Should I create independent images for everything or combine them into a single sprite sheet?

kitfox

I'm creating a world that will have several things in them (houses, road signs, trees, rocks, etc) Each is going to be dragged and dropped into my scene as a separate sprite. I was wondering if it's best to create each of these (potentially hundreds of them) each in their own separate image file or if I should combine them into a single image and then have the Sprite object indicate a subregion to display.

As far as I can tell, Godot doesn't have an easy way to restrict a sprite to only a subregion of an image, but that could be because I haven't found the correct way to do it yet.

cybereality

If your game mostly uses a standard grid, like the old 16-bit RPGs, you can use a TileMap. This will allow you import 1 huge image and section it off to different objects. Probably the player and other animated characters would need their own maps, but you could use a single image for like a forest level, another for a dungeon, etc.

fire7side

There's software called TexturePacker that is free for some use, you might want to check it out. This guy says it increases performance and it has an export for Godot.

Calinou

Texture atlases can be faster to render on low-end devices, but unless you're targeting low-end mobile or are creating lengthy sprite animations, I wouldn't bother. AtlasTexture has many restrictions and isn't supported in 3D, so I would recommend using standard Sprites first and only replace them with AtlasTextures once you run into performance issues on the hardware you're targeting.