Render strategy for ASCII game

Hi!

I want to develop my new ASCII (emulated text mode) game in Cocos2d-js. Could you please suggest the best render strategy for implementing text mode. Here is some info of my project:

  1. The resolutions of text mode are from 80x25 to 132x60 and more. So, it is from 2000 to 8000+ sprites on the screen.
  2. Each sprite is a character which can change its glyph (char) and color.
  3. This is only one texture with font characters. All characters are stored in white color.

The game will have a lot of dynamic scenes - all 8000+ sprites will be changing its glyph (rect in the texture atlas) and color. Each frame.

Could you please suggest the best implementation for this situation in Cocos2d-js!

The simplest way (as I see) is to make 8000+ sprites on the screen and then change its rect in the texture atlas and color. Every frame. But, is the cocos engine fast enough to make such sprites’ manipulation? Maybe you suggest another way to implement such text mode?

Thank you!

Is it a game where you dynamically create charactere?

My idea: Just create a single picture for a tank or unicorn in your favourite image editor e.g. paint.

Then you dont have to load 8000 sprites but one for each entity.

If you want to create entities in you game, make an editor for it, export the finished result as an image and use this image. Keep the actual textformat to manipulate the entity later as the image is actually an image.

Thank you for the answer! The game will have a lot of dynamic light effects which affects different symbols of characters. So, it is inconvenient to make an object as one sprite.

My goal is to make a Text Mode engine on Cocos now.

Then I still would use a shader, find connected pixels (-> they are one character) and change the color then.

Thanks! I’ll check this possibility.