Do you have Audio stutter when previewing the creator? - Beefy_Clyro Tip

beefy_clyro

Hey

So as the title suggests, when previewing in the creator, do you get audio stuttering? This 1st happened to me once a new update was introduced, i think it 1st started for me in 0.9.91 or 0.9.92. It was incredibly frustrating and support never really were able to help me, i know this affected a lot of people also.
Anyway, i got a new Macbook Air recently and the problem was eradicated ... WooHoo. Well, i thought, now a couple of months on its randomly happening again! D'oh. This makes quickly testing painful as it doesn't always register your commands due to the stuttering.
Now i won't believe its the Macbook, the minimum requirements are quite low, I'm hardly running anything and don't have that many programs on my machine.

Anyway, as a test i decided to create another user on the Mac, i named this GameSalad. Under this blank profile i tried out my games, low and behold , the stuttering doesn't happen! So now i intend to have my normal profile for everything else but when working on my GameSalad games i will switch to my new user account and use this only for this purpose.

Hope someone finds this useful and if you do test this, could you please state whether it made the stuttering better for you or not?

Cheers

ellfire

Okay, I believe the issue is being caused if you have the Android SDK installed in your machine. My reasoning.

I first noticed this on my home iMac. This has the Android SDK installed in my user directory per Gamesalad's instructions. The stuttering music occurred. I didn't have the SDK installed on my MacBook Air until last night, and today I noticed the issue.

I removed the SDK folder (there is a process called adb that it runs, so you will need to force quit that first before emptying the folder form your trash.)

Performed a restart and voila, no more stuttering music in the GS creator. I can also say that it is not a resources issue as GS is using the same ram and processor cycles without the SDK. This would also explain why creating a new user account fixed the issue because the SDK is no longer in that home directory. Hope this helps.

ellfire

I only recently started seeing this with my iMac. It gets weird stutters in any music files playing back. Ironically, it doesn't happen on my significantly less endowed MacBook Air or actual iPads. An odd annoyance to be sure, but not a deal breaker.

beefy_clyro

Thats something different, this is an issue specific to GameSalad when previewing from the creator!

ellfire

Actually, I take it back. I am now getting the playback error on my MacBook Air as well. Perhaps a reinstall will fix it?

beefy_clyro

No reinstalling GS won't make any difference. Try the tip i said above and see if it helps.

beefy_clyro

Ahhhh, interesting, will be good to see if other people see this and try it out. Would love to see if it solves others issues with their stuttering!

I knew it wasn't resource as this is virtually a brand new MBA with not much installed and hardly any background processes running.
Once this started happening again on this new machine i couldn't believe it, i just tried to create a new user profile just to see if it still did it ... which it didn't. I never thought about what happened before i noticed it occurring etc but having thought about it ... It wasn't happening, then i wanted to publish to Android so had installed the SDK, never previewed for a week as i was just publishing games ready to build, got back to game making and noticed the stuttering ... So that certainly seems the likely cause!

I don't really want to remove the SDK though as i sometimes use the ADB installer, creating the keystore and publish for Android!

ellfire

Yeah, hopefully it is something that GS can take care of. Till then, it's annoying, but you could keep removing the SDK until you need to publish and then reinstall it I guess. Did you file a bug report with them about this?

beefy_clyro

Its no problem for me just to switch to a new user profile to do my work, once the project is finished i can just bring it back to my regular profile and publish to the required platforms ... That way i don't need to remove and keep reinstalling the SDK.

scitunes

@beefy_clyro - I tried your tip and it worked! Great find!

beefy_clyro

@scitunes Awesome, really pleased to here it and glad I could help I was thoroughly chuffed when I discovered it, its one of those things thats really annoyed me for a long time now as i couldn't easily test small changes real quick. Theres been a lot of posts on the forums with people experiencing the same stuttering so hopefully lots will find it useful.

scitunes

Yeah, this is a very useful workaround, but my real hope is that this info will help GS squash whatever android bug is causing it.

@beefy_clyro, have you done a bug report yet on this?

beefy_clyro

@scitunes I alerted this to SSS and he asked me to tidy up my post and send it to Lauren to do as a SaladSolution, so they are aware of it. However, i did not fill out a bug report.