Performance issues with simulator on OS X and Windows (latest build - 591)

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hello everyone,

I don’t know if this is really a “bug” or not, so let me explain what I’m experiencing and then let me know if I should file this as a bug, and sorry for the long winded post but I want to make sure what I’m experiencing is understandable.

I don’t update very often with the latest Corona SDK, but today I actually updated to the latest build on my Mac running OS X Lion and ran my project that I’ve been working on for quite some time. Unfortunately I don’t know what previous version I was using before updating to this latest stable build as of today (version 591).

After updating to 591 the performance of a certain area of my project is suddenly awful in the simulator. Here’s what my code is doing, in a nutshell:

The player can touch the screen anywhere and slide their finger down and an object on the screen will slowly scrunch down while the player is in the process of moving their finger downwards. The player can slide their finger back up, as long as they don’t take their finger off the screen, and the object will un-scrunch, basically like a spring in real life that you can push down with your finger and lift your finger up on.

The animation for this scrunching down used to be flawless in the simulator, very smooth with no jerky-ness. But now, with the latest build, when you slide your finger down it takes the simulator a couple seconds, then you see the object scrunch down. It’s like a delayed response or something, or like a very bad frame rate in a video game.

I tried this same project, with the same latest build, on Windows and it’s having the same issue. Very jerky, delayed response whereas before it was very smooth, no jerkiness at all.

I went way back to the version 563 SDK on Windows, and with that version the animation is very smooth in the simulator, like it used to be. I haven’t tried that older version on Lion because I read the latest version that’s compatible with Lion is 577 I believe.

I haven’t tested this on the device yet, but the older version I used to use (sorry I can’t remember the exact version number) was also very smooth animation on the device. I’ll try later today to see if my iTouch shows this same jerky behavior or if it’s only something with the simulator.

Has anyone else experienced any issues like this? I did search through many, many pages of the forums before posting, because I know how annoying it is for someone to post something that’s already been posted and handled.

Thanks for your attention.

Kind regards,

David

Edit: I just tried out version 563 on OS X Lion on the daily builds page and the performance in the simulator is great, like it used to be. Until I try out every single version of the SDK I don’t know what version this performance issue began with. But there’s definitely a difference from 563 to 591 of the SDK where 591 is laggy in the simulator, at least for monitoring a player’s touch on the screen and checking how much they’ve moved their finger up/down (+y/-y). [import]uid: 457 topic_id: 13249 reply_id: 313249[/import]

#2

hmmm…-- well - we need to look at what code you have that demonstrate this issue -

anyway you can send to my team or me and show me where it exhibits the problem - once the team recovers from shipping we will tackle it

.c [import]uid: 24 topic_id: 13249 reply_id: 48610[/import]

#3

Hello Carlos,

Thanks very much for your reply. I assume you mean I should fill out a bug report, correct?

I’ll go ahead and do that and include some example code of what I’m talking about.

Kind regards,

David [import]uid: 457 topic_id: 13249 reply_id: 48615[/import]

#4

yes and you can send code to me directly and i can have one of the engineers look at it with me once we recover

.c [import]uid: 24 topic_id: 13249 reply_id: 48617[/import]

#5

Please fill out a bug report and provide some sample code that demonstrates the problem. You can just reference this forum post in the bug report.

Since you are seeing the problem on Windows, it’s doesn’t sound like a problem related to Lion. It would be interesting to know if you see the problem on a device too.

Thanks,
Tom [import]uid: 7559 topic_id: 13249 reply_id: 48619[/import]

#6

Thanks Carlos and Tom,

I’ve filled out a bug report and included my code. Please forgive some of the code, it’s still a work in progress.

I did find out after further testing that this issue only occurs when both my character AND the platform he stands on have friction > 0 as physics objects. If I make the friction of my character 0 then this issue doesn’t occur, and the animation is perfectly smooth like before. I included this information in my bug report.

However, this wasn’t an issue in the past, as I stated, so maybe something changed in one of the builds in regards to physics?

Now that I know what’s causing the issue I can at least make adjustments so I can see real time action in the simulator.

Please contact me via email if you have any questions or need anything else.

Thanks again for your time, and for the most outstanding mobile game development platform on the planet.

Kind regards,

David [import]uid: 457 topic_id: 13249 reply_id: 48638[/import]

#7

Just a quick update, I finally had time to test it on my device, and unfortunately the lag is there as well, where it wasn’t before with the older build. I tested it on an older iTouch, 2nd generation, running iOS 4.2.1

Kind regards,

David [import]uid: 457 topic_id: 13249 reply_id: 48656[/import]