Importing a table now takes 90 seconds, instead of 2 seconds.
Hymloe
Member Posts: 1,653
Importing a CSV table (256 x 900) now takes 90 seconds (even when the data is all just cells containing 0s and 1s). It used to take about 2 seconds.
Why does it take so long?
When I do "Load Game" in my game, to save the player's progress, it used to take 2 - 4 seconds. Now it hangs Game Salad Creator entirely, or so it seems. I perform various Copy Table properties in this code. It may just be really really slow at doing that, and it may take some 700 seconds or so to perform my Load Game logic in my game.
Could we get that back to how it was before?
Comments
Has this already been reported?
@BlackCloakGS
Is the Copy Table behaviour significantly slower than before? In my game, it's slowed down by a factor of about 50x since the upgrade from Creator 0.11.0.13.
I snipped down my "Load Game" code, to just a single Copy Table behaviour. Table is 255x900 of 0s and 1s.
When I run my game in the Creator, and press the "Load Game" button, it "hangs" for 8 minutes then returns back to the game.
I've re-imported all the table data from my original CSV file (just 0 and 1 throughout the whole table), and I say to import as Integers.
Didn't help at all.
Ooooh! I waited 9:00 minutes, and it worked! It copied the table (used to take less than a second).
Could we have that fixed please? I need to copy multiple tables in the Load Game process, and it used to do it all in just a few seconds.
Now it's un-usable.
Is this a known issue?
Make sure you submit a bug
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Bug added, please vote for it if this affects you.
http://bugs.gamesalad.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1276
Bug written up as:
The performance of tables has become un-usable.
I use tables a lot in my game (a Tile RPG game).
I need to import tables frequently, often tables that are as large as say 256x900.
These used to import fine, and I could run my Load Game process in the game, and it would complete in 5 - 10 seconds. Now, it hangs the game for several minutes on end.
In my Load Game process, I use 4x Copy Table behaviours. I tried turning them all off, and just leaving one on, and it took 8:00 minutes to perform the Copy Table behaviour!
That's more than 400x slower than it used to be, and makes it completely un-usable. It would take my player 20 - 40 minutes to load their game, where it used to take about 5 seconds in GS Creator 0.11.13.
Please fix!
I found that if I halved the amount of data (chopped off half the rows on the table), it halved the amount of time it took to perform a Copy Table behaviour in the game at runtime.
Makes sense.
It still takes 4 minutes in-game to perform a single Copy Table behaviour.
I used to be able to perform 4x Copy Table behaviours, all in about 5 seconds or less!
Please fix! Tables have become un-usable.
Voted.
I have significantly improved those "Load Game" times to about 25 seconds now.
I had several "Constrain Attribute" behaviours going, that would constrain a Global variable to an expression containing a reference to one of the tables that I do a Copy Table behaviour on.
I made a boolean that prevents it from doing the constrain while the game is doing the loading process.
If I dig in and find all such references, it may be back to normal.
GAME SALAD: A question: Is it necessary that the Constrain behaviour needs to conflict with the Copy Table behaviour?
I'm not sure if that's the only issue. But if that's the case, perhaps it could be "optimised" at the engine side, like it was before?
Loading times on iPad 2 are several minutes long. It used to take 5 - 10 seconds.
Importing tables into the Creator now takes much longer.
I've added a sample file to the bug base for how long it takes to import larger tables.
As noted in the bug we really need a sample project to see what you're doing that is taking so long.
@GeorgeGS I've always been under the assumption that bugs are addressed in order or severity/fixability and not based on the number of votes. That votes are there for feature requests, and bugs are something that comes down to the discretion of the dev team.
Is that correct, or is there actually benefit in trying to get others to vote for submitted bugs? This seems a common impression, so a clear answer on this would be helpful.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
You're right, votes don't change how we prioritize bugs. If something is broken and it is affecting many users we do our best to get it fixed as soon as we can.
I've had issues importing large tables (like 10+ minutes of waiting) since 12.x, havent tried with the newer releases, as it's only a side project of mine that uses external and very large tables.
I'll see if I can get it to do it in 13.x and add to the bug what I can if so.
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No issue importing tables here. 55,000+ row table imported pretty much instantly. Also, copying 10+ tables took well under a second.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Those are the results I would expect. But it's not happening for me, using Creator 0.13.31.
How many columns in the 55000+ row table? What sort of data is in there? Integers? Text?
What version of GS Creator are you using?
What is your computer, and OS?
Thanks!
I've replied to that bug with a comment that includes an attached table that is taking a long time to import into a clean fresh GS project for me. Is that importing pretty much instantly for you @GeorgeGS or is it taking a while for you?
If it's importing instantly, what is your test machine, what version of Mac OSX, and what machine specs, and what version of GS Creator?
Thanks.
Since the bug refers to multiple issues we'd need to be able to look at all of them. A project showing the copy and constraint issue would be useful if you want all of the issues to be addressed.
In general it would be better to report bugs on single issues. If you have multiple issues, create multiple bugs.
Yes. It started off as the Copy Table bug, which is harder to reproduce. I've tried to build a simple project that demonstrates it, but I wasn't sure how to make it happen in a fresh project.
The Import Table bug is dead easy to reproduce, and can be done with a new blank project, so I supplied a file to try that with. Fixing that may inadvertently fix the other issue, too.
Can you reproduce the slow import table issue?
If you are unable to reproduce that, please let me know.
Here's the table to try importing...
http://www.muzboz.com/Host/GameSalad/Map1.csv
Create a new Game Salad project.
Create a new table.
Import this CSV as the data, select to import as Text, and have no Column or Row titles.
It takes over a minute to import the table.
It used to take about 1-3 seconds in older versions of the Creator (0.11.0.13 and earlier).
Did you try it? How did you go?
What type of computer are you using, and with what version of GS? Cheers.
I tested this out and Creator hangs for about a minute, with the beach ball of death spinning. Then it actually imports the data, exactly as described. I'm on the latest OS X, latest Creator. I used a brand new 15-inch Retina MacBook to test this, so it's not a matter of computing power.
That said, I've also been importing large tables of my own lately, which didn't exhibit this behavior as far as I am aware (so I can confirm @Armelline 's experience), thus it must be something specific triggering this. Not at home now, but I'll do some more testing later on.
@GeorgeGS
I just tested out a table with 13 column 17,000 plus rows no problem. I brought @Hymloe table into numbers and even there it causes a beach ball. I suspect something is wrong with the formatting of that table.
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Thanks. So it takes a long time to open in pages (does it open eventually?)
If you import my table into GS, does it take a long time there also?
I was finding that a table full of 0s and 1s was also taking a very long time.
I don't see how my tables would have suddenly changed their formatting. I use the same version of MS Office for Mac OSX that I always have used. Nothing else in my work flow has changed, except the new version of Game Salad Creator.
What do you create and edit your tables in? Excel? Pages? Which version?
I opened @Hymloe s table into numbers ( 3.5.3 ) and Excell 2011 both without issue under 3 seconds, it's only a €hit load of commas and a bunch of carridge returns afterall
@Hymloe there is nothing wrong with your file. As a format CSV really couldn't get any simpler.
I don't understand the disparities between people's experiences here.
A few people have said that it does take a long time to import my table into GS.
A few people said they have no problems importing their own large tables into GS, even if they had problems with mine.
@The_Gamesalad_Guru said he found it slow (beach ball spinning) when opening in Pages (but no mention of what happened if they tried in GS).
I've personally been having no problems with any of my (many) tables in Excel itself. I'm using the same version I have for years. And I export my map from Tiled, the same version I've used for months and months.
The only thing that I noticed to have changed at my end is the new version GS (now using 0.13.31, used to be using 0.11.0.13 which was fine).
Now it takes a long time to import the same takes I've always been using.
And it takes a long time to do a Copy Table behaviour in GS, on the same tables that used to take just a second or two in 0.11.0 13.