@JSproject said:
Hymloe Are you using the same scene for the missions or do you do change scene between them? If you are using the same scene then make sure to destroy all actors after they are used (instead of e.g. hiding them) and respawn when needed. In my opinion that is basically a must in more complex "one-scene" projects now since memory is not being flushed/cleared completely when using "reset scene" (which also means that if the player dies a lot on the same scene memory will build up unless you destroy your actors or change to another scene).
Note that even hidden actors (without images attached), that you may have on your scene, will take up memory (which will not be released during "reset scene" unless you destroy them before the scene reset or if you change to another scene). So the memory will build up and may eventually crash/close your app. You don't even have to do an adhoc to check this, you can see it if you study the memory usage when you have loaded your app on your device via the gs viewer. Just a tip based and what you wrote..
Thanks @JSproject I might have a play with those concepts at some point. I'm hoping GS can come up with a solution about memory management at their end. But yeah, not feeling real confident about that.
I have a Main Menu, which loads into a mission (they're procedurally generated), and upon Win or Lose, you go back to the Main Menu, then go into another mission from there.
Traditionally in games, one would avoid using Destroy and Respawn, and instead you would recycle actors, by making them Sleep and Wake.
I would expect both to work OK in Game Salad, and I try to recycle actors as much as possible, to avoid memory being re-allocated each time an actor is created, and also to avoid the slight freeze ups that occur when actors are spawned. But I do use a bit of Destroy and Spawn as well.
I'd consider changing how my systems work if Game Salad can give me an absolutely definitive run-down on which system will use less memory and make my game more stable. But I'd rather not put all that work in based on heresay, or un-proven theories. I guess it also depends a bit case-by-case what might be the bottleneck of a particular game project.
I have been assuming that the main problem is that there was a change some months back (when the LUA implementation was changed out for a different one, if I recall correctly), and at that point in time, one type of attribute suddenly used up twice the memory every time it was allocated. Something about "Longs" becoming "Doubles", or something... I can't quite remember now. And it caused a lot of people's projects to run out of memory earlier.
I'm thinking my problems were exacerbated around that time, and the memory usage has never been brought back down.
But maybe it's just some other bug or instability that's been introduced, so I'm really hoping that Game Salad's examination of my project will yield some definitive answers about an issue - either in my project in particular, or in Game Salad itself - that can be addressed, thus solving the problem whether that be just for myself, or on a broader spectrum which may help others as well.
So I just found this forum. My app freezes when it has no internet connection and it is hooked up to revmob. When there is internet revmob takes forever to load ads. After reading this I found that essentially revmob hasn't worked in months? Shouldn't you disable this feature until it does work? Isn't this ruining ratings of every game using revmob? When is this going to be fixed? And what is a nightly build? Does this affect my gamesalad program or is it built into the generation on the site? Is there any ad service that actually does work for iOS and Android at the moment, or am I going to be wasting mytime adhoc testing with your other ad providers?
My game that I've been working on for 2+ years used to work fine on my iPad 2 using GS 10.4, but in the newer versions, it crashes while playing 1 - 3 levels of the game.
I think Game Salad really needs to have a pro level coder take a solid look at optimizing the memory usage. I kept hearing mentions recently about work being done to optimize draw calls, yada yada, but I have not seen improvements in the memory usage and stability of games that a re pushing Game Salad harder, like mine.
Comments
you are right excellent work everyone!
Thanks @JSproject I might have a play with those concepts at some point. I'm hoping GS can come up with a solution about memory management at their end. But yeah, not feeling real confident about that.
I have a Main Menu, which loads into a mission (they're procedurally generated), and upon Win or Lose, you go back to the Main Menu, then go into another mission from there.
Traditionally in games, one would avoid using Destroy and Respawn, and instead you would recycle actors, by making them Sleep and Wake.
I would expect both to work OK in Game Salad, and I try to recycle actors as much as possible, to avoid memory being re-allocated each time an actor is created, and also to avoid the slight freeze ups that occur when actors are spawned. But I do use a bit of Destroy and Spawn as well.
I'd consider changing how my systems work if Game Salad can give me an absolutely definitive run-down on which system will use less memory and make my game more stable. But I'd rather not put all that work in based on heresay, or un-proven theories. I guess it also depends a bit case-by-case what might be the bottleneck of a particular game project.
Good things to think about, though. Cheers!
I have been assuming that the main problem is that there was a change some months back (when the LUA implementation was changed out for a different one, if I recall correctly), and at that point in time, one type of attribute suddenly used up twice the memory every time it was allocated. Something about "Longs" becoming "Doubles", or something... I can't quite remember now. And it caused a lot of people's projects to run out of memory earlier.
I'm thinking my problems were exacerbated around that time, and the memory usage has never been brought back down.
But maybe it's just some other bug or instability that's been introduced, so I'm really hoping that Game Salad's examination of my project will yield some definitive answers about an issue - either in my project in particular, or in Game Salad itself - that can be addressed, thus solving the problem whether that be just for myself, or on a broader spectrum which may help others as well.
So I just found this forum. My app freezes when it has no internet connection and it is hooked up to revmob. When there is internet revmob takes forever to load ads. After reading this I found that essentially revmob hasn't worked in months? Shouldn't you disable this feature until it does work? Isn't this ruining ratings of every game using revmob? When is this going to be fixed? And what is a nightly build? Does this affect my gamesalad program or is it built into the generation on the site? Is there any ad service that actually does work for iOS and Android at the moment, or am I going to be wasting mytime adhoc testing with your other ad providers?
So will there be Google play leader boards in this update?
Any news on my memory issues @RhiannonSalad?
My game that I've been working on for 2+ years used to work fine on my iPad 2 using GS 10.4, but in the newer versions, it crashes while playing 1 - 3 levels of the game.
I think Game Salad really needs to have a pro level coder take a solid look at optimizing the memory usage. I kept hearing mentions recently about work being done to optimize draw calls, yada yada, but I have not seen improvements in the memory usage and stability of games that a re pushing Game Salad harder, like mine.