I'm hoping someone else has experienced this and subsequently found a solution as I am about to light my own hair on fire in frustration.
Simply put, I was creating a Cocos2D app using XCode 3.2.6 and SDK 4.2. I used two devices for testing: iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, both at IOS 4.2, I believe. When testing on either device I was getting solid 60 FPS performance.
The disaster first hit when I upgraded to XCode 4.2. With no trouble I was able to open my project directly into this new version and run it. Everything is the same except that I am now in XCode 4.2. To my shock and horror I found that I was now getting FPS in the 45 to 50 range, and it will drop into the 30's at times, none of which ever happened before.
At this point I decided to upgrade to Lion, XCode 4.3, and SDK 5.1. Unfortunately, this changed nothing.
I then upgraded both phones to the latest IOS, and still the performance problem continued.
Finally, I upgraded to the latest version of Cocos2D, but to no avail.
I have tried a number of remedies that involved release versus debug modes, compiler settings, etc. Nothing helps.
I found something that might be a hint, but I do not know enough about Open GL ES at this time for it to make a lot of sense. On another forum someone had complained about the very same problem and said that if they disabled Vertex Buffer Object (VBO) support, it resolved the problem. I found where this is enabled within Cocos2D, disabled it, and to my surprise I was back up to 60 FPS. The app does not perform as strong as it did when compiled under XCode 3.2.6, but it is much better with VBO support disabled under XCode 4.3. The problem with this is that disabling VBO support is not recommended as it is suppose to enhance performance when enabled.
Some of the testing I have done seems to point to graphics being the issue. When the app does drop into the 45 FPS range all I have is 12 to 20 sprites moving on the screen. If I remove these sprites and allow everything else to continue operating, I get back to 60 FPS, even with VBO enabled. When I was developing under XCode 3.2.6, I at times would have 100+ sprites moving along (both in view and out) and the the FPS remained at 60.
So in short (sorry, too late for that), does anyone have any idea how the exact same code would run great when compiled through XCode 3.2.6, but rather badly under XCode 4.3? I have tried many different compiler settings to no avail. My guess is that there is some simple setting somewhere that perhaps defaults to a different value between XCode 3 and XCode 4.
I'm desperate, so please pass on any ideas you may have.
Thanks!
Is it possible you let Xcode update your project settings? Have you rolled back to a known good version from before Xcode 4.3 was released and verified that it is slow?
Related
I started using Xamarin.UITest for cross-platform testing (IOS & Android).
With Android it worked instantly without any problem and it keeps forking even after any SDK update or JDK.. name it!
But for iOS there was so many issue encountered with the device agent that didn't want to start, the wrong Xcode commande one, the wrong Xcode. Some time it worked, but out of no where it crashes.. then you must clean, rebuild, retry, cross your fingers it doesn't crash or at least that it will launch..
But now April 19 2019, I had an iOS update, combine with an Xcode update and sadly, it doesn't work anymore. I made a lot of research and attempt to recover my test case:
Downgrade Xcode to 10.1
Downgrade Xcode commande line tool to 10.1
downgraded the OS!
To finally rethink it. It's not a good solid testing tool if it breaks at every updates.
On the AppCenter it still works for both platform. But to create your test, you have to run them locally.. You can't anymore with iOS and if you find how to make it work, let me tell you : "See you for the next update!"
So the question is:
What are the alternative to do some automated UI test for iOS & Android using Xamarin?
Xamarin.UITest Xcode 10.2 support
Sorry to hear about your difficulty with the Xcode update.
Unfortunately Xcode minor updates for the last several releases have tended to break local iOS simulator testing, and occasionally device testing. I've seen this be an issue since at least as early as Xcode 9.x versions.
For context, Xcode 10.2 support was added in this package: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.UITest/2.2.7.2002-dev
If you or future readers of this discussion still do end up using Xamarin.UITest, I recommend checking the release notes when new minor versions of Xcode come out to see if that support has been confirmed. Typically the support has been added in the 1st Xamarin.UITest package released after a new minor version of Xcode has been released.
(I generally haven't seen this issue with patch versions though, for example Xcode 10.2.1 didn't seem to cause any issues when it came out if it was run against a test suite that was working for Xcode 10.2)
Other testing frameworks
As for other testing frameworks, if you're using App Center itself; then Appium (JUnit) or Calabash are both able to be used with App Center Test and can be used cross-platform to run against your IPA/APK, generally regardless of what was used to write the apps in the first place, like Xamarin.UITest. (Though each framework has slightly different set up requirements and limitations.)
Outside of App Center Test, there may be other testing frameworks you can use; but that gets more into individual developer opinion which strictly speaking is out-of-scope for Stack Overflow answers.
Appium Studio which holds all the pros of native Appium. It also supports parallel execution with built-in test reporting mechanism. They also provide cloud devices with which you can check whether it is feasible for your project. Check out their documentation for more features.
I've created an iPhone game which utilizes some code from an old version of the Cocos2D iPhone game development framework and I've got a wee bit of a problem running it on iOS 7.
The version of Cocos2d from which the code was used was probably 0.98.
The actual class is called QuadParticleSystem (in newer versions it's been deprecated by CCParticleSystemQuad).
The actual issue is that the game runs fine on iOS 6 and below. It even runs fine on iOS 7 if the deployment target is set to iOS 6.0 and SDK version set to 7 (at least when put on the device directly using XCode).
The problem is that when the game is uploaded to the appstore, Apple seems to strip out the whole iOS 6 compatibility thing and the particle emitters fail to show up among other things like alpha transitions, invisibility etc.
(They initialize correctly and everything, but they simply DO NOT render).
I've considered (and tried somewhat) upgrading the Cocos2D version, but due to the old third-party frameworks I've used for other things there is a hell of a lot of linking/dependency/deprecation errors which could take forever to fix (if it's at all possible, which I doubt) In other words, I've wasted too much time on the project already and am looking for a quick fix.
If no one knows any solutions could anyone at least direct me to docs where I can see how to create/insert a new particle emitter system in the existing code?
I've thought about using SpriteKit's native emitter system, but I don't know how to incorporate it within the current code (as I've never had dealings with SpriteKit) and am not sure if it's even possible.
I've also thought of maybe upgrading the GL ES framework within that old version of Cocos2D just in case Apple have killed off some functionality of older versions of OpenGL. Then again that could take a while.
I couldn't readily identify if Xcode 5 is stable release/out of beta, and it's getting about that time no? There's also no indication if Xcode5 is stable release or beta on developer.apple.com
I think it was recently announced iOS7 is officially released in 6 days (Sep 18). It wouldn't surprise me if Xcode5 is official now.
If you plan on submitting any new apps or updates in the near future, I recommend you switch ASAP (and live with the inconvenience of any possible instability): Since the GM seed, Apple requires that any apps submitted must support iOS 7, and for that you need to build using XCode 5.
On the other hand, if your next binary submission is still several weeks/months away, no need to hurry.
It hasnt been stable in my experience. Its also very slow and if your computer isn't fast enough xcode will probably crash (and i'm running it on an iMac i7 with 16 gb of ram)
Yeah it's officially official https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id497799835?ls=1&mt=12
I'm interested in learning OpenGL, so I started reading the book 3D programming for iPhone by O'Reilly. And guess what, I got stuck at the first exercise.
Even though I followed the guidelines, my Xcode application won't allow me to use the _OES suffix in the functions glGenFramebuffers and glGenRenderbuffers.
I did some research, and it appears that this is related to the 2.0 version.
However, I did in fact add both:
#import <OpenGLES/Es1/gl.h>
#import <OpenGLES/ES2/glext.h>
and the added OpenGL framework also includes the header files for both ES 1 and 2.
So I did some more research, and downloaded the project that I found in this thread:
Example from Chapter 1 of iphone 3D programming book not drawing to screen.
When I run it in my Xcode, it works.
I don't see any difference between our projects, so why does the _OES suffix in fact work for him and not for me while using the same version of Xcode? I even copy - pasted his code into my own project, but my Xcode project won't allow it.
Well, I don't get bugs either by just leaving out the _OES suffix, but I only get a black screen when running the app so it must mean something is wrong.
As a second problem is also that I get a lot of linker errors when I try to run the app on the iPhone simulator; I don't get these errors when I try it on my iPad. And I don't get these linker errors on my simulator when I use the downloaded project; it works for both the simulator and my iPad.
I'm terribly confused, has someone an idea what could be the cause of all this?
I'd like to continue, but I'm stuck :-) Thank you very much for your attention and help!
I am just starting iOS/iPhone development and I would like to start using XCode 4 instead of XCode 3.2. Is XCode 4 stable/feature complete enough for beginning iPhone development or should I stick with XCode 3.2?
I have run into far too many problems using beta versions of XCode, especially since you can't really have two versions of XCode one the same system. Apple already has a history of releasing things to developers before they are truly ready (just look at iAds for the iPad which were released months ago and have yet to deliver a single ad). So, if even Apple isn't ready to label XCode 4 as ready-to-go then you can rest assured its not really ready to go.
I recommend sticking with 3.2. That's what I'm doing until XCode 4 is officially supported.
Using XCode 4 calls everything you do into question. Having a problem with an API? Maybe it's XCode, maybe its your code, maybe its a bug in the API. You just don't know.
I would say no, it's not ready. I tried using it as my main development environment for about a week, and eventually switched back to 3.2. For one thing it crashed fairly regularly, but I could get passed that.
The big thing that caused me to switch back was a bug where the iOS simulator would think that certain resources existed in my app that didn't. Deleting the app from the simulator didn't work, cleaning the project didn't work, and deleting the derived data folder didn't work. Since it's not officially released, finding help for problems like this is a pain as well.
This is just one instance of the kind of problems you'll run into while using it, so I'd recommend avoiding it for now.
You can use Xcode 4 if you do not plan on using the current version (Preview 6) for submitting apps to the App Store.
iOS Dev Center:
Xcode 4 Developer Preview 6 includes
iOS SDK 4.2, bug fixes, and additional
features. To compile submissions for
the App Store, continue to use Xcode
3.2.5 and iOS SDK 4.2.