Memory questions on loading (and unloading) objects

[azurie]

Hello all. I'm getting toward the end of my game development and I'm really focusing on lowering the memory usage of my game (I'm down to around 350 mb from 1300 mb just a couple weeks ago). A big part of this is due to the load on call box. It's super useful. But some objects that i only want loaded occasionally- that I need to load during action intensive segments- can cause a hiccup. My first question is as follows...

1. Is there a way to load an object into memory without actually creating the object?? A special projectile, for instance, may only be used during a frame very rarely, so it's smart to use load on call. But when I know the projectile will be used during the frame, I'd rather load it into memory before the action starts. Is this possible.

Taking optimization further, I've got a second question as well.

2. Is there a way to unload an object from memory during the same frame?? For instance, say a frame starts with a cut-scene and has a dialogue box object. After the cut-scene ends I know the dialogue box will be unnecessary for the rest of the frame. Is there a way to remove the dialogue box from memory at that point?

Thanks for any responses and/or ideas.

[Danny]

Forcing load on call for all objects is always a great optimisational tip (although useless in very unique situations) but overall your best optimisation tip. Believe it or not, creating the object is never really the issue. Your GPU could effectively create 1000 512x512 sprites a second without a hassle, it's the memory usage that is the drip (as you probably know). Unless you force load on call, it will be loaded into memory at the start of the frame.

With regards to your second one, you can't unload an object from memory in the same frame yourself. I'm not 1000% sure entirely on how Fusion exactly handles this, but you can check the differences out yourself in the debugger when you create/destroy particular objects. With regards to the cutscene object, when you destroy it, it should relieve memory usage...

There are a ton of other optimisations you could do too, but having a drop from 1300mb to 350mb = some great optimisation already. 350mb for a finalised, compiled game utilising the GPU (PC) is not bad at all. It will probably actually use less than this in your final build. Try building your app as an executable, run it and then open task manager and see how much memory it is using.

[azurie]

Thanks for the reply! After some testing it seems that destroying objects doesn't relieve much (if any) memory usage. But you are right about 350 mb being much better than 1300! It's good to hear that's a decent number for PC. For the record, its 350 as an executable. It's around 800 in the debugger. In my experience running it through fusion seems to add about 500 mb in the debugger.

[Danny]

Sure, try a test build (executable) and as the game is running, check in task manager how much memory is actually in use. 350mb for your compiled executable will be the runtime and all your assets including sound files aswell as images, plus any binary files you may have put in.Again, give it a test as a compiled executable and let me know the memory result...

[SHINBAXTER]

does the "load on call" command work on iOS? or is it just for PC?

[Danny]

Across all runtimes SHINBAXTER

[SHINBAXTER]

Cool. Cheers Dan