> To be honest I don't actually see much efficiency advantage over using sprite sheets. C2 can PNGCrush files to absolutely minimise the PNG filesize, and modern graphics cards can use non-power-of-two textures so split frames don't use more VRAM than a single sprite sheet, as well as being able to render 2D things so fast that there's nothing to be gained by rendering from one texture instead of many. So what other efficiency gains are you looking for by using sprite sheets?
Huge difference when using sprite sheets. I can take 262kb of images, run them through a sprite sheet editor (I use my own) and get a 156kb sprite sheet. Then I run it through ImageAlpha and ImageOptim (both are Mac only) and get a 49kb sprite sheet. I just wipe off 213kb and my images look exactly the same as before. Now just imagine doing that to all your images. You're saving a lot of memory, faster loading times, and smaller executable. ;)
I think what Ashley is getting at is that it doesn't matter how you import the images, they are stored in the capx file itself as PNG's, and instead use Construct 2's method of compression when the game is exported. It doesn't matter whether your sprite images have 1000 pixels of empty space on the sides or not, Construct 2 will crop and compress to the same size.
Edit: I just saw that he was also saying that whether the animation images are seperate objects or a single large image, there is little to no performance gain either way.
I would assume that drawing the seperate objects (of the same image as shown in the Sonic example), would actually draw faster than seperate animation frames, as the image raw data does not change as it is repositioned and sized on the screen.