I am thinking about getting Rolando (it seems similar to Trace, which I loved) but after an expensive mistake with Tetris, I am trying to avoid apps which drain the battery really quickly. Is Rolando okay on the battery, or does it drain it really fast? Can I play casually for say 15 or 20 minutes without losing all my juice?
Ya its surprisingly light on it, I naturally have my brightness way down but even with wi-fi on a few hours doesnt do NEARLY as much damage to your battery as Tetris.
Hmm, I would imagine this would drain the battery, but I guess the little guys moving around with the loaded backgrounds and levels already around them must not be too hard to process.. ( not big into knowing the hardware of the touch, don't really know what I'm talking about =P)
Played with WiFi on for 4 hours before the 20% warning poped up on a 2G Touch. It's a 2D game, so it's obvious that it won't drain your battery as fast a BiA or HoS do. But they really optimized it. I keep on finding new reasons to further enhance my love for this game xD
Yes do tell yeah. do tell if rolando is hard on the battery as I am thinking of getting it. That and replayability value is usually the deciding factor for me as a consumer.
lawllawllawl read the above posts and on replayability....well its alright, im hoping to see downloadable levels and user created content.... Rolando Pinball anyone?
I'm sorry but this logic is false. Rolando renders textured polygons just like the other games you mentioned. The fact that the camera tends to be looking at things from the side view instead of a more free-roam perspective doesn't make it less intense on the hardware. How many here have actually measured the battery life consumption of game A vs. game B before replying to these threads?
3d games naturally require more polygons and more complex textures. rolando has one tone so therefore, i imagine, low-res textures with little polygons as the non interactive background is a still image. you cannot have a constant still image background in 3d, you need actual models in place. just compare a screen between rolando and HoS. and its clear how different the amount of assets used are. of course i don't know if the amount of polygon and high res textures affect the battery as much as CPU processing, but i imagine it plays a big enough part anyway. oh and as mentioned. its optimized to perfection. so all of the above is just a bonus
It really is not that simple: Rolando's textures are not "low-res" despite being stylized. Having a limited palette says nothing about a texture map's resolution. Also, you can have a still image as the background, and many games do. Usually it's just done well enough so most don't notice. And while looking at Rolando screenshots, you'll notice the levels tend to be very curvy and round, and that requires a decent amount of polygons. But it's not just the number of polygons that counts, it's also their size on the screen and how many times the chip must draw overlapping elements before a single frame has finished rendering. So, Rolando runs smoothly... is it then less intense on the system as a game that runs choppy? Does a game that updates at 30 frames per second use less battery than a game with more complex assets that runs at 15 fps? Smart asset design and technical design helps a game run smoothly, but does it help the battery if the device is doing less wasted effort? How much do the above even matter compared to the amount of juice taken by WiFi, or the screen brightness setting? I don't know, and I would hesitate to make any assumptions about a game's battery use from a screenshot. There are simply too many variables to consider. If any developer has profiled the device with battery use per component I'd be very interested to hear that. Also any tips for optimizing battery life without sacrificing the end user experience would also be fascinating (beyond sleeping if there are milliseconds to spare). I'd just like to shoot down the beliefs that there's magic to be done in game optimization. If a developer really wants to conserve battery, they'd do clear tangible actions like turn off wireless or disable the backlight during level loading. I haven't seen any application do so. So in absence of evidence to the contrary, I don't expect battery life to be much of a factor in the development cycle of a game. If a game loads quickly and runs smoothly, it's definitely using all the resources of a device that it can. In any case, tip of the hat to HandCircus, they have made an excellent game! Which brings us back to my original question... has anyone actually measured battery life of Rolando vs. any other game? Love and science don't really go well together.
good post. ill give it a check when i eventually get it in a week but im sure someone will update us earlier
