Sparrow Forum

1. 

   Carlos
   Member

   Hi guys,
   how it's going?

   1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Performance may be seriously affected by the fact that exists an OnEnterFrame Event within the object that is being instantiated a lot of times?

   2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Using Instruments:
   - When (after how many MB) is considered a game uses too much memory?
   - When (after how many %) is considered a game uses too much CPU?

   3)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Leaks:
   My app contains many leaks which not seems to belong to my code.

   --- Many from AudioToolbox library:

   Malloc 512 Bytes | AU3DMixerEmbeddedInputElement,
_NSCFDictionary | CreateDictionaryForDevice(unsigned long),
_NSCFArray | SimAggregateDevice::SimAggregateDevice(__CFString const*, __CFString const*, long&))

   --- Many from Foundation library: All of these (from Foundation) seems to appear in SPTextureAtlas (parseAtlasXml:) (but maybe is my fault xD)

   Malloc 512 Bytes | allocateCollectableUnscannedStorage,
NSConcreteMapTable | [NSMapTable alloc]

   --- And many others from libLLVMContainer.dylib:

   Malloc 32 Bytes | llvm::SmallVectorImpl<unsigned int>::grow(unsigned long)

   There any way to solve them? Are these leaks "normal" (commons)?

   Thanks a lot, I hope I've explained clearly.

   Greetings,
   Carlos.

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   ronaldmathies
   Moderator

   1. No not really, the object that is created is released directly after use. Instantiating such an object has hardly any cost because it is very small. Loosing the functionality of that object would also probably cause more intensive work for you to do. For example, in that object you can find out how much time has passed since the last update of the state. If you don't have that you have to keep track of that yourself which would probably cost more memory / cpu.

   2. There is no such thing as too much .. there are games that use 1 Mb and there are games that use 10 Mb. totally depends on what your game does. If i create a game for non-retina displays it would use less memory, if i create for retina & iPad it would probably use a lot more. If it's a simple 2D game it uses less then a 3D game.

   % likewise, if i create a simple checkers game my CPU usage would be very low. If i create a game using physics and 3D environment it will be higher.

   The usage all depends on the user experience, as long as the experience is good there should be no problem. If your application starts to stutter then you have a problem.

   3. I also have these, after running for a while i have in total three different lines with the libLLVMContainer.dylib. I am still figuring out what they are and what they do. What i do notice is that the amount of memory it is allocating is very low. Normally not more then a few Kb.

   As long as it doesn't crawl higher and higher it should be no problem. If it continues to grow for ever and ever then you have a problem.

   Still, i don't consider these as normal, and they are in fact memory leaks (why would it otherwise be displayed). But i have no clue where they come from and how to solve them.

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   Carlos
   Member

   Thanks,
   Sorry, I'm very newbie in game programming.

   about first point, in this object i'm looking for collisions and updating his X property, and there are about 10 of these objects in my stage, executing his own onEnterFrame function...

   the second point. I guess that it's provided by the experience... but if I'm totally new?
   How I Know if my game is between "normal" parameters of his kind of game. do you understand me?

   Third point, I get about 30 leaks... It's too much, no? xD (Fortunately, When deploying at device decreases)
   All these +/- 30 leaks are like(type) my previous post.

   Another question: When i'm doing:

   [obj.state = [FirstState alloc] init];

   and then in other place:

   [obj.state = [SecondState alloc] init];

   I have to release the state property before point to SecondState? if I use autorelease the game crashes (release too early)
   like this (?):

   [obj.state release]; // (?)
   [obj.state = [NormalState alloc] init];

   Posted 1 year ago #
4. 

   ronaldmathies
   Moderator

   1. Would it make any difference if you would do it somewhere else? in the end it needs to be done right?

   2. Yes, i understand what you mean, like, for an average checkers game you would expect X and for an average 2D game you would expect Y. But there are so many variables that could lead to differences. Especially things like assets (images, music, etc..).

   Of course you can also have the effect that you retain so much objects in your memory that it becomes too large while it could have been smaller if things were released on time. But this is all guessing.

   30 Leaks i s quite a lot, leaks are never really good. If they are small they (watch the word i use) might not cause any problems. But you never know.

   If you want to switch the object on the state variable you need to do a

   [obj.state release]

   first.

   Posted 1 year ago #
5. 

   Carlos
   Member

   Thanks!

   Do you know if is normal that when you create a spstextureatlas it consumes much performance and which would be the "best practices" for the creation and management of these, i mean, what is the best way to create and manipulate atlas so as to doesn't affect the performance and memory (creating it as a global variable, local, when i do "release" or whatever...).

   And do you know if these leaks can be fixed somehow, especially "XMLParser".

   Thanks a lot!
   Carlos.

   Posted 1 year ago #
6. 

   Shilo
   Master Sparrow

   If you are planning on using your SPTextureAtlas in multiple classes, you should have a look at "Singletons".
   Here is a really good tutorial that I used.
   http://www.71squared.com/2009/05/iphone-game-programming-tutorial-7-singleton-class/

   Posted 1 year ago #
7. 

   Daniel
   Primary Feather

   Carlos, the leaking XMLParser is fixed in the development-version of Sparrow (thus, in Sparrow 1.2).

   Posted 1 year ago #
8. 

   freerunnering
   Moderator

   @Shilo have you actually tried that?
   I tried making a Media class that loaded all my graphics only once but i remove and re-add the sparrowView. If you create the textures when the sparrow view isn't created on you destroy the sparrowView and re add it you get the same result. White blocks?

   I can think of a solution though. If you could do a UIKit style SPTexture, SPImage, SPTextureAtlas...... initWithData:(NSData*) then you could load the files into memory with your Media class then just pass the data to sparrow to create the images.

   Posted 1 year ago #

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