r190 Performance Issues (Edit: Global Layers?)

SecondDimension, I think we have/had different problems. After deleting the shader effects I was using (no change to my problem) I tacked the small number of custom plugins I was using. First to go was Gleam (I discovered a couple of weeks ago that it has become deprecated) - this was easy to replace, it just took a little time (it was my first suspect because it was on many families and present somewhere on every layout during run time). Everything seemed more stable and I had my hopes up... but then, after about an hour of work the same crash happened again! So, the next to go was my old favorite LiteTween. Luckily for me I was only using it on one object, so I found a suitable work-around. And that's it! No repeats of the crashes (so far at least, after 2 hours tinkering in the editor).

Edit - OK, it's still crashing... Typically when I preview the layout. I have no idea what to do now. It is certainly more stable than before, but it's not as good as it was....

Hmm...this is kind of worrying. :/

Does it seem to make any difference what you preview with (node, chrome, FF, IE, etc...)?

Can you force the issue to happen sooner by repeatedly previewing?

Does it happen with other projects?

TiAm, I agree, it's a little unsettling. It's hard to say what triggers it to happen. I tend to make a few adjustments to an event sheet and then preview the results. Thus the failure seems always to happen just on preview or just after I close the browser tab. I haven't done a comprehensive test using other browsers yet - good idea, although it will lock up before preview as well, so I'm not inclined to think it could be that... I've just had an idea to change something else that I have overlooked - custom web fonts... Often the preview will run with tiny default font (hard to read) or no fonts show at all - both a sign that the editor crashed during compilation.

I've just got my hopes back up. I'm away from my computer but will post later. Fingers crossed its a corrupt web font set....

OK then.... This will take a couple of hours to confirm, but it appears that it was a web font that I was using. Nothing about it caused it to be rejected by the c2 editor, or Windows, but it was definitely was causing the editor to slow down. As soon as I deleted it from my system and changed the references in c2 to another font, the c2 editor became lightning fast. I feel a little elated, even though it's taken all weekend to sort out....

For what it's worth, the name of the font was SF Cartoonist Hand... A pity - it was one of my favorites.

Wow...how could a font cause that much grief? I guess you could use GYFM to make it a spritefont...

Anyway, glad you got it resolved.

I doubt a web font has anything to do with it. The editor has no special treatment of web fonts: they are handled entirely by the runtime, or if you import it as a project file, it's treated as an ordinary binary file with unknown contents. So that explanation doesn't make any sense to me, and I'd suspect it's something intermittent that you attributed to your last change.

As ever if you can reproduce anything or share any related projects then post them to the bugs forum. Also if you have extremely large projects, try turning off icon caching in Preferences.

Ashley, so far so good and I'm a bit skeptical as well... What about the editor's treatment of web fonts when compiling a preview? Is it possible that a glitch during compilation could cause a crash shortly thereafter? The mini default font during preview was odd and always indicated that the editor had crashed, as if the editor/compilation process found the font incompatible somehow.

Also, it is like running a different prog now. C2 is blisteringly fast, and - regarding whether something else caused the fix - I was careful to make incremental changes and test until the next failure to avoid the confusion that would be caused by making multiple adjustments at a time. Never say never, right? But this looks like it has sorted it...

I have one extra plugin remaining (CB Hash, can't write that one myself in events) and I will certainly report a bug somehow if this recurs.

Thanks.

It doesn't make any sense to me, but it wouldn't be the first crazy nonsensical bug I ever dealt with, so I'm always prepared to find out if it's the case. If it really is the cause, perhaps creating a new project with nothing but loads of web fonts might demonstrate the issue?

Sorry, Ashley, you were right to be skeptical about my earlier conclusion. Although the editor is far more stable now that I have removed almost all of my plugins and that one web font, I just had a repeat of the crash on compilation to nw (all text objects were displayed with tiny default font). My last 2 plugins are CB Hash and Canvas, which leaves me one last try. I'm going to remove CB Hash and see what happens next, as it seems unlikely that both of my computers have display driver issues v the C2 editor (one's a 9 month old W8.1 and the other is a 2 year old with W7). I will have to soak this one up, I suspect, as I have progressed too far to remove Canvas as I can't recreate what it provides by using native plugins...

Just to update on my issue, it's not the global layers. It's just that after 20 mins of editing event sheets it gets slow, pretty much like clockwork, and I have to click on a layout (any layout). As soon as I click anywhere in any layout it all speeds up to normal again. So I can work with that, it's not too much of an inconvenience, but it's definitely a new issue with me since r190, and I haven't installed anything else new.

Does turning off icon caching in preferences help? That can make a difference with large projects.

Already turned it off... (if the icon caching was for me).

Already turned it off... (if the icon caching was for me).

Same, and nothing change

The crash always happens during rendering for preview or just after returning to the editor after a preview. Because the text objects don't load their web fonts, I'm suspicious in that direction, but that could just be a symptom of something else. I have quite a few text objects on global layers (HUD etc) so I'm trying to recreate it in a simple project, but since this is intermittently failing already I'm not confident of reproducing it. I also have a few canvas objects on global layers, and replacing them would require me to replace the text objects with sprite font so I can use paster... It's my next and last option!

Does turning the icon cache back on affect it?