Performance running in iOS 5

Stylish

Hello,

Since I have updated my iPhone 4 to iOS 5 I have noticed my game is running slowly. Sometimes it run well but the execution becomes slow. It seems that the game is using too much resources but it runs well with iOS4!!

Somebody has noticed this?

Best regards

borrrden

Come to think of it, my game didn't run so great on the iPad 2 with iOS 5. I assumed that it was because it wasn't a universal app, but maybe iOS 5 has something to do with it...

Stylish

My game is in review and the performance is VERY LOW. We submitted it in October 9th, 3 days before the iOS 5 launch.

I don't know where to start in order to improve the performance. It runs perfect in iOS 4.

bsowers

This sounds an awful lot like the issue we were having. SPPoolObject has a memory leak in iOS 5 which degrades performance and will eventually lead to an "Out of Memory" crash.

See this post for more information and a temporary work-around:
http://forum.sparrow-framework.org/topic/sppoolobject-leaking

Stylish

I noticed that the memory was doing "bad things". I have edited the line in Sparrow but I still have slowdowns. Did you deactivated pooling too?

Best regards and thanks a lot!!!!

dpizzle

I had this same issue. Tweens seem to stutter in iOS5. I followed bsowers advice and put DISABLE_MEMORY_POOLING into Preprocessor Macros and changed typedef NSObject SPPoolObject; to #define SPPoolObject NSObject.

Things seem to be working now. Does this leak memory by doing this or have any other side effects? I can't run instruments with memory pooling disabled.

Would love an official word from Daniel on this and if he's working on a fix.

borrrden

I tested on my 3GS after upgrading to iOS 5 and I got the same result, the game starts stuttering....and memory leaks are abundant from SPPoolObject (quickly reach into the MB range)

UPDATE: The above fix worked for me as well, but I am waiting to test on an iOS 4.2 device (the minimum that Pandemic supports) to see if it has any adverse effects.

Stylish

I don't know where to add the "DISABLE_MEMORY_POOLING". Please help!! 🙂

borrrden

Add it at the top of the SPPoolObject.h class

bsowers

I've done pretty extensive tests in Leaks, and from what I can tell, disabling memory pooling does not cause any leaks or have other adverse side effects (aside from the performance hit you'll take from not having object pooling, which is a necessary evil right now).

foxyfox

I'm really a newbie in Obj-C.
Can someone please let me know where exactly I should put DISABLE_MEMORY_POOLING in SPPoolObject.h?

Below is the code at the top of SPPoolObject.h

=====================

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@class SPPoolObject;

typedef struct
{
Class poolClass;
SPPoolObject *lastElement;
} SPPoolInfo;

#ifndef DISABLE_MEMORY_POOLING

====================

should I take out the #ifndef DISABLE_MEMORY_POOLING?

dpizzle

Thanks bsowers, appreciate the response.

foxyfox, I put it in Preprocessor Macros and it worked for me.
Try this, click your project at the top, click build settings on the right and search for Preprocessor Macros. Under debug and release enter DISABLE_MEMORY_POOLING

foxyfox

Thanks for the instruction, dpizzle!
I will try that.

foxyfox

By the way, can someone tell me what are the advantages of Memory Pooling?
I disabled it as instructed, and I don't notice any performance hit.

Stylish

Se have lost 40 fps by disabling memory pool but out game ran nearly at 100 fps. No problem for us, we had fps limit in 60 fps. No slowdowns now.

borrrden

The advantages of memory pooling are avoiding the cost of allocation. Objects are added to a pool instead of being deallocated, then when you need a new one they are simply taken from the pool of already allocated objects. Obviously, your memory footprint will be larger, but Sparrow is designed to clear this pool if memory warnings come.

PS All you need to do is write #define DISABLE_MEMORY_POOLING in SPPoolObject.h (under the #import line).

foxyfox

Thanks for the explanation, borrrden!

dprijadi

is this going to be fixed in sparrow 1.3 ?

enbr

Hopefully before that.
Any ideas Daniel?

borrrden

http://forum.sparrow-framework.org/topic/arc-and-ios-5

Sparrow 1.x will stay with iOS 4 and OpenGL 1.1 and Sparrow 2.0 will start off with iOS 5 and OpenGL ES 2.