Loading Files Only Once.

BigRed

Hi,
I have a object that get's added to the scene many different times.
The object has a CCSkeletonAnimation that is part of the object getting added.

Every time the Object makes the CCSkeletonAnimation it causes lag.
I'm thinking if i can load the atlas file only once, It will stop the lag.

how could i do this, Im using cocos2d-iphone ?

BigRed

It's not the atlas that causes the lag, it is actually the number of animations in a .json file.

I removed all animations but one and exported the .json file. The game had no lag when adding the object.
I then duplicated the same exact animation a couple of times then exported and imported the file and the lag was back.

The animation data is causing a lag, why is this so?
The way I understand it is that the animation data is basically just ' floats' and shouldn't take up to much memory.
Shouldn't only the data for 'ONE' animation be in use and not the data for 'ALL' animations ?

Any Idea what could be done to fix this?

BigRed

I think the only way it will work is if the .json file is loaded only once.
Is there any way I can load the .json file only once and reuse the information instead of the .json file being loaded multiple times?

Nate

CCSkeletonAnimation has a ctor that takes a SkeletonData. You can use the spine-c API to load a SkeletonData and then use it many times. Eg:

	SkeletonJson* json = SkeletonJson_create(atlas);
	json->scale = scale;
	SkeletonData* skeletonData = SkeletonJson_readSkeletonDataFile(json, [skeletonDataFile UTF8String]);
	NSAssert(skeletonData, ([NSString stringWithFormat:@"Error reading skeleton data file: %@\nError: %s", skeletonDataFile, json->error]));
	SkeletonJson_dispose(json);

BigRed

Thanks Nate, I actually just loaded a number of skeletons before the game started and used the skeletons that were not in use, then when I was done using it I returned it to a pool of skeletons for later use. It got rid of the initial framedrop that I was getting.
Loading is not a problem now but when I 'SetAnimation' to a handful of skeletons I get a drop in performance (framerate).

You said that "You can use the spine-c API to load a SkeletonData and then use it many times.", will doing that cause a performance boost in my situation or is there anything else that you can suggest ?

Nate

It will reduce loading, but won't affect using setAnimation. setAnimation should not be slow though, I would guess the slowdown comes from something else.

BigRed

If I don't 'setAnimation' the game runs just fine even with the skeletonAnimations loaded. It's after I 'setAnimation' to a number of skeletons that this happens..
I have other SkeletonAnimations that cause a lag right when I set the animation, we plan on moving away from those skeletons and using prerendered art instead but we would prefer to continue using spine skeletonAnimations, any suggestions would be appreciated?

Nate

Yes, profile your app so you don't have to guess where the CPU time goes. 🙂

setAnimation with a string uses SkeletonData_findAnimation which does strcmp on each animation name until it finds the one you want. You can use findAnimation at load time and use setAnimation that takes an Animation* rather than a string. The other thing setAnimation is look up the mix between the two animations. Unless you have thousands of mix durations defined, it should be plenty fast.

BigRed

Thanks for the info. 🙂
I do have alot of things happening in the app at any one given time so it may be the overall CPU usage.
Originally we moved to spine because the extended use of different textures in our app took up too much memory, spine fixed that problem by allowing us to setAttachments.
We have about 2 - 7 mix durations defined.
I will profile the app and see what I get from there..

BigRed

Well moving many skeletonAnimations around the screen while animating and doing collision checks in the game caused the drop in framerate.
We tried many different things but it all came back to the same conclusion.
We ended up going back to pre-rendered animations for the objects that appear on the screen more than enough times to cause lag.
It's weird because I can have more pre-rendered animation objects on screen while doing collision checking, triggering events, and moving around on the screen according to a Interpolating speed without causing any major frame drops.
We are still using skeletonAnimations, just not to the extent we wish we could.