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Memory Leaks

(11 posts) (4 voices)

Started 1 year ago by markjsb
Latest reply from Daniel

Tags:

leak
memory

markjsb
Member

Hi People,

I've almost finished a prototype and wanted to check for memory leaks so used the profiling tool in Xcode4. I managed to find a few of them and sort them out, but I've got a couple that cannot be gotten rid of!

The first is one that relates to audio, even though I'm not using Audio in the game. So is this a memory leak in the Sparrow Framework? The originator is Audio Toolbox.

The other is in my project and it has something to do with a texture. If I win the game and all the textures are swapped and I leave the scene then return then I get the message. I occasionally get the message when I leave the scene mid way through play, but not always. I've checked my textures and in the dealoc I'm definitely releasing every texture. Anyone have any ideas or had experience with this?

Thanks

Mark

Posted 1 year ago #
markjsb
Member

Well I managed to find one texture that wasn't being released so solved that, shame there isn't some way you can just link straight to the code that's causing the issue from the profiling tool.

Just wondered about the Audio one though. Noticed the same leaks occur on the demo file, so would this stop my app being accepted by Apple? Appreciate info from anyone who has had their Apps accepted!

Thanks

Mark

Posted 1 year ago #
Daniel
Primary Feather

Hi Mark,

I have spent a lot of time searching for the reasons for the audio leaks; I came to the conclusion that they must be rooted in Apple's libraries. Especially on the simulator, the Audio libraries seem to be not very well implemented. There are also those weird log messages in the console at startup that suddenly popped up in iOS 4 -- I didn't find a way to remove them.

Try to test your game on the device with Instruments -- it might be that they won't pop up there.

Daniel

Posted 1 year ago #
markjsb
Member

Ok Daniel, thanks for the info.

I guess if they're Apple's leaks, there's no problem. But in general do Apps get rejected because of leaks?

I found this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1136511/does-apple-reject-leaking-iphone-apps

But would love to hear experiences from Sparrow users.

Mark

Posted 1 year ago #
Daniel
Primary Feather

I think you'd have to have extremely severe memleaks to have Apple reject an App out of that reason -- there's a lot of crappy software on the App Store that has memleaks for sure

But perhaps others have different information about this?

Posted 1 year ago #
enbr
Moderator

I guess I'm stating the obvious but there have been a handful of sparrow games approved for the app store and a couple have some minor memorly leaks other than the audio.
I think as long as it runs well you will be fine.
Definitely make sure you are not leaking things with your code though.

Posted 1 year ago #
markjsb
Member

Thanks Embr

There are no leaks at the moment with my code I've tracked them all down and plugged them, so as long as I keep an eye on that should be ok.

I was just checking really that given the amount of time invested, Apple wouldn't turn around and reject because of the audio.

I'm still at prototype phase so once I get the last few features in their, it's on to full scale production with texture atlas's instead of temp graphics and HD res as well as SD!

Posted 1 year ago #
jollyblade
Member

Hello,

I have a question about textures, audio, etc. My app uses 20 megabytes of memory at startup, and when playing it goes up to 50... it is too hight for an iphone 3g. So i tried to identify what is causing the problem:

In the list below I have the biggest allocations, 18 megabyte textures, 6.88 textures, 5.02 Auido engine, even if I don't load any of the sounds... strange...

I am using 1024 x 512 texture atlases, 2 at the moment. double the same for retina.
It should not be so big.

Do you have any information what is normal for an iphone? How can I keep in best prcatice the memory low?

Thank you very much

Graph Category Live Bytes # Living # Transitory Overall Bytes # Overall # Allocations (Net / Overall)
0 Malloc 512.00 KB 18.50 MB 37 0 18.50 MB 37 <XRRatioObject: 0x14dbc0820> %0.00, %0.00
0 Malloc 128.00 KB 6.88 MB 55 356 51.38 MB 411 <XRRatioObject: 0x14dbb5de0> %0.00, %0.00
0 Malloc 2.51 MB 5.02 MB 2 0 5.02 MB 2 <XRRatioObject: 0x14dbc37d0> %0.00, %0.00
0 Malloc 1.00 MB 5.00 MB 5 39 44.00 MB 44 <XRRatioObject: 0x14db80fc0> %0.00, %0.00
0 Malloc 3.77 MB 3.77 MB 1 3 15.08 MB 4 <XRRatioObject: 0x14dbd5f90> %0.00, %0.00

Posted 10 months ago #
Daniel
Primary Feather

Hm, that really seems too much for those 2 texture atlases. Are you sure each is in memory only once? When you say it goes up to 50, does this happen when you load additional textures? Or just when you are playing? Perhaps instruments can help you find out where exactly the memory is allocated / leaking.

Posted 10 months ago #
jollyblade
Member

It took me a week to make the stuff work on 3G. I could reduce everything a bit. Actually audio engine allocates ~7 Megabytes, sparrow and stuff ~12, and UIKit another 11. So I deallocate the whole menu when I am back to the game, and I deallocate the game when I am back to the menu. This way I don't get memory warnings. I also had to optimize the code a lot to make it better, but still, there were only minor memory leaks not affecting overall performance, on in long play periods.

So I think thats all, our game gets closer to its finish. I guess, I will write a whole article about the process, that nobody else does the same mistakes I did

Sparrow is good indeed, it is always the user who has the error

Posted 10 months ago #
Daniel
Primary Feather

Congratulations, I'm glad to hear that you managed to get rid of the memory problems! I'm looking forward to your game!
If you indeed find the time to write an article about your findings, it would be great! The wiki would accept it open-handedly

Posted 10 months ago #

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