Unity3d - Using a panoramic background in a 2D scroller game?

Question

This is for Unity3D 4.3+

I have a ridiculously large background I wish to use for a 2D scroller game. The background is 10 times the width of a landscape device (10240 x 1024). (The basic loop background goes behind that and is not an issue.)

I understand I can cut the background into 10 images of 1024 x 1024 each (basic sprites). But, I'm unsure of the best approach to go forward...

One way is to pre-load all the background sprites and then do a simple scrolling of them all. But take too much memory.

However, keeping in mind this is aimed for mobiles and tablets, isn't possible to do a loading/offloading of the background as the player progresses? Like this: Initially load 2 background images (bg-1 and bg-2). Once the camera has passed bg-1, the unload bg-1 and load bg-3. Then when player passes bg-2, then offload bg-2 and load bg-4 and repeat. Thus only 2 bg images loaded at a time.

The player can not go backwards, so that helps me in this scenario.

Any thoughts on the best approach?

Thank you.

Answer 1

You can use Resources.Load function to load assets dynamically(link). Or just load them all in a list and reference from there.