How to cache TextureAtlas results?

Question

When using a TextureAtlas to create a Sprite with the createSprite method, the LibGDX documentation says: This method uses string comparison to find the region and constructs a new sprite, so the result should be cached rather than calling this method multiple times.

How do I cache these results? Is it just a variable I create to store the created sprite? If so then how do I create different copies of the same sprite?

Answer 1

Each time you use the createSprite method, a new Sprite gets created. Usually you'd have one sprite per enemy for example. Let's say that you have a class Frog which is one of your enemies. It should look like this (pseudo-code):

public class Frog {
    private Sprite sprite;

    public Frog(TextureAtlas atlas) {
        sprite = atlas.createSprite("frog");
    }

    public void update(float deltaTime) {
        // update the sprite position
    }

    public void render(Batch batch) {
        sprite.draw(batch);
    }
}

Now each Frog would have its own Sprite. This is necessary, since all frogs can be in different places. The position will be configured via the Sprite. You will create the sprite just once in the constructor and all of those sprites share the same TextureRegion of the same TextureAtlas, which will result in a good performance, since there won't be many texture switches on the graphics card, when you render your frogs.