fixed array vs resources.load for 1000+ sprites MOBILE

interesting, i havent heard of StreamingAssets so ill check it out.

I was wondering though, it states in the manual if you call Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets then "The script excecution stack, however, is not examined so an asset referenced only from within the script stack will be unloaded and, if necessary, loaded back in the next time one of its properties or methods is used."

http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets.html

Doesn't this mean that i can create an array with references to images in my project and calling Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets will make sure none of the images are actually in memory unless i access some index in which case it will be loaded, but then when i change the image i can call the function again to keep clearing the last image?

Actually this does bring up one question. Does dragging objects from the project panel into an array create a copy in memory or just a reference to the file on the hard drive?

If an object in your scene has a reference to a sprite, that sprite will be loaded into memory when the level is loaded. Calling Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets wont work because your array still has a reference to the sprite.

The only way to truly unload something is to remove all references to it. this means removing it from your array.

I see what ur saying but the docs make it sound like if object in the scene has a reference to a sprite BUT the sprite is not present anywhere in the scene then unloading assets will remove it from memory although the reference will remain or something.

I found this thread where someone was able to fix his memory error using resources, he was able to properly unload the asset from memory.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15820890/loading-a-png-as-a-texture-at-runtime-in-unity3d

That might be the case but I remember reading somewhere that Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets only worked on assets that were loaded with Resources.Load. I could be wrong though.

ahhh!!! So what if i use something like this example:

 // Load all textures into an array
 Object[] textures = Resources.LoadAll("Textures", typeof(Texture2D));

If i only load them into an array for reference but none of them actually appear in the scene, then they wont actually be loaded in memory yet?

Or does it actually load them but then afterwards if i call unload everything, then only the references will remain, which doesn't work since at first they are all actually in memory which will make the app crash...

is this a catch 22?

In any case though, I guess i can just have 1 folder with all my images and pretend that's my array, and i can load in 1 image at a time and unload the previous one beforehand. That should work right?

Then i dont need StreamingAssets