Android Graphics Memory Limits

Question

I am creating an android game using opengl and a cocos2d port (http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-android-1). I am targeting a wide range of devices and want to ensure that it performs well. I only test on a nexus one and am hoping to get some input from people with experience on slower devices.

Currently the game uses two 1024x1024 textures as well as two 256x256 textures. Is this within the limits of most devices? Anyone have any rule of thumb or experience with graphics memory limits in these cases? If gfx memory is exceeded does it page to normal memory?

Answer 1

Java Apps are 16Mo (mdpi) or 24Mo (hdpi). But Native aren't and OpenGL Java API is only a JNI wrapper. So you can load on GPU more than 24Mo of texture. My experience was to limit Atlas at 512*512 at first (because G1 was slow on big textures) but today i use bigger atlas texture.

Our current games use 20-50 Mo of ram and use 2048*2048 textures.

Answer 2

Old post I know but nowadays your talking at least 128mb in the VM for available loading space on Bitmaps in memory using android java.

With textures you are loading outside the app space (c). So the loading limit is the same as the phones memory. (You'll notice on memory intensive games that the icons draw when going back to the home screen)