Empty game objects - too much?

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Is it bad to have a lot of empty game objects for your game? I am working on a side-scroller and utilize empty game objects alot - primarily for moving enemies and platforms between two points (e.g., 5 enemies would mean 10 empty game objects). I plan to build t$$anonymous$$s game for iPhone and Android devices so i'm trying to improve performance in anyway possible.

Answer 1

Answer by Mox.du · Nov 17, 2011 at 03:32 AM

There shouldn't be performance impact with empty game objects cause they are only pivot points in space (X,Y,Z), unless you have like million of those :).

But for moving object between 2 points I would use programming, or Tween class.

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Answer 2

Answer by Eric5h5 · Nov 17, 2011 at 03:46 AM

The only performance impact I can t$$anonymous$$nk of that empty game objects would presumably slow down Find commands to some extent, but you shouldn't be doing those a lot anyway.

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POLYGAMe · Feb 04, 2014 at 01:41 AM 0

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Sorry to bump this but I am doing a racing game that has huge courses. I'm going to have hundreds of waypoints which are just empty game objects. This shouldn't affect performance?

EDIT: Make that thousands.

rutter · Feb 04, 2014 at 01:51 AM 0

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@POLYGAMe Your scenario isn't inherently a problem, but it's reaching a point where certain operations may be expensive enough to cause a performance hiccup. Be careful to avoid unnecessary lookups, especially anything that might require an O(n) operation against GameObjects in the scene.

Answer 3

Answer by Lenvanthis012 · Jan 23, 2021 at 08:19 PM

@rjdfhorn2006 Among other reasons not to create too many game Objects, there is a limit in the number of game objects you can create in one scene. Some reported a crash after creating 16K or so, some say the limit was 5000. (Refer https://answers.unity.com/questions/365552/why-would-you-use-a-scriptable-object-versus-an-em.html?_ga=2.88130203.1241098326.1611400501-548920451.1586375942) In any case, it is not desirable to create too many game objects even if they are empty, as others mentioned, since it will undermine the performance overall.

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Max_Bol · Feb 15, 2021 at 07:44 PM 0

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I can safely point out that there's no actual limit to the amount of game object you can add to a scene for as long as their relevant memory allocation doesn't exceed the devices memory.

To put it bluntly, an empty game object comes with a tiny overhead of a few bits (for its object ID which is used as reference by the Engine) and a total of 9x 16+2 bits float value. In other words, each empty object is approx. 162 bits + its overhead and that's in a built game.

Remember that, in the case of the Editor, there's a bigger overhead since each game object may also generate a UI icon in the Hierarchy window. The one way of reducing this overhead is to set a proper parenting system with grids within grids. Most of the people's crash comes from this single point where they generate 5000+ game object in a way that makes them appear right into the editor's Hierarchy and, that in particular, is heavy.

I'm currently working on a game that generate, at this moment, a grid with 1,000,000 empty game objects with a parenting system of 100 per "layer". • 100 squares per Block (10x10 squares) • 100 Blocks per Zone (10x10 blocks) • Map has 100 Zones. (10x10 zones)

In reference and size, 1 zone is 1km x 1km while 1 game's unit = 1m relatively speaking. All is managed by a script, but instead of calling it through the Awake() method, I'm passing the creation through a Coroutine as it allows me to pass the instantiation through more than 1 single overpacked frame.

Empty game objects - too much?

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