Sprite vs Group

[threedollarbill]

Hi, I am fairly new to Phaser (formerly a Flash dev) and I am currently trying to decide whether I should use a Sprite or a Group.

Since they can both be used as a container, I am trying to figure out which one of the two I should use.

For my purpose, I simply want to have 3 separate main "screens" / "containers" (stage select screen, game screen, and win / lose screen). I plan on setting their visibility on / off, and possibly tweening them in and out of view too for a fancy transition-effect when switching between the screens.

My question is what would be better to use for this. Sprites or Groups? What would be the benefits or hindrances of each?

[drhayes]

You probably want group for that... although you should also check out States. They're not a display object container, but more of a logical "what's going on in my game now" kind of construct.

As far as group vs. sprite: groups have iteration and filtering methods like getFirstAlive and callAllExists, helpful in manipulating a large set of things.

[kbtpodifo]

I don't think it is possible to rearrange which children are on top of others with Phaser.Sprite. It is possible with Phaser.Group.

[drhayes]

It is possible, sort of. The primary texture of the Sprite is pretty much always going to be on top because it is the root of the display tree -- it's "above" all of its children. If you don't add a primary texture then you can position the children all you want with "bringToTop" and "addChildAt", etc.

[kbtpodifo]

11 minutes ago, drhayes said:

It is possible, sort of. The primary texture of the Sprite is pretty much always going to be on top because it is the root of the display tree -- it's "above" all of its children. If you don't add a primary texture then you can position the children all you want with "bringToTop" and "addChildAt", etc.

Okay thanks for the clarification.

[glantucan]

It seems the difference is deeper. For example the width and height properties of a sprite will always report the size of its texture, ignoring completely the size and position of its children. I recently discovered I was trying to use them as containers (Old habits never die, I also have to unlearn actionscript)  on a big project and have to change all that in order to enable scalable relative positioning in my game.

So I would use groups for anything that is a container in your game.

[stupot]

I now always use groups because I nearly always ended up having to convert them, mostly because I wanted to toggle the visibility of the base sprite without it affecting the children (which I thought I wouldn't want to do at the start).