Glossary

Glossary

Short definitions of the words used around sprite animation in HTML5 and slot games, and in GreatSprites.

Credit

GreatSprites' unit of payment: 1 credit = $0.01. A Standard clip of up to 1.5 seconds costs 125 credits ($1.25); every price is on Pricing.

Download size

The bytes a player's device fetches before an animation can play. GreatSprites shows it for every animation and recommends about 15 MB on a phone for everything loaded at the same time (Memory and loading).

Draw call

One request from the game to the graphics chip to draw a batch of things. The fewer a frame needs, the more of the frame is left for everything else on a weak phone. The proof page compares them across 24 slot games.

Frame

One picture in an animation. Played one after another, frames make the motion; how many a clip has and how large each one is decide what it costs in memory.

Frame rate

How many frames a screen shows each second: commonly 60, and 90 to 120 on faster displays. GreatSprites animations play at the screen's own frame rate.

GPU memory

The space pictures take on the graphics chip while they are loaded, also called texture memory. A PNG or JPG is decoded to raw pixels there: a 2048 × 2048 picture takes 16 MB however small its file was. Every GreatSprites animation shows its phone and desktop GPU memory before you make it.

GPU-compressed texture

A picture stored in a format the graphics chip reads without unpacking it, so it takes a fraction of the memory of a decoded PNG. Phones and desktops support different formats: the GreatSprites runtime picks the one the device has, and shows the still picture on a device with none (Unsupported devices).

HTML5 game

A game that runs in a web browser with JavaScript and WebGL, with no plug-in and no app to install. GreatSprites makes animations for HTML5 games built with PixiJS v8.

Idle animation

A small, calm motion played while nothing is happening, so a symbol or a character feels alive between events. A character's idle is usually a loop; a slot symbol's idle plays now and then (Slot symbol animation).

Land animation

A short, firm arrival played as a symbol, often a wild or another special symbol, stops on the reels.

Living background

A background picture in which only the parts that should move (water, fire, leaves, lanterns) move, in one seamless loop, while the rest stays a still. Opening soon in GreatSprites (Living backgrounds).

Loop

A clip that repeats without a seam for as long as it is on screen, such as a spinning blade or a flickering flame. In GreatSprites a loop is about one to one and a half seconds of motion and stays in place on the picture's footprint.

Memory budget

How much GPU memory and download you allow for what is loaded at the same time. GreatSprites recommends about 32 MB of GPU memory and 15 MB of download on a phone, and shows each animation against it (Memory and loading).

Moment

A named frame inside a clip, such as impact, release or land, that fires an event in your game on that exact frame, so a sound or a screen shake lands with the motion (Moments).

One-shot

A clip that plays once and lands back on the still picture: a win, a landing, a reaction. GreatSprites calls it Once; between plays the game shows the picture itself.

p50 and p95

The median and the 95th percentile of a set of measurements. In frame timing, p50 is the typical frame and p95 the slow frames players notice as stutter; Why great sprites reports both.

PixiJS

An open-source 2D renderer for the web that draws with WebGL or WebGPU. The GreatSprites runtime is built for PixiJS v8 with its WebGL renderer, tested on every 8.x from 8.0.5 to 8.22.0 (PixiJS sprite animation).

Runtime

The small JavaScript module that loads and plays GreatSprites animations in a PixiJS v8 game. You host it with your game, so nothing is fetched from GreatSprites while the game runs (Getting started).

Scatter symbol

A slot symbol that pays or triggers a feature wherever it lands on the reels, not only on a payline. Its animation often marks the trigger.

Self-hosted assets

Game files served from the game's own build and servers, with no requests to anyone else while the game runs. Operator reviews ask for it, and GreatSprites exports are self-hosted by design (Hosting).

Skeletal animation

Animation made by moving a rig of bones that bend cut-out parts of a picture. The files are small, but each picture has to be cut up and rigged by an animator, and the bending is computed while the game runs; Why great sprites measures what that costs a phone.

Sprite

A 2D picture drawn as one object in a game: a symbol, a character, a coin. An animated sprite changes its picture over time.

Sprite animation

Motion made by showing a sprite's frames one after another, drawn by the graphics chip. GreatSprites makes sprite animations from one picture and delivers them as GPU-compressed files with a runtime for PixiJS.

Sprite sheet

One image holding many frames side by side, with a data file that says where each frame is: the classic way to ship frame animation. Decoded on the graphics chip, a sheet takes its full pixel size in memory, so large sheets fill a phone's budget quickly (GPU memory).

Still

The static picture an animation starts and ends on. GreatSprites one-shots start and end on exactly your picture, so the animated and the static version swap without a visible jump.

Turbo mode

A faster spin mode in slots in which animations play sped up. A sped-up GreatSprites clip still fires its moments on their frames, so win sounds stay with the motion (Moments).

WebGL

The browser interface that lets a web page draw with the graphics chip. PixiJS uses it by default and the GreatSprites runtime draws with it; under PixiJS's WebGPU renderer the elements show their still picture.

Weight report

weight-report.json in every GreatSprites export: each clip's GPU memory on a phone and on desktop, its download size, and the totals.

Wild symbol

A slot symbol that stands in for other symbols to complete a win. It usually gets the boldest animations: a land as it arrives and a win when it pays.

Win animation

The clip a slot symbol plays when it is part of a win: about a second and a half, the liveliest of its clips. Every cell showing the same symbol draws from one loaded animation, so fifteen winning symbols cost the memory of one.