Framerate drops after a few minutes in Mac

[AaronWizard]

I've been finding that my game's framerate drops to unplayable levels after a few minutes of gameplay. The weird thing is that this only seems to happen on Mac when the game is through an application bundle or a .love file. Running the uncompressed source directory on Mac doesn't give me this problem, and I don't see this problem on Windows with either a .love or a stand-alone application.

Downloads for Mac and Windows applications and for the .love

[coffee]

I've been finding that my game's framerate drops to unplayable levels after a few minutes of gameplay. The weird thing is that this only seems to happen on Mac when the game is through an application bundle or a .love file. Running the uncompressed source directory on Mac doesn't give me this problem, and I don't see this problem on Windows with either a .love or a stand-alone application.

Downloads for Mac and Windows applications and for the .love

I downloaded osx and Love version because I thought you had FPS indicator in that new versions. Well, just for playing I didn't notice FPS drop even after done first structure and half second structure. Does the problem show later? (used .app version). I don't remember slowdowns in older versions also.

[AaronWizard]

I didn't put in an FPS indicator since the drop is pretty obvious. The game basically freezes for me.
So you never saw any slowdown with the Mac app version at all?

The new versions were actually for fixing and optimizing some stuff in the sound manager (sound_manager.lua). They were partly motivated by a notion that I might actually be seeing Lua's garbage collector kicking in. Though if it's only happening to me...

[coffee]

I didn't put in an FPS indicator since the drop is pretty obvious. The game basically freezes for me.
So you never saw any slowdown with the Mac app version at all?

The new versions were actually for fixing and optimizing some stuff in the sound manager (sound_manager.lua). They were partly motivated by a notion that I might actually be seeing Lua's garbage collector kicking in. Though if it's only happening to me...

No sorry, no slowdowns found, spite of played more than 3 or 4 minutes, so I asked that there was a problem after some area . I even tried to acumulate some badies on screen but didn't notice something strange. Do a thing, try test it with slime's JIT version to see if there is a difference.

[AaronWizard]

I tried running the .love file with the JIT version and still got a freeze. The freeze took about 40 seconds to show up in one of my tests.

I think I'm running the 64-bit version of OS X, if that makes a difference.

[coffee]

I tried running the .love file with the JIT version and still got a freeze. The freeze took about 40 seconds to show up in one of my tests.

Can't detect anything strange in your console.app? How is behaving in Activity Monitor?

I think I'm running the 64-bit version of OS X, if that makes a difference.

Well but if you using at least snow leopard it must be 64bits.

[AaronWizard]

I've confirmed that I'm running 64-bit.

I've tried running my .love file with both Löve LuaJIT and regular Löve while Activity Monitor is open.

On the title screen I get about 3-5% CPU usage and 30 MB memory.
During gameplay I get about 40% CPU usage with normal Löve (though no performance loss with my computer overall; I'm running in windowed mode) and 25% CPU usage with JIT. Both versions take about 60 MB memory.

When a freeze occurs, the CPU usage drops to about 5-10% CPU. Memory stays around 60 MB.

I'll be back with a Console log.
Edit: Here it is.

Regular Löve

Code: Select all

12-05-31 9:44:00 PM	love[917]	*** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x1009125c0 of class NSPathStore2 autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
12-05-31 9:44:00 PM	love[917]	*** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x100916410 of class NSPathStore2 autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
12-05-31 9:44:00 PM	love[917]	*** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x10091d310 of class NSCFArray autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking

JIT

Code: Select all

12-05-31 9:48:06 PM	love[931]	*** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x9126e0 of class NSPathStore2 autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
12-05-31 9:48:06 PM	love[931]	*** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x9165a0 of class NSPathStore2 autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
12-05-31 9:48:06 PM	love[931]	*** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x91b490 of class NSCFArray autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking

In both cases this output only showed up when the game was first started. Nothing appeared either when the freeze occurred or when I shut down the game. Again, here I was running the .love file.

[coffee]

Well, console.app will not help us in this case since you don't output nothing or the app crash. That __NSAutoreleaseNoPool()/leaking are usual in all loves runs.
I don't have your problem, but your game fingerprint is even better than in my mac because playing it takes 50%-+60% of my CPU.
You could consider problems with things like use of canvas, shaders or anything draw in non-conventional way. I thought first it could be some big table iteration slowing things down (like failling remove well enemies or something) but your code knowledge and talent is beyond doing that mistakes. Also wouldn't explain why I never got that problem.
Sorry, don't know how to help more. :/

[AaronWizard]

You could consider problems with things like use of canvas, shaders or anything draw in non-conventional way.

Heh, this game started with Löve 0.7 so I never got to put in cool things like that.

Weird that I seem to be the only one getting this. Could it possibly be some kind of hardware thing?

My specs:
iMac
Mac OS X 10.6.8
3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
ATI Radeon HD 4850

[coffee]

You even have better imac than mine. I have half of memory, integrated Nvidia GPU chip with only 256mb, same snow. And you should know imac models are too homogenous not having great differences between models. If your machine wasn't spotlighting indexing or searching anything in that moments it's hard to understand your problem.

If you had at lease some saving feature it could be an idea for test in another people with osx that freezing issues moments. However I advise at least you add a fps meter in your game.

You could consider problems with things like use of canvas, shaders or anything draw in non-conventional way.

Heh, this game started with Löve 0.7 so I never got to put in cool things like that.

Weird that I seem to be the only one getting this. Could it possibly be some kind of hardware thing?

My specs:
iMac
Mac OS X 10.6.8
3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
ATI Radeon HD 4850