Flash performance tuning (EN)

The Basics • Always use AS3.0 Always! • Type everything • Prefer Vector.<type> over Array or Dictionary Only in • Prefer String methods over RegExp critical areas • Be careful with E4X and XML ( ) • Callbacks are faster than Event© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

Pooling Instantiation can be expensive! Pool or reuse objects to avoid the cost of frequent creation and collection • Static temps • Object pooling© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

Garbage Collections Know your GC! • Flash’s GC does both reference counting and mark-sweep. (If you want to tune memory usage, you need to understand these!) • Use Monocle to find if GC is firing too often • Pooling/reuse makes GC collection less frequent • For large collections, prefer literals (String, int..) or plain objects over complex objects (Sprite, Rectangle..)© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

Smart GC Tell Flash when to trigger a GC! Call this between levels, when the game pauses, etc. Flash’s GC marks incrementally, and this command tells it to finish marking and do a collection if a GC was already imminent. The argument specifies how long you’re willing to wait for a GC: imminence=0.99; // GC if ready now imminence=0.01; // GC even if you need to pause a while© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

The big picture // Flash’s internal loop (simplified) while() { sleep until (nextEvent OR externalEvent) if ( various events pending ) { handleEvents(); // handles Timer events, // fills audio/video buffers } if ( time for next SWF frame ) { parseSWFFrame(); executeActionScript(); } if ( screen needs update ) { updateScreen(); } }© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Gory details: http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=82

Point: Because of this, most recurring scripts should be handled in Event.ENTER_FRAME ! ENTER_FRAME Handle Next SWF frame external Rendering events Execute scripts sleep© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

Rendering Basics More basics: • Understand that certain features are just heavy! • Bitmap Effects (shadow, glow, emboss...) • Masks (inherently vector-based) • Alpha channels • Blend modes (add, multiply...) and even... • Embedded fonts (especially Japanese!)© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

Stage Settings • StageQuality.LOW: Lower-quality vector shapes. Never anti-alias, never smooth bitmaps. • StageQuality.MEDIUM: Better vectors. Some anti-aliasing but no bitmaps smoothing. Default value for mobile devices. • StageQuality.HIGH: Always uses anti-aliasing. Uses smoothing on bitmaps depending on whether the SWF is animating. Default value on desktop PCs. • StageQuality.BEST: Best quality. Always anti-alias, always smooth bitmaps.© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

Bitmap Caching • Lets complex assets be rasterized once instead of every frame. • Turned on automatically if you use bitmap effects Caching is the single most important thing to understand for tuning display list content!© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

1. Display List Rendering • Plain vanilla flash content, made in Flash Pro • Easiest to build – worst performance. • Suitable for prototypes and light desktop content. Bad for mobile! (because the GPU is not used) • Your key tuning technique will be bitmap caching.© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

2. GPU Mode • GPU mode is a publish setting available for AIR apps on devices (Android and iOS) • When selected, Flash uses the GPU – vectors and cached surfaces are rendered through hardware. • Can be very powerful with careful, correct use of movieclip.cacheAsBitmapMatrix • Powerful technique today, but not recommended for new/future projects© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

3. Blitting • Blitting refers to putting a Bitmap object on the stage for your game area and manually drawing contents into it with BitmapData.copyPixels(). • Hence, you manage your own rendering, caching, etc. • Can be very fast in certain restricted cases • Does not scale up for retina/hi-res devices!© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

4. Stage3D • New feature from Flash 11.0, allowing ActionScript to load shader programs directly to the GPU. • Based on AGAL (Adobe Graphics Assembly Language) • AGAL looks like this: m44 op, va0, vc0 dp4 op.x, va0, vc0 dp4 op.y, va0, vc1 • You probably want dp4 op.z, va0, vc2 dp4 op.w, va0, vc3 to use a 2D/3D library! m44 op, va0, vc0 mov v0, va1 (It’s dangerous to go alone!)© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

ASC2.0 • All new ActionScript compiler! • Included with the Flash Builder 4.7 preview: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4-7/ • Key features: • Faster compiles! More optimized bytecode! • Error messages localized to JA, FR, ZH • Inline functions, get/setters (when possible) (use –inline arg) • goto statement (!?!?!?) • Details: http://www.bytearray.org/?p=4789© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.leebrimelow.com	33095
http://www.scoop.it	1592
http://khaledgarbaya.net	802
http://abauchu.net	223
http://goflash.collected.info	195
http://richinternetapplication.collected.info	176
https://twitter.com	73
http://blog.hansune.com	56
http://newsflash.collected.info	40
http://www-ig-opensocial.googleusercontent.com	34
http://www.webpeace.net	33
http://blog.kaizimmer.com	23
http://geekoutsummer.wordpress.com	21
https://si0.twimg.com	17
http://devcafe.nhncorp.com	16
http://feeds.feedburner.com	14
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	14
http://www.hanrss.com	12
http://www.plurk.com	6
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	5
http://pinterest.com	5
http://webpeace.net	4
http://localhost	3
http://mx1.leebrimelow.com	2
http://www.newsblur.com	2
http://cafe.naver.com	2
http://m.leebrimelow.com	2
http://10.100.0.241	1
http://edit.optimizely.com	1
http://ranksit.com	1
http://flavors.me	1
http://twitter.com	1
http://hsmaker.com	1
https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net	1
http://www.systranet.com	1
http://127.0.0.1	1
http://www.leebrimelow.com.us6.hshh.org	1
http://tweetedtimes.com	1
http://2fwww.leebrimelow.com	1
http://131.253.14.66	1
http://192.168.35.49	1
http://lwww.leebrimelow.com	1
http://www.khaledgarbaya.net	1

Flash performance tuning (EN)

by Andy Hall on Aug 29, 2012

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

43 Embeds 36,483

Statistics

Flash performance tuning (EN) Presentation Transcript