Performance of tiled backgrounds

Hello all.

I'm looking to make a top scrolling shooter for the iPad and am wanting to use a tiled background as it will save me an immense amount of time creating the maps.

The tutorial below states that less than 20 sprites should be used in order to maximise performance. Does each tile count as a sprite or will the fact that the tiles are doing nothing exempt them from this 20 sprite guideline? The tiles are of a size that there will be around 30-40 of them on screen at a time.

construct.net/en

Thanking you in advance!!

Please forgive me for bumping my own post but if someone does know the answer I can spend my Sunday making my backgrounds!!

(Crosses fingers, hoping someone more knowledgeable than me knows the answer...)

According to that article: construct.net/en you can and you should use tiled backgrounds, as tiled background counts as one sprite. That's how I understood it, but you can read the article also. There are some valuable tips there.

That's a really good article. I didn't find that. Thank you for linking it!!

I have one last question. If you use the same sprite to tile the entire background but you use different animation frames at each location, does the game consider it to be a single sprite or as many sprites as there are different animation frames?

The tutorial linked below shows that the platforms are all the same sprite but they have different animation frames.

construct.net/en