Performance Hiccups

SDMG

Hi, i am trying to optimize the most simple game i have made ...

the game itself is like a "statemachine" ... i have about 20 images that are turning on and off ... 12 timers and one player that is not moving...

so nothing is really moving at all... nothing is collidable just turning the visibility of each image on and off every 0.5 - 1 sec.

This very very simple gameplay runs at 29.9 fps ...
and every 1-2 minutes the fps are going down to 5 (!)

The game freezes for 2 seconds ... than the fps are back at 30 fps and all enemies has made 2-3 steps in the meantime instead of 1 so that you are dead most of the time after these "hiccups" ...

So just a guess ... not that i am really knowing anything about it ...
but could the "garbagecollector" be the reason for these "hiccups" ??

The game runs at a total memory usage of 20mb and the gameplay is very constant ... nothing new is happening when these hiccups appear?

So i see no other reason for that dramatic performance-collaps

Any idea??

Thank you!!

SDMG

jhaas

I'm having the same issue with my own game. A very simple puzzle game. I've spent two days attempting to optimize and well - I'm done. It's as good as it's going to get.

The game uses checkers like jumping moves to eliminate game pieces. The game seems to hold memory usage to around 15.3 megs, but after about 10 minutes of playing and replaying there are occasional glitches and freezes.

If anyone at GG would like to load the game on a device to examine it - feel free to pull the xcode project I have on my account. (Just please only use it for debugging purposes and keep it off the web).

I'm sure you're already aware of any performance issues, but if it helps to use my game - go for it.

It does seem to me that the interpreted code - and all the performance issues have less to do with the device but have to do with the complexity of turning your nice coding interface into something that executes on the device.

I have every confidence in GS ability to continue to improve - it's a great tool, keep up the good work.

SDMG

Hi jhaas,

yesterday i have tried to optimize my games and YES! there is so much you can do... I have reconstructed a lot of gamelogic and i am starting to examine how much processing power each little behaviour in my games cost... so... while i am pretty sure that gamesalad needs a lot of performance optimization i am knowing now that my games needs that too and i don't mean the "power of 2 rule" or mono-ogg-converting... but for example to try using 4 timers instead of 12...

So there is a lot to do

Good luck!

Cobra

You might take a look at http://gamesalad.com/wiki/optimizing_for_iphone if you haven't already. This tip in particular might be helpful for your game:

"Physics - Games with fewer actors that need to be simulated will run faster. Make sure that all static, non-interactive actors (text display actors, HUD elements, static backgrounds, etc…) have their 'Movable' attribute turned off."

The temporary freeze every two minutes sounds like something that shouldn't be happening, I will see what our coders have to say about that.

SDMG

hmm... i am rebuilding my 4. game from scratch now and have a light version ready without enemies, startscreen and stuff like that... simply a basic version of the game which runs now smooth at 39fps... unfortunatly i have the same problem as in my 1. game that i have described above... after 1-2 minutes the fps are going down to 29-30 and after 5-10 minutes like jhaas described it freezes for 10+ sec and crashes... ;(

(total memory usage 9,4MB)

@jhaas: so while i have already read that you sent your first game to the appstore... is this the game you mentioned above? were you be able to get rid of the freezes??