should use Starling. Starling has been recommended to me multiple times based on the need for performance. I personally don't need high performance and don't have the time to learn Starling before my project is due (Adobe Air for a mobile game). Good luck.

As far as specifics, you may want to run through a few tutorials and decide upon a direction.

Answer 2

i recommend you to go for Starling because of:

• friendly api
• advanced optimizations
• transition from native flash to starling is easy
• helpful community

if you are curious about Starling and tile maps then check:

• explanation how Starling uses stage3D to render objects
• Starling extension which works with exports from Tiled engine