Why great sprites

What makes a sprite great in a shipped game

A sprite is great when it looks hand-made, costs the device little, and does exactly what the game needs on the frame it needs it. GreatSprites is built around those four things, and this page shows the measurement behind each claim we make.

Every number below was measured on a game animated with the same runtime you download. Methods and raw tables are in the measurement reports. Claims we have not measured yet are listed at the end, and we do not make them until we have.

1. It costs the CPU nothing measurable

We measured JavaScript time per frame in the same game with its animated character on and off, on desktop and on a phone profile with the CPU slowed down four times.

Measured September 2026 with our in-page probe. The skeletal-rig game added about 2 ms at p50 and 6 ms at p95 over its own baseline without rigs.

2. It stays among the lightest on a real phone

We measured a slot game animated with the GreatSprites runtime against 23 of the most-played web slots on a major operator, all on the same Android phone (4 GB RAM, Mali-G52 GPU), through the same journey: load, intro, idle, three spins, idle.

Full table and method: Runtime performance, September 2026. Reference titles are anonymised.

3. It holds up for a whole session

On the same low-end Android phone, the animated game ran 29 minutes of autoplay at 57–59 frames per second in every one of those minutes, with no long frames, no errors and no drop as the phone warmed up.

4. It is quick to make and checked before you see it

From your picture to a finished animation took 22–41 seconds per clip in our October 2026 measurement of eight clips (three to four made at once on one workstation). Every animation is checked automatically before you see it: it must start on your picture, return to it, and leave no stray colour around its edges.

5. It chains, and it never jumps

Every clip begins and ends on your own still picture. That is what lets any clip follow any other, a reaction interrupt an idle at its loop point, and the static art take over without a visible jump. In a slot game, the animated symbol and the static symbol are the same picture at rest.

6. It tells your game when things happen

A clip carries named moments: impact, release, land. Your game listens and acts on the exact frame: the screen shakes when the fist lands, the coin flies when the hand opens. In fast mode the clip speeds up but the moment still arrives on its frame, so sound and motion stay together.

7. You see the cost before you pay

Memory is pixel area times frames, so size matters more than length. Every planned animation shows its GPU memory and download per device class, and every project shows its total against a recommended line. A recommended budget for a whole game on a phone is about 32 MB of GPU memory and 15 MB of animation download: in our own games that holds about 25 seconds of animation, for example a win animation for every symbol, a living background in both orientations and a character with an idle and five reactions.

Claims we will make only after measuring

• How much lighter the same clip is than a classic sprite sheet, in memory and download.
• Smoothness on 120 Hz screens.
• Time to first frame for a single element on phone and desktop.

Each will get its own dated report.