how memory is released

flashjaysan

I'm currently working on a snake clone and I create body parts each time it eats food. So, I create a new Bitmap for each new body part. However, when I lose, I need to erase every parts I created except the head and tail of the snake.
I use stage:removeChildAt method to remove everything from the scene. Does it frees memory of those objects or do I have to do something special with them ?

keszegh

be careful that there is no reference left for that bitmap and then it will be garbage collected later. not necessary to do anything. if there is enough time between restarting then you can call garbagecollect() once or twice and then you can force this to happen at that time.

keszegh

still, i think in such cases some pooling method is recommended where you put these elements in a table and then you can reuse them later.

flashjaysan

@keszegh Thanks. So in order to completely remove, I should nil every variable that references those Bitmap?
I'll take your pooling method in consideration. Thanks again.

keszegh

yes, you need to nil every reference and of course remove it from stage hierarchy.

oleg

local UsedMemory = function(cleanup) if cleanup == true then collectgarbage() end local mem = collectgarbage("count") print( "\n Memory : " .. mem*1024 ) return mem end ------------------------------------- UsedMemory(true) --run after object deletion

antix

-- create the snakes head local head = Sprite.new()   -- add 20 tail sections to the snake for i = 1, 20 do head:addChild(Sprite.new()) end   -- remove all tail sections from head if head:getNumChildren() > 0 then -- only proceed if there is at least 1 tail section for i = 1, head:getNumChildren() do head:removeChildAt(1) -- remove tail ection end end   -- you should remove any other references to the tail sections here.   -- you can opt to force garbage colection after the tail sections -- have been removed, or leave it to happen automatically collectgarbage('collect')