I just recycled my actors and the performance is awesome

Portyman

Instead of spawn and destroy a missile, I start the level out with 15 missiles offscreen and move them when needed. The mb stay low and do not rise. No slowdowns in fps either. Just had to share.

quantumsheep

portyman said:
Instead of spawn and destroy a missile, I start the level out with 15 missiles offscreen and move them when needed. The mb stay low and do not rise. No slowdowns in fps either. Just had to share.

Brilliant, isn't it? Worth the hassle in the end!

I've been trying to make a top down shooter for a year, but was never satisfied with performance - maybe now I'll give it another shot!

QS

hdeanda

It would be nice if GameSalad can make a Bullet Behavior that is optimized to do this.

Portyman

Actually , if gamesald would free up the ram when an actor is destroyed , it wouldn't be an issue

Hachiko

Yep, that way is really efficient

GingerBGames

Can someone make a template on recycling an actor please? I would be very interested in seening how this is done. Sorry, would someone be kind enough to make a FREE template and upload it please.

JohnPapiomitis

GingerBGames said:
Can someone make a template on recycling an actor please? I would be very interested in seening how this is done. Sorry, would someone be kind enough to make a FREE template and upload it please.

If someone doesnt do it before i get home, ill make one for you.

QbAnYtO

what if you have a game where you want unlimited actors (like having alot of enemies running to u until u reach a certain score or event?

i'm talking about 5 plus enemies on screen (up to 10). you just "move to" them to a certain spot (x and y) offscreen?

DreamLab

I also would love to have a recycled actors template. Would be greatly appreciated!!
DL

madmassey

It's really simple. Just drag your actor somewhere in your project away from the main camera. When you want to use it, do something like set BooleanTest = True... then on your actor you have a rule that says When BooleanTest = True, change Self.Position.X and Self.Position.Y of the actor to wherever you need it to be.

Then when you're done with it, just set Self.Position.Y to 500 or something that'll put it off screen. You can do stuff like put that on a timer so you can Interpolate the alpha to 0 first, in order to have it fade out before it moves away.

QbAnYtO

yea thats exactly what i wanted to do... kill my enemies. have him fade out and move while faded to said destination, the he comes back... awesome! this will freak chris angel's mind! thanks dude!

Hachiko

GingerBGames said:
Can someone make a template on recycling an actor please? I would be very interested in seening how this is done. Sorry, would someone be kind enough to make a FREE template and upload it please.

You can find it, with cover flow, platform, canabalt, grid for as little as...here it is for free :P
http://www.mediafire.com/?05cxj3h1l3h7k85
Click the square to move it around!

QbAnYtO

thanks! too bad can't open it YET since i don't have 0.9 but i saved it, thanks again!

Aasimar

portyman said:
Actually , if gamesald would free up the ram when an actor is destroyed , it wouldn't be an issue

GS dont free up the ram when actor's destroyed ??
Crap, my game destroy like... 1 actor by second. bad bad ?

simo103

yeah it is in the wiki on iphone performance:

http://gamesalad.com/wiki/optimizing_for_iphone

that being said GS team has indicated they are working on a number of known issues and I'd have to think this is a priority issue.

tenrdrmer

Aasimar said:
GS dont free up the ram when actor's destroyed ??
Crap, my game destroy like... 1 actor by second. bad bad ?

To be honest I think it really depends on the device. I have tested a shooter layout that used constant spawning enemies dropping from the top and every bullet spawned and while the memory creeped up a little on the 3G I saw no issues on iphone 4 so try it both way to see how you like it. another plus from recycling is reseting your level can be done with out a loading a scene reset which will save time and look much more professional. You will have to search and talk to Darren (utopian Games) to really get that down since he's the master of it. but I think as the new devices come out this is really going to be a non issue regardless of what GS does with it.

THRSTN

Hachiko said:
You can find it, with cover flow, platform, canabalt, grid for as little as...here it is for free :P
http://www.mediafire.com/?05cxj3h1l3h7k85
Click the square to move it around!

Hachiko, thanks man that helps alot but i dont see the cover flow, platform, canabalt, grid in that zip and Free is always great if im lookin in the wrong place let me know cause id love to learn how to make those.
Thanks

quantumsheep

What he meant was that it was part of that package, but he's giving the shooting demo for free, which is what the download is.

Cheers,

QS

Hachiko

Yep QS, thanks for the explanation :P
THRSTN, unfortunately I can't give those other one away for free (I sweated a lot on those, especially the canabalt one xD), but if it's for things like these, expect more free stuff (like it always was, but I have to eat now xP)

THRSTN

Hachiko said:

THRSTN, unfortunately I can't give those other one away for free (I sweated a lot on those, especially the canabalt one xD)

I totaly understand man thanks anyway.

Snow

It's cool what you can do with pooled actors. In a couple of my projects I have a system where rows of actors move down 1 x actor-length at a time (example: if actor is 40 pixels high - to shift down 1 length would be "if actor recieves blah event, then actor.y = actor.y-40") and when they go past a specific x or y value, they are moved to the screen and their rules change - such as they can now move or be affected by physics. When they get "destroyed", they are simply moved back to their place in the row or top of the row and follow their old rules again.. er rules for if they're outside of the screen. This system is excellent for grid based games if you want to drop objects 1 at a time onto the grid. The only cons is that you can't get random objects, they are in order of whatever order the row is in.

Hyrytty

I made a thread about this just seconds ago before I noticed that this thread is about the exact same thing, so I'll post here instead..

"Does spawning/destroying actors slow my performance down? I'm having new actors spawn every 0.1 second. They float up to the top of the screen, and when at the top I destroy them. So in 10 seconds I've spawned 100 of the same actors with different attributes (Sizes/Speed), and in 10 seconds I've destroyed approximately 100 actors also. So does this slow everything down? I've heard people talk about recycling?"

I'm guessing playing my game for 1 minute will rape the phone up wont it?

quantumsheep

NahirC said:
I'm guessing playing my game for 1 minute will rape the phone up wont it?

Absolutely.

QS

Portyman

I made doodleroids on the iPad ( similar to that atari game you might have heard of) and every click on the fire button I spawn a bullet and when the action gets thick, there is a noticeable difference in fps. As I started adapting the game for the iPhone, I played with a bunch of new game designs and instead of spawning the bullets, I start off the game with 15 bullets and call them in as I need them. No slowdown of the game at all..... It was a dramatic change.. it has taken a week long project and turned it into a month long saga, but the game is far better because of it. It takes a new way of thnking about our game design......

< a tear slowly falls from portyman's eye>

FranzKeller

I still want to make a nice Raiden type game. ;-)

here's a question - what about particles? are they automatically recycled, or does that slow things down also?

Portyman

I don't believe particles are recycled and. They kill performance.....

Hyrytty

quantumsheep said:
Absolutely.

QS

How about now then. I spawn 10 actors every second for 6 seconds. So 60 actors, then I keep recycling them. This is only in the first startscene, then they press Start and that brings them to the game and the spawning stops. Will this kill performance? And when they switch screen will it free all the RAM given to those 60 actors?