Do too much empty sprites cause performance issues?

Uh, yeah probably a really stupid question. In general though, do empty sprites even do anything to performance? There just empty, no image is inputted into them.

Uh, yeah probably a really stupid question. In general though, do empty sprites even do anything to performance? There just empty, no image is inputted into them.

Whether its a stupid question or not, I guess depends on what you think the answer should be

But yeah all sprites take of memory regardless of there being a image loaded or not. Also each frame counts as an individual image so a sprite with 2 frames will be seen as being 2 images. So having two sprites vs 1 sprite with 2 frames are the same memory wise.

good explanation and performance tips

https://www.scirra.com/manual/134/performance-tips

Thanks guys! I guess making these empty sprite EXTREMELY small sized will make their presence not really matter all that much.

well, there would be a variety of ways it could cause a performance hit: in addition to memory, they could reduce your FPS if they are being moved around, or have behaviors that eat up CPU time, or are triggering collision checks.

Why would you need a lot of empty sprites? to hold data? You could store data other ways.

I know there are plenty of good reasons to use invisible sprites (I use them to track touch points in a multi-touch interface, or make larger targets around small objects that are otherwise difficult to touch on a small screen), but just make sure you use as few as necessary and keep them as simple as possible (no behaviors, disable collisions, etc.)