Flash - Garbage Collector Can Run During Or Between 2 Statements?
Aug 30, 2010
Here's my question. Suppose I've written some AS3 code like:
statementOne;
statementTwo;
Is there any possibility that the garbage collector will run during or between my two statements, or does it only run after my "user" code has finished and returned control up to flash? We have an A-Star codeblock that's sometimes slow, and I'd like to eliminate the GC as a potential culprit. The codeblock is obviously more complex than my example above, but it doesn't involve any events or other asynchronous stuff.
I have ship game that i create using falsh as3. but i have the problem with memory usage. the memory usage still increase when game played. whereas the System.gc was called, but the memory still increase.
I am creating a bunch of movieclips when I first start the flash movie.I then put them into an array and use functions to add and remove them by selecting a random index in the array.When they are removed are they marked for garbage collection?Or can I just keep creating them.Might be hard to understand so code is below
var mc1:mov1 = new mov1(); var mc2:mov2 = mov2(); var mc3:mov3 = mov3(); var mc4:mov4 = mov4();
var theRandomClip:Number; var movieClipArray = new Array(mc1,mc2,mc3,mc4)
function getRandom():void{ theRandomClip = Math.floor(Math.random()*movieClipArray.length); addChild(movieClipArray[theRandomClip]); }
function remove():void{ removeChild(theRandomClip); } //Then I would call them in succesion many times
getRandom(); remove(); getRandom(); remove();
//etc do I need to worry about them getting garbage collected and no //longer being available?
fully removing objects from memory, but I still think I'm not getting it. I've written a test script that looks the following:The stage has is of class MemTest
There is approximately a 3x difference in the rate of gain of memory usage between simply letting the movieclips accumulate or running removeChildforever() in the enterframe. There doesn't seem to be a difference between using the "killme = null;" line or not.However, I am still seeing an constant rate of increase in memory usage of about 3 megs over the course of a minute, running at 120 fps. why is the memory usage still going up? Is garbage collector run so infrequently that it hasn't happened after 7200 frames?
Lets say a scene started off around 70-80mb, it loaded a swf in, and by removing the event listener and setting objects to null and numbers to 0 before unloading the swf,and went back to the original scene, the memory stack up till like 80mb++, and every time I repeats the same process the memory goes up higher,is that normal? or its a memory leaking issue?
Looks like the garbage collector is not removing movieclips that have textfields set to TLF. I'm using Flash Builder's profile inspector and TLF brings in a bunch of objects and prevents the clip from being removed by the garbage collector (including all the objects that TLF put in memory). How could Adobe release CS5 with such a crappy implementation of text? If there is no solution I will have to avoid using TLF text for all my projects.
I've coded a 2000 line game on one actions layer (facepalm*) and I just recently learned about the GC (garbage collector). I've looked around a bit and can't, how to trace the source of it. There is an interesting article that mentioned event listeners and for every addEventListener there should be a removeEventListener. My game has 60 adds and only 15. What I can't make sense is that the mc's that have the event listeners are never removed, but just moved off of the stage. Others are just made invisible. So if the event listener is added once, why would the memory keep growing? (I'm using the Windows Task Manager to monitor this). Another point was to remove objects so that the GC can do its work. What I did was create an object, add it to an array then null it.
Then removed the object from the array. for ( var ii:int = 0; ii<instanceArray.length - 1; ii++ ) { stage.removeChild(instanceArray[ii]); delete(instanceArray[ii]); instanceArray[ii] = null; }
I'm forgetting now exactly how I should dispose of unneeded objects. In the past, every object/class I created had a public dispose() function which removes all added listeners inside it and called the kill/dispose function on any children of it that may need the same (so it worked its way down the tree, as this process can continue for as many children/grandchildren there are in the list). So basically, the code in the parent class would look like this:
Code: childObj.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, anotherHandler); childObj.dispose(); childObj = null; ...and the childObj class would look like this: [Code] .....
Do I need to set any variables/objects defined in the child class's class scope to null prior to setting the class itself to null? Or is this handled automatically when I set the class itself to null from the parent (assuming these class-scope-defined variables/objects have no listeners or child objects which need to be disposed themselves)?
I've decided to move on to AS3 (and maybe AS4 in the future). I've done PHP object oriented programming and Java oriented as well, but Flash is a bit different because of actual visual things that occur.
I tried to follow a very simple tutorial. I made a "collector" MovieClip and added both the identifier "collector" and the class "collector" to it. I added the project class as "superClass".
In superClass.as I had the following lines of code:
If they get a question wrong in my quiz ( weakest link) the money clip goes to zero and it goes onto the next question. If they get it right the money clip advances and they go onto the next question. I want to include each time that it should only go onto the next question if all questions have been asked. SO i want an extra if clause in both sections, saying if current question is more than 11 go to '#game over"The questions are saved in the frame of the quiz
_root.qArray = new Array("question: A;B;C;D") _root.qArray.push("Question?:A;B; C; D")
There are 11 questions.At the moment at the section with choosing answers I have
function selectAnswer(n) { // correct if (answers[n] == correctAnswer) { _root.money.nextFrame();
I put together a quick sample just to test out the garbage collection convenience functions in casalib.
All seems to work well (i.e, objects are removed from the stage, listeners are stopped) however I am using Mr. Doob's stats display and it looks like my memory usage isn't going down after the destroy method is called?
[Code]...
Are my items actually being marked for garbage collection? What am I doing incorrectly?
I know that there have been questions asked about garbage collection and memory management and after hours of searching through the internet I frustratingly haven't been able to find a solution to my problem.So here it is:I have a function that reads an XML files and creates thumbnail instances of a class. The class contains the usual information as well as two listeners for MOUSE_OVER and MOUSE_OUT. The thumbnails are movieclips and are placed in a sprite container/holder. The container/holder is created with code:
Code: var containerProjects:Sprite = new Sprite();//Creates sprite to contain projects spriteGallery.addChild(containerProjects);//Adds container to main container
Yesterday when playing a game (Balloons Tower Defense 3) I noticed that the game started to slow down over time and then randomly speed up very quickly. Looking at the memory usage dropping each time I assumed it was the GC running.
As a legitimate question, is there anyway to force Flash to GC from, say, Firefox? Perhaps there's an addon or a command you can run that will do this? I know that you can do System.gc() but this game isn't mine so I can't modify the source with a "Click here to GC" button.
I've a question about garbage collection in flash.I'm making a game using with Flash AS3. This game will stay open for a few hours, like 5 - 6 hours. People will play it again and again in these hours. I have 15 loader in my flash game and don't want to have a problem with Garbage Collection. I'm uninstalling every load object when it is not necessary but i'm not sure do i have trouble about this garbage collection?
i have got a project im working on that requires if statements
basically im wanting to create 2 or more statements detailling if an answer is right, to move onto the next question but before it does that, to play an audio clip then move on. the next statement will be similar, but i cannot remember how to create them i.e. the syntax.
if i could get a response ASAP that would be gr8, as i have 2 weeks to get it done.
This blog (and others) state that you should set object references to null inside your dispose() methods when cleaning up objects. However, Actionscript 3 (with Flash Player 9) uses mark and sweep to clear out circular references for you. So I am wondering: is there really any reason to null out your object references?
I have memory leak in my project and I wonder how garbage collector working in Flash Media Server.I have 2 questions: Will FMS release objects from memory that have cycle references. For example when object A is has ref to Object B and vise versa.Why FMS still consumes memory after application unloaded by idle timeout. For example there were no users connected then fms unloaded app after 20 minutes. Memory usage left at the same level (for a long period of time).
my flash has lots of images and dispaly objects. Hence it costs high cpu usages. after using my flash for an hour, it is dieing.I am trying to reduce it. I have some questions here:
1. I create an array, or string at frame 1 for example, when I go back to frame 1, should I create a new array, or a new string?? Or is it better to make it empty array(eg:[]) or empty string("")? which way it reduces cup uasge more?
2. does anyone know how to force the flash to do garbage collection??
3. any other possible reasons that cause high cpu usage?
I am creating an CS5 flash application that is based largely on a library for loading MP3 files located on a user's computer using file references.
The issue I am having is that each time a new song is loaded, most of the memory is garbage collected but a small amount remains. In most cases this would be fairly unimportant, but the purpose of the application involves the user selecting a large number of mp3 files.
I am a bit new to AS3 and OOP, but I have come to the conclusion that the memory leak is within the library classes. I have tested the library using the smallest amount of my own code I could, and the problem remains. I did make minor changes to one of the library files, but as far as I can tell it is not the cause.Here is a link to the library, the actual download link is the "MP3FileReferenceLoaderLib.zip" link part way down the page:[URL] Here is the code I have for the main .as file:
When use the full path name and the identifier of a movie clip, my conditional statement works fine. However, when I swap the identifier out with "this", it no longer works. This script is contained within the movie clip I am trying to reference. I have found that, "this" works fine by itself on the timeline. It just stops working when I place it within a conditional statement.
Here is my script: function functionOne() { randomX = 550*Math.random(); randomY = 400*Math.random(); } functionOneInterval = setInterval(functionOne, 1000); function functionTwo() { [Code] .....
The reason I am trying to use "this" instead of the identifier name is because the movie clip it is referencing will be duplicated. This script here generates a random destination point for an enemy spaceship and tells it to constantly move to the changing points. This script is contained within the enemy spaceship movieclip, and I am planning on duplicating several of them at once.
I if create a sprite, and that sprite contains numerous child sprites (which themselves also contain child sprites), do I need to worry about garbage-collecting everything, or just the parent sprite? What if the child or grandchild sprites have listeners attached?
For example, let's say I have a class (a subclass of a Sprite) that creates a screen in an application.That screen contains numerous Sprites for all of the UI affordances on the screen (e.g., buttons, drop-down menus, textfields, etc.) Many of those sprites have event listeners on them.So, in my application, I have this:
var myscreen:MyScreenClass = new MyScreenClass(); this.addChild(myscreen);
Later, when the user is done with that screen, I remove it:
this.removeChild(myscreen); myscreen = null;
Is that all I need to do? Or, do I need to go recursively through myscreen, removing all it's child Sprites and Event Listeners?In other words, if you GC a parent, are all it's children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. also GC'ed?(For what it's worth, I'm using weak-references in my event listeners...)
I'm trying to unit test memory management. So far I have a semi-workable solution using flash.sampler.getSamples to get the difference between the number of NewObjectSamples and DeleteObjectSamples which have the same id value.
The test looks something like this:
startSampling(); new Foo(); new Foo();
[Code].....
Since there are no references to Foo I'm assuming that all instances are being garbage collected, and my code is simply wrong due to my lack of understanding how sampling works. I am trying this instead of using weakly keyed dictionary because it seems it should be less of a hack, but now I'm starting to wonder if it's worth the trouble.
Just curious, If i nest a movieclip inside of another movieclip, and the nested movieclip is attached to a custom class. And that custom class has a Event.ENTER_FRAME listener. when I destroy the container movieclip, will flash get rid of the event listeners inside of nested movieclip's custom class ?
May seem like a silly question but flash has a tendency of not killing listeners along with the movieclip itself once it is removed from the stage(this is if your apply the movieclip via addChild). and its a hastle when things get too complex. My solution was to create a single loop for all my objects. Now ive come to a point where I am probably going to have to nest some movieclips inside of another so the position of the nested movieclip stays relative. the parent movieclip will be rotating and scaling so I rather nest it. But I got to know how flash handles moveiclips that are nested into a parent movieclip and has enter frame listeners.
I have a working TCP/IP socket server that loads 3-flash files in succession. How can I unload previous files and eliminate the garbage build up? 2-Flash clients are active, 1-the loader, 2-the next Flash file being loaded, however "the Flash files don't unload." Maybe there's a "put - kill" method or something similar to addChild removeChild in as3.
Lets say i want to have a communication console for my game user, to communicate to them what is happeiong in terms of their game, particularly, anything that i have traced in my code? is it possible to have these traces output as dynamic text that opens up in another window, adjacent and smaller to the swf that has the game?
I am connected to the Flash Media Server Administration API via RTMPE on port 1111 and I'd like to monitor calls to trace() from the server side actionscript code.
've been trying to make a code in actionscript that will set a function to true if an object is moved to a specific part of the screen. The confusing thing is making the rule apply to when it's between a specific four coordinates (in this case, 165 and231 as the X coordinates, and 295 and 330 as the y coordinates; "honey" is the instance name of the symbol).I was given this code:
bool IsBetweenInclusive(int value, int lower, int upper) { return value >= lower
