Cocos2D - CCSprite runaction not finishing with low delay - cocos2d-iphone

Problem: I have a CCSprite animation that uses 7 frames. It works fine when I run the action with a delay of .04f, however, I need to run this animation at .02f which causes it to completely stop about 2~3 frames into the sprite animation. Bumping it up to .03f gets about 4~5 frames in before the sprite freezes.
I can't post the code because there's way too much. Really I'm looking for a general idea of where to start looking. The CCSprite I'm calling the runaction on is being retained, so that doesn't seem to be the issue. Thoughts?

Related

Dragging a sprite with TouchMoved

I'm using Xcode with Cocos2d version 3.0.
I want to drag sprites around the screen. I've done so successfully using the following code:
(void) touchMoved:(UITouch *)touch withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
CGPoint touchLocation = [touch locationInNode:self];
sprite1.position=touchLocation;
sprite2.position=touchLocation;
sprite3.position=touchLocation;
sprite4.position=touchLocation;
}
However, sometimes the sprites stop moving after a second. It's not a lag, because they never catch back up with my movement. They just stop! If I let go and start moving my touch again, the sprites start moving fine again / sometimes do the 'freeze thing' again.
Is it a memory issue?
Ok, I'm sure it must be memory. I copied this code onto a simple game with hardly any sprites and it worked perfectly.
Ok I've got it!
I had to unEnable the UISwipeGestureRecognizers while I moved the sprite.
The game was registering my touchesMoved movement as a swipe, and cancelling the touchesMoved commands.

cocos2d game becomes slow after checking notification center in IOS7

After upgraded to ios7, I found the Cocos2d application run slowly (or frame skipped) after checking the notification center.
Reproduce the problem:
Launch a cocos2d game, better with some fast moving sprites
Swipe down from the top of the screen to drop down the notifaction center, then swipe it up.
Now the game becomes like frame skipped. (slow). But after a while, or after some operation within the game, the frame speed recovers.
I tested on iphone5.
Anyone see the same problem? Any idea how it happens?
EDIT:
Since this problem only happens in rare case, I d like to close it.

How to load the loading scene background in cocos2d without blanking out?

I have a cocos2d game that has a loading scene where we load a bunch of assets. The game starts with the splash screen, and then launches the loading scene. The loading scene starts by loading the background, so the user sees the loading scene background while the assets are being loaded.
I load the loading scene background by calling CCSprite::spriteWithFile: and passing the filepath: loadingbackground.pvr.ccz
It seems to work differently on different devices:
On iphone (3gs) simulator, I see the loading scene as expected.
On iphone retina simulator, I don't see the loading scene (there aren't many assets yet, so may be happening quickly) and it goes directly to the main menu scene.
On the ipad 3 device, the splash screen comes up, and then there is a half second of black screen, and then the main menu scene shows up.
I want to see what I can do to avoid that black screen showing up on iPad 3. I suspect this is because of the time taken to load the loading background.
I have tried the following optimizations (mostly based on #Steffen's blog post on memory optimization):
Moved the loading background (originally 2.3 MB RGB8 png file) into a pvr.ccz spritesheet by itself, which reduced its size to 1.8 MB.
Removed the image from the texture soon after use.
I still see a black screen on iPad 3. Any suggestions?
Update: Found the issue - I had some code where I was overriding OnEnter and calling [[CCDirector sharedDirector]replaceScene] in it, and also calling the same from the background thread. Removed the OnEnter overload and it worked without flicker.
Thanks
Ignore whatever happens in Simulator. That's not relevant, focus on the device.
When the loading scene initializes and you add the loading scene's background, make sure you schedule update and load your assets in the update method. Otherwise if you load the assets in init, the background won't be drawn because you're loading all the assets before cocos2d gets to redraw the screen.
If this still fails, simply send the visit message to the background sprite followed by [[CCDirector sharedDirector] drawScene]. This forces a redraw of the scene.
Is this cocos2d-iphone or cocos2d-x ? make sure the tags are correct :)
I think you're referring to the startup flicker, there are a few ways to avoid that.
first thing you need to make sure you're handling the rootViewController correctly for iOS 6 and iOS 5 and below, there are a little changes for each.
You can find a little reference here:
http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/34471
Second thing you need to know that simulator's behaviour is not stable, you should always rely on real devices for testing, but it's very likely you'll still have the flicker issues.
Sorry I didn't provide example code, but you haven't supported enough information to know what's the real issue here.

How to add a short pause (think time) in a cocos2d game

I'm working on a two player iOS game that is similar to checkers. I'm using cocos2d to create this game.
I want a think time of .5 seconds between when the player's move renders and when the computer's move renders to simulate think time.
The flow of the game is controlled using NSNotification events and looks like this...
Player (computer or human) submits a move -> The board adds the new sprite -> The game controller updates the current player and asks them to submit a move.
I've tried adding usleep(500000) at the end of the board update or the beginning of the game update. What ends up happening is the sprites added in the board update, for the human player, don't show up until after the computer player has submitted his move. So the game waits 500 milliseconds and then updates with both moves.
Is there a way to force the CCLayer to update its child sprites before the usleep, or is there just a better way of adding this think time?
Thanks
if you schedule for receiving an update in your controller, you could slip time in the update:(ccTime)dt function.
in your .h
float _slipTime;
in your .m
// with other declaratives
static float THINK_TIME=.5f;
// last line before the stall
_slipTime=0.f;
[self schedule:#selector(pauseForThink:)];
-(void) pauseForThink:(ccTime) dt {
_slipTime+=dt;
if(_slipTime>THINK_TIME) {
[self unschedule:#selector(pauseForThink:)];
// trigger here whatever you wanted to accomplish after
// the think pause.
}
}
ok, this is simple, but will prevent the main loop from being blocked (this is what happens with your sleep). When running at 60 FPS, the pauseForThink method will be called about 30 times, and cocos will have 30 draw cycles during the pause.

Are offscreen animations ignored by rendering and CPU?

Just wondering how Cocos manages the CPU cycle and graphics engine for CCSprites that are offscreen, including those in the middle of an animation. If you have many animated sprites going on and off the screen, I could check and stop each animation when it's off the screen then restart it when it is about to come back on, but I'm wondering if this is necessary?
Suppose you had a layer with a bunch of them and you make the layer invisible, but don't stop the sprite animations. Will they still use CPU time?
I just did a quick test (good question :) ), in a game where i can slide the screen over a large map that contains images of soldiers performing an 'idle' animation. They continue running when off-screen (I tacked a CCCallFunc in a sequence in a repeat forever, to a simple selector that logs).
I suspect they would also run when the object is not visible. It kind of makes sense, especially for animations. If you look at my use case, if the animation were stopped, it could cause a cognitive disconnect if the user slided the soldier in and out of view, especially when the soldier is doing a walk on the map - he could actually walk-in the view without the user having done any interaction with the screen.