Cocos2dx performance issue on Windows Phone 8

2
votes

I'm trying to port an android/iOS game to windows phone 8(cocos2dx v 2.2). I'm using the exact same code base that I've used for android and iOS. The game functions just fine, but I facing some major FPS drop. The game runs flawlessly at 60FPS in android and iOS, but I'm getting roughly about 35FPS on wp8. Has this got to do anything with differences in OpenGL and directX?

I doubt its got to do with the game's logic and calculations because when the game starts in windows phone, it starts with 60FPS on the main menu, which has got like 5 sprites. But as I add more sprites on the screen, say about 30 of them(average number of sprites when I'm IN the game) the FPS rapidly drops to 35-40 range. Note that there are no schedulers or update functions running at this point. I did the same test on Android, but the FPS didn't drop. Does the win8 port of cocos2dx suck?

Any help,comments or redirection to useful articles would be appreciated. Thank you.

2
optimizationwindows-phone-8cocos2d-xframe-rate
did you compare the specs? Maybe the win phone is simply not that fast. – LearnCocos2D
I'm using a Nokia lumia 520 for win8. I had no prob running the game on various android devices ranging from wildfire S to galaxy s2. – Srivathsa Dhanraj
Lumia 520 is said to be an entry-level win8 phone, uses Snapdragon S4 dual-core CPU @ 1 GHz. I have no idea how it compares to typical Android CPU/GPU combos though it sounds like it ought to be able to beat at least the Wildfire S (600 MHz CPU). – LearnCocos2D

2 Answers

1
votes

In case anyone runs into similar issue, I reduced the number of children in the scene and deployed the build in release mode. Gave a major boost to the FPS. Also, I had a bunch of float to string and int to string conversions happening in every frame inside the update function. That was eating away on the processing speed too.

1
votes

Actually, the Cocos2dx port for WP8 is ok, but outdated. Cocos2d-x is now at 3.0 beta, but the WP8 was left at 2.0 alpha.

Anyway... in Cocos there are some recursive drawing functions which are very heavy on the CPU, and also, keep in mind that even though WP8 is supposed tu support arrays, lists, maps etc. they are very slow on WP8.

And since you came to this subject, Please let me know if you managed to successfully put cocos2d-x on an XAML+D3D Interop project. I am getting tons of crashes.

EDIT: Indeed, the recursive calls which process (draw or update) child "CCNode"s are very heavy on the device. However, after putting Cocos2d-x ver. 2.0alpha for WP8 into a XAML+D3D interop project, I found a whole lot of memory related issues. Apparently, after doing this (or just because I don't know how to properly configure my VS project and allow loose addressing), a lot of uninitialized pointers and data cause some memory overlaps, leading to major crashes. This proves only that it was truely an alpha release :) Too bad no newer version of Cocos2d-x for Wp8 is available.