Preview App Performance first glance

jhaas

Here's my experience with testing on the iPod touch with the preview app thus far.

I have 3 games that I've developed so far with Game Salad. Not wanting to be too specific right now, the first game is a basic puzzle game(not much on screen movement, the other two are games that make a lot of use of physics moving and striking balls within the game.

I have noticed a significant slow down in the performance of the games on the iPod vs the preview on the Mac. In the puzzle game, when begining a new game, there is a four second delay to reset 15 variables and call a game reset rule.

The ball movement and physics of game number two is completely unacceptable on the iPod, let alone as a commercial title. The performance monitor in GS reports at least 30 fps however I am unable to strike the ball hard enough to even get it into the playing area on the iPod due to the reduced performance.

Hopefully the slow down in performance is due to the preview app running on top of the Game Salad code. I'll have to submit the app for xcode conversion and try it again to be sure.

Anyone else have similar results? Will the final xcode version be a little snappier?

Thanks

quantumsheep

Try running the game from just the viewer - click the 'recent games' button in the top right of the screen on the viewer.

The final xcode version could surprise you as it's EXACTLY what the player's will experience and seems to run a little better than within the viewer...

However!

Writing games in GS is one thing. You have a ton of memory in your mac and processing power which far exceeds what an ipod/iphone can do.

You'll have to make some changes if the xcode version isn't working any better.

Also, switch the ipod off then on again before testing - this purges the memory of stuff like other programs running in the background etc.

Alternatively, try and make an ad-hoc version of the game for an iphone 3G/3GS - they have more power than an ipod, and it may work fine on those models if you can give the game to friends that own one.

You'll just have to state that it's not compatible with the ipod touch when you submit your game.

What gen ipod do you have? Mine's a first gen model. I've given the option in-game to stop animations, which seems to make my game run a little better on that, though still not perfectly.

My OTHER game, however, just crashes way too often on the ipod touch, so it'll be limited to iphone/3GS models.

Sous chefs have had access to the viewer, in one form or another, for a while now. My first experience of it was one of 'Cool! It works!' to 'damn - that's just too slow!'

You'll have to bite the bullet perhaps and make some 'optimisations'... it's what I've had to do, and while not fun, a working game is better than no game.

jhaas

The only real issue I have with what you've said, is all of this was unknown until I could actually can test on the device. Which I couldn't do until I paid money only to discover that instead of having 3 games ready for publishing I now have none.

If you're all telling me I now need to purchase the most powerful device to even test on well that's not acceptable.

If developing for the iPod touch was a known issue, it too should have been made clear BEFORE I paid for a license it now seems I'll have to rethink keeping.

Sorry

ktfright

You really just have to optimize the Heck out of your game.my driftng game used to stutter and was near unplayable, so I had to cut a whole bunch of stuff, and now it runs great. My second game however, is slow, not unplayable, but is very annoying. The reason why is because, the game constantly spawns actors, so it leads to extreme slowdowns.

ktfright

Also, you don't need a 3GS, but it might help, bit think like this, if all of my games work on an iPod touch 1g, then it works for everything.

quantumsheep

Hey Jhaas

You don't have to apologise to me - I'm not part of GS at all!

I went through the same process. I thought I had several games ready to go, and then had none because of some changes. However, with some optimisation, as I mentioned, you CAN get them to work!

Use the memory manager (appears on the left of the ipod picture in GS when you're using the viewer) to determine where the most memory is being used up. Watch the screen and see where it slows down - watch how the memory responds etc etc

There's several things you could take a look at to improve performance:

Are all your images power of 2?
Do you destroy actors once they're off the screen?
Have you made sure all non-moving actors have movement removed from their attributes?
Could you perhaps use less spawners (if any).
Have you made sure your sound is in mono and of a low bitrate?

etc etc - the list goes on really, but that's a start right there.

BTW, I never said you should buy the most powerful hardware. I specifically said that maybe you should make an ad-hoc version of the game that can be distributed to other people. I'd be happy to take a look at your game on my 3GS, for example.

Indeed, getting it to work on an ipod touch should guarantee it'll work on anything after that. It's best to test these things though!

Good luck with it all,

QS

CodeMonkey

Hi jhaas,
I see your concerns. Its not that the developing for the iPod touch is an issue with GameSalad, it is more that it has less resources than other devices. I only have a 1st Gen iPod Touch, and its actually better for development than a 3GS. If your game can run on a 1st Gen iPod Touch, then it should be able to work with a 3GS, giving you a larger customer pool. With the GS Viewer you are able to figure out where your memory hogs are and you can fix them as needed.

EDIT: Yah. What they said.

Cobra

@jhaas,
Thanks for your comments.

As QS mentioned, there is some overhead associated with the viewer, so your final app will have slightly better performance. The dev team is also working on additional performance improvements that may help in the future.

But if your game is running so slow on the iPod Touch that it's not playable, you'll want to consider how to optimize things on your end:

- Are your art and sound assets bigger than they need to be?
- Do you have complex or redundant rules/behaviors that could be simplified?
- Are you spawning and destroying a lot of actors when you might be able to "recycle?" (for example by temporarily moving them offscreen or making them invisible)
- Have you considered simplifying certain things (say, reducing the number of frames in an animation) that may be resource-intensive without giving enough benefit in return?

And so on... I'm sure there will be a lot more discussion on optimization strategies around here in the near future.

If you were not able to gauge potential performance issues until purchasing your subscription, that seems like a fair concern which we can relay to the team.

ktfright

Dang, my financial aid money doesn't kick in until November, so I can't be In the early access program ;(.. Eh cobra or codemonkey, I only have enough to be an apple dev, but do I need that first or be in the early access to get the viewer?

superNES

Hi Ktfright. Until the Viewer gets on the app store, the only way to install it on your device is to be an apple developer and build it from Xcode. We're working on that now, but until then it is what it is.

quantumsheep

You can choose the non-paying option for apple dev which will allow you to download the SDK without paying. You only pay if you want to publish something, and that's $99 a year.

CodeMonkey

You need to be an Apple Developer to get Xcode. Without Xcode, you can't build your games for iPhone or the Viewer.

ktfright

yeah, i have xcode, i just haven't applied for the program for $99 yet.