Confirmed issue with the way GS handles preloading

Fodder76

Hi there,

So a couple of months back I started a thread about an issue I was having. The thread is here:

http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=24674#post-187267

Since that time, I've submitted a bug report to Gamesalad. They have looked at my project, and confirmed what I've been suspecting to be true: Gamesalad will preload any images that are being referenced in any of your actors, whether they are being spawned or not.

Just to explain the issue again: I have a character select screen. You choose your character, the game then goes to the level which has an actor that says (if X = 1, then spawn Character1, if x=2, then spawn Character2, etc) I have a total of 9 characters. They are all referenced in that actor, and because of that, the images associated with each of them are all loaded.

For me, this is a major problem. The friendly Gamesalad rep informed me that GS is designed to preload all of its assets to improve performance. I understand and appreciate that, but as you can see in this case, it backfires.

He acknowledged that this was an unfortunate side effect, and asked that I post the issue again on the forums to see if any other members have encountered this, and if so, how they got around it.

In one instance, I got around it by making 9 separate scenes, and only loading one character in each of the scenes. But not only is that inefficient, its also time consuming. When I want to make a change to the level, I have to do it 9 times.

Anyway, I just wanted to see if there was any further response to this issue, and to bring awareness to it. If I had known in advance that this was how GS worked, I very likely would have gone a different route, or made a different game entirely.

Thanks very much for your help.

MagoNicolas

I have had this same problem, Is terrible, because, if you want to have Different characters on the same game, you will load ALL of them, even though you will only use on, and your ram will be very bad..

I think Spawn should have an option To Load or not load, for things like this, because, there will be some Actors that only will be spawned, if the character was chosen, otherwise, you will not use it in that Scene.

I also thought about the solution of making a lot of scene, but it is not avery professional solution.

Cheers.

Fodder76

Thanks for the reply Mago,

Your solution is exactly what I suggested to the GS representative. Basically, give us the option to flag certain actors as 'do not load unless this is specifically spawned'. That seems like a simple enough solution.

I know they will be keeping an eye on this thread, so I'm hoping that others are having this same issue will post here, and it encourages GS to come up with a solution.

The sad thing is my game is nearly done and I can't wait around too long for a fix, so I may have to go the less desirable route regardless.

ApplisticMonster

I also have that problem while planning my new game based on mapletheif... So if i have TONS of weapons i am gonna have LOTS of different types of animations...

GamersRejoice

I have experienced this. At the moment there is not much you can do about it. For Dust Those Bunnies! you can unlock different types of bunnies. Originally I had all of the different types in one actor. But they all loaded up just the same whether I was using them or not. So I split each one up into a different scene to help with load times. For my game that worked just fine, but if you were making a game with separate levels? Not so great...

Fodder76

Interesting. While I certainly don't wish ill on anyone, it makes me feel better to see that others are struggling with this issue as well.

Thanks for posting!