I'm programming in Java.
I have more than 200 MB of images used in my games, something like 100000 40x40ish images. I initially wanted to load them all during app initialization but it took like 2 minutes to do so.
Since I do not need them all at the same time I may load the ones I need before entering a new game state (quick loading screen), but there is still a delta time that I can't afford, so I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to gather them into larger images (sprite sheets) to reduce the cost of I/O. But here I am : if I do so, what is the best approach for rendering : splitting these big images back into smaller ones, or keeping the sprite sheets in memory and rendering the needed parts of these sheets directly using Graphics#drawImage?
I will test a simple game loop using the second option to see what happens performance-wise, and come back to compare with what you advice me to do.
I hope I was clear, don't hesitate to ask me to reword an incomprehensible of mine.
EDIT: I just tested loading using sprite sheets and I was able to do load my 200 MB in less than 10 seconds, which means that if rendering little parts of an image can be done at high rate my problem is solved.