Has RAM usage changed?
HoneyTribeStudios
Member Posts: 1,792
@SaladStraightShooter @GameTeamOne - Hey, could you ask one of the dev team to offer some guidance on the following please:
I updated to 0.9.9.0 and, unless MY memory is failing, the memory management seems to have changed?
When using the viewer to monitor RAM usage the 'other' category used to be not too bad as I'd avoided using to many timers and constrains. However, now it's pretty hefty and also doesn't seem to flush from memory when changing scenes.
So what behaviours and/or assets contribute to 'other' memory? As far as I can make out, when switching scenes 'images' are flushed from memory, some of 'game engine' is but 'other' is not?
So what I need is some info so I can optimise scene management better.
If you could get them to offer an explanation quick that would be great. As I'm needing to release an quick update to fix some crashing issues. Especially now that +40,000 peeps have bothered to download the game I feel inclined to make sure they can all play it properly. :-B
Cheers - Shaz
I updated to 0.9.9.0 and, unless MY memory is failing, the memory management seems to have changed?
When using the viewer to monitor RAM usage the 'other' category used to be not too bad as I'd avoided using to many timers and constrains. However, now it's pretty hefty and also doesn't seem to flush from memory when changing scenes.
So what behaviours and/or assets contribute to 'other' memory? As far as I can make out, when switching scenes 'images' are flushed from memory, some of 'game engine' is but 'other' is not?
So what I need is some info so I can optimise scene management better.
If you could get them to offer an explanation quick that would be great. As I'm needing to release an quick update to fix some crashing issues. Especially now that +40,000 peeps have bothered to download the game I feel inclined to make sure they can all play it properly. :-B
Cheers - Shaz
Comments
from the startscene move to worldselect, then from there to levelselect, then start the game press pause, back to startscene,then go through the hole process and its added 5 to 6 mb ram. go through again adds more.doesn't dump correctly
Audio isn't flushing either but in this particular game that's actually better.
*Be good if someone from GS can clarify and explain.*
As a general note, some flexibility on how we manage memory would be ideal. e.g. keep certain images( that are used in most scenes) in memory. But select other images to flush as you change scene.
@gamedivision. Yeah unfortunately that's what I'm noticing too. Think I might have to back to 0.9.8.5 for this quick update. Although I was hoping to have an iap update out in a 2 weeks.... damn......
I can confirm that RAM keeps increasing as I switch back and forth between 2 scenes (according to the viewer) . Also somehow the sounds are getting saved to memory twice i.e. I have 10mb of sounds but eventually a scene will load up and tell me there are 20mb of sounds.
Request in the general direction you guys take:
I'm sure all the game devs around here would appreciate a heads up with every release. e.g 'With this release we've changed some stuff around so you should expect the following differences when testing in the viewer.' Or 'now that we have implemented x, y and z you should stick to the following best practices when using behaviours A, B and C'.
Not just new features but existing ones. I'm more talking about game optimisation rather than understanding how to use a particular behaviour.
All the stuff mentioned in the end of year review sounded really good. I welcome the changes. And I look forward to the GS SDK becoming faster and more stable. But we should get more technical info as things change so that we can make the best games possible.
I can tell you that stumbling along in the dark, not understanding what is going on with one of your existing games... is not much fun.
So I reckon it would be good if you could regularly interrogate the lead programmer and then get back to us with details and also how planned changed will effect things. I can't be the only one to think this...?
i did some GS viewer tests. Have 5 scenes, kept switching between them randomly every 10 seconds. I noticed that the overall memory (the total) increases from around 50 mb to 70 mb over time, but it stays around that region.
also, with each scene change, the "game engine"'s memory reduces by about 2 mb, and the overall memory usage increases. which i find weird
i did several things (which I hope to have made a difference, but can't tell for sure)
- killed all timers before a "change scene" is called. I have a gut feeling that timers consume lots of memory, and should be killed once its task is done.
next test would probably be to destroy all actors in the scene before switching. ( perhaps the scene switch function already means removing all actors , but we don't have an inside scoop)