Drawbacks for having all levels in the same scene?

Question

Hello!

I'm working on a basic 2D metroidvania. It's my first non-tutorial project, so I have the scope set to be small. Small as in, by December I want basic run-and-gun mechanics to work, have a few levels, and a boss.

I wanted to know if there are any concerns I should be aware of by simply teleporting the player within the same scene instead of making each scene be a separate level.

I tried making a portal between scenes and I ran into issues with the player facing the wrong direction, and the mouse-to-point-and-shoot bullet spawn point being translated from the player position. That's what led me to just say screw it and keep everything in scene 1.

My first thought is making all the levels in the same scene might be resource hungry, but I don't really have a good measure for what resource hungry looks like.

I googled around a bit and didn't see this issue addressed yet.

Thanks!

Tyler

Answer 1

Resource hungry game is a pain in the neck of every gamedev. You should try to keep your game as light as possible for a widespread audience. Also a long loading time is hated by everyone. People will be ready to wait to play big games like gta5 but they won't wait for a 2d game to load up.

Try to split your game in as many levels as you can otherwise you will lose audience and will face degraded performance.

One more reason to split levels is also because having everything in one scene will make it difficult to track everything.