Should I preload main character animations on game start?

Does it make sense to preload the main character's animations at game start, such as to make the game run smoother?
Or this is this perhaps even done automatically?

Your active characters animations tend to stay in the animation cache once they've been loaded, so unless your characters animations are massive (large file-sizes, canvas sizes, lots of frames, etc) there's probably not much point in pre-loading them...

Now, depending on who's playing on your game & the specs of their machine, they might end up with animations loading smoothly on first play or if they are using a potato machine with regular hdd they might get a little bit of jerkiness the first time an animation is played, but usually it's only for a brief second then it should play just fine. Also depends on game resolution & various other factors.

P.S: I recommend converting your images / animations to webp format. They will decrease required hdd space for your game & decrease loading times of each scene, image & animation overall.

Find out more about webp here.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Is it correctly understood that if I preload an animation in the game start actions, the animation stays in the memory throughout the whole game unless it is specifically unloaded in an action at some later point?

That's correct, but each preloaded animation will eventually eat into available system resources over time thus probably end up slowing the game down as more stuff gets cached.

Okay, thanks!