Another game...defeated by GS performance. UGH!

synthesis

Once again...I got 80% complete with a GS game and the GS RAM allowances just won't allow it to happen (and I don't have any physics in this one...just actor counts). Where the heck is the update so I can get all these games I have on the shelf...out on the market.

Otherwise...Corona...here I come.

VoidedSky

Is this your Shooter game?

AfterBurnett

Try starting small ;-)

EDIT: What about a game where you tap things that fall from the sky> HAHAHA... just kidding... I feel your pain. I'm waiting on the GS update so I can finish my current project, too.

synthesis

So...its a tap tard (a side project). Basically a paint by number. Tap on screen...spawn a dot of color...make a picture with a bunch of dots. After about 10 minutes and about 100 actors later (that do nothing but sit there...about 4 KB of image each)...the RAM bogs down and after about 20 minutes...CRASH!

Its obvious that actors are way over bloated in the rendering engine...even once with no physics and limited rules/behaviors.

Lord I hope this next update is even half of what they are promising...as I'm tired of making games that crash out from GS weight.

AfterBurnett

What about EMO?

butterbean

I too had the same problem with a platformer, and had to shelf it until they update Gamesalad. Frustrating to say the least!

reddotinc

POLYGAMe said:
What about EMO?

Haha it's EWO!!!

butterbean

reddotinc said:
Haha it's EWO!!!

Now now... don't get all Emo about EWO

ktfright

What devices are you guys using?

iDeveloper

I'm waiting for the update also.. Thus I haven't started on anything....... Hope the update is out by October 1st.

ORBZ

@tshirt, resize images to 512x512 (or 512x384 if you want too keep aspect ratio)

Then they will fit in memory. I bet they will still upsample to 600x450 without too much loss of quality.

Also, you could try adding a world and reducing the levels per world.

ORBZ

@syn, what device crashes out? iPhone? Iphone4? iPad?

Gamexcb

I am on an iPhone 4 and I am still working on making it run decent. I have a lot of spawning so thats whats slowing it. It seems that when Gamesalad was made in ye olden times, or what it was called then Holy Bowl of Leaves and Chess, did not have many of these issues because the community was making waaaaaay smaller games and less complex. Now the developers are facing the problem of making there engine run to handle the more complex ones because it was built for small games. I hope the update is seriously amazing or I am definitively going back to Objective-C!

-Gamexcb

Peter_Olafson

I'm on a gamesalad vacation because a recent app got a corrupted graphic when I bundled it. And an update for another game did the same thing recently. I find out about 10 days later when Apple rejects it. Can't trust it right now.

synthesis

I am testing on an iPod Touch2G. The game operates fine for the most part. There aren't any significant bugs in it and my logic is quite tight IMHO.

The game operates fine on preview and on the web play versions. The problem is...as you get about 10-15 minutes into playing it...the RAM craps out. I don't have an FPS issue...its purely a RAM issue...again!

Once again foiled by GameSalad bloat.

Here is a link to the game:
http://gamesalad.com/game/play/82038

I have about 100 hours invested it this. I am at the end of my rope with GS. If this next release doesn't fix the damn game engine...and doesn't come soon...I'm not sure if I can "waste" anymore time with it.

I've given it 8 months now and have little to show for it...as most of my product sits unfinished waiting for some GS maturity.

bluelotus

@tshirt, synth.....

(Aside from the know leak culprits like spawn and timers) Are you guys finding that more issues are caused by heavy actors or too many actors on screen?

StusApps

I know it shouldn't be an issue but it is quite well known that that level of spawning actors is gonna cause a gamesalad problem on older devices. Perhaps upscale and make it an ipad app, then there should be enough ram to deal with it. From looking at the game I assume each actor has minimal rules, but I see animation on each so ram usage will be creeping up. Even with that I can't see each using much more than 20kb, 100 should be fine but I think it keeps being proven that the spawn effect on lots of actors with rules in them will kill the game pretty fast. Couple that with the fact that GS does not release memory reliably then problems keep happening. I hope this gets fixed in the next update, but I think it is fundementally down to the way GS works, here's hoping the new screen graph changes that, not holding my breath though.

StusApps

Actually, seems I'm wrong. Those are particles not animation.

Hunnenkoenig

I started my new game as a side project, willing to give a new try for GS, but I am afraid, when I finish my game, how I want it to be, it won't work again.

Until now I have no ram issues, but the game is jerky on the viewer. It didn't crash yet, but I am also not finished yet.

I try to make it as simple as possible. If it will be successful in some miracle way (I don'T count for success, it is just an experiment), I will redo it with a real programmer as a real iphone game for sure.

I think, GS is only good for prototyping an idea fast. If it is any good, you better get a real engine and do it with coding.

Sorry Gendai, but this is the last shot I give GS. Almost a year gone and nothing improved.

Chaser

I had to keep Stick Climber as armv7 because of the sluggishness and leaks in GS
By the way I've got a couple codes to give out if willing to star or review.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stick-climber/id392569079?mt=8

chicop

synthesis said:

Here is a link to the game:
http://gamesalad.com/game/play/82038

I have about 100 hours invested it this. I am at the end of my rope with GS. If this next release doesn't fix the damn game engine...and doesn't come soon...I'm not sure if I can "waste" anymore time with it.

I've given it 8 months now and have little to show for it...as most of my product sits unfinished waiting for some GS maturity.

man, thats a cool app! tell y ou what though you have a reel working demo at the least.. i know thats not what you set out to do but you can take this and show any one what you have created... maybe just nock on a indie developers door with it and pitch it. Must be some nifty code behind it..

this forum post is sort of unsettling as ive purchased a mac with the idea of using GS to make some games/apps.. im not a coder at all but GS does get me some sort of result.. I am going to stay positive here for a bit till the new release any way :-)

I sure hope it works out for all you guys as you've all invested much more then i have at this point being it time or what ever else

AfterBurnett

Don't be put off, GS is a great tool and currently the ONLY tool for non-coders.

Yes, it has its issues. I myself have held off the "actual" work and am only doing art on my current game until the update is released but GS is still in beta and the reason this update is taking so long can only be good for us.

Gendai promised massive performance increases and I think the wait will be well worth it!

Photics

synthesis said:
Once again...I got 80% complete with a GS game and the GS RAM allowances just won't allow it to happen (and I don't have any physics in this one...just actor counts). Where the heck is the update so I can get all these games I have on the shelf...out on the market.

Otherwise...Corona...here I come.

This is what, the third project with the same outcome? Heh, maybe you should change your login from Synthesis to Sisyphus.

Maybe the next update will bring many of your games life. Isn't it supposed to be more optimized? Although, Corona currently beats GameSalad with optimization. If that is your main concern, I can't really argue against it. One of the things Corona seems to do well is optimization. I don't know for sure... I saw some lines of code and went back to GameSalad.

Did you read my Textbook? There are lots of optimization tricks in there. It seems odd that you'd hit the same problem again.

firemaplegames

Your Toxic Roach game should hopefully be up and running again with the new update. They have apparently plugged the memory leak that often rears its head in the current version.

However, I honestly believe that Bedazzled should not even have been attempted with GameSalad.

To pull something like this off - or any type of painting program - you really need to be able to manipulate the bitmap data.

The general logic that you have implemented in Bedazzled is fine. However, spawning all those actors is not the way to go.

All of those actors you have spawned are 'alive'. You currently aren't, but you 'could' set all of those actors to be draggable. All of those actors have weight to them. The have the capability of all the touch actions, the accelerometer behaviors, plus the 35 other behaviors.

What you really need to do is to be able to simply edit the pixels of a single bitmap - like you would do in Photoshop. Changing the color of a pixel does not increase the RAM usage.

But this of course is not currently possible in GameSalad.

Another example is a "bullet hell" shooter. All of those bullets flying around are not actors, or objects. They are simply pixels being drawn into a large 'bullets' bitmap. That bitmap gets redrawn every frame. Collision is done by comparing the bitmap of the player with the bitmap of the bullets.

Hopefully the next update will improve performance and allow us to add even more actors to the stage. However, there will still be an upper limit of how many actors you can add to the Scene.

quantumsheep

firemaplegames said:
Hopefully the next update will improve performance and allow us to add even more actors to the stage. However, there will still be an upper limit of how many actors you can add to the Scene.

Yep, fingers crossed. Though I can almost guarantee that some people will still moan about the performance!

QS

Edit: Oh, I meant to add that you can still make perfectly playable games (not taptard stuff) with GameSalad. I think that FMG and Tshirt, amongst others, have proved this.