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I worked my butt off this weekend on my new game “Elyxir” which should be available for purchase in the iOS and Apple TV app stores this week. Elyxir is a match-3 style puzzle game with endless play that allows you to make potions while you play that radically change the game.
Friday night I updated my Apple TV with the latest operating system and when I ran the project I found that memory consumption was through the roof. I don’t mean like it was a little more than previous, but it was 3 times more than I was expecting. Not only that but every single frame was increasing in memory and I had no idea where to even start looking for a solution.
My friend Dave Wood suggested a bunch of things; all of them totally common-sense debugging approaches that I couldn’t see because I was freaking out, and that put me on the path to finally fixing the problem[s] after about 22 hours of debugging. Needless to say it’s been an exciting Halloween weekend.
I’m putting build #8 up on TestFlight tonight and other than making sure that all of the elixir bonuses work properly after all this bug fixing; this will be the second to the last build before I submit for approval in the store.
If you’re interested in beta-testing you can use the sign-up form below or just shoot me a message with your apple id.
The change list:
- Removed normal-map textures from spheres. In addition to reducing the memory footprint, it just looks better.
- Replaced the audio handling code. We now play many more sounds than we previously could.
- Memory consumption on all devices is down to ~230mb from 600mb which will mean fewer iOS crashes.
- Removed the bug that allowed audio to get into a disabled state.
- Cleaned up the main menu and added some audio to it.
- Sped up color transitioning code by removing new references and mutating the color objects themselves. (Wow that’s fast.)
- Improvements to frame rate on all devices (but particularly on iOS.)
- Performance improvements on all devices. (iPad I’m coming for you.)
- All audio is now positional, buy an apple tv and put it in your living room.
- Re-balanced spinner audio to be more present and added additional gradient steps to volume to make it ramp up more gradually while the spinner increases in speed.
- Fixed bugs.