playMaker

Author Topic: Playmaker Editor Performance  (Read 4438 times)

artician

  • 1.2 Beta
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 318
Playmaker Editor Performance
« on: October 10, 2012, 03:33:46 AM »
Hello,

For several months now I've had some extremely bad performance within the Playmaker editor.  It's limited to typing or changing variable names, clicking/connecting states, and typing within any actions, and the problem itself is severe input lag. 

When I type any characters, there is usually a delay between 5-15 seconds before there is any feedback.  I can type entire strings before I see the line appear, which would be manageable if it didn't buffer keyboard input strangely (so typing something like 'variable1_A', which necessitates the use of the shift key, ends up appearing as something like 'vaRIABLE!_A').

This also occurs, though to a slightly lesser extent, when I'm trying to connect states and transitions.  Clicking on the Transition Event of a state will also lag, so I have to click and hold over the transition for 5-15 seconds before it's highlighted blue, and then drag to the target state.  Otherwise the system will receive the click input somewhere else, and either draw a multiselection box, or accidentally click and move a state within the FSM.

I've tried turning off error checking and restarting the program among other things, but haven't had any success.  New projects don't display this problem, but at some point along the way of a project in progress I seem to hit this threshold that causes this to happen.  This is the third project that it's occurred in, and it's such a major issue that it easily delays my dev-time by 10 fold. 

I would be more than happy to create a screencapture of it if that has any chance of helping.  Otherwise, if anyone can offer a suggestion or solution I would be immensely grateful. 

Thanks in advance.

kiriri

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 506
Re: Playmaker Editor Performance
« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2012, 11:02:52 AM »
The lag issue is based on the amount of FSMs in the scene I think. Or the amount of states. The newest PlayMaker version should've fixed it I think... I'll try it out now, having the same problems + often I can only type one character at a time, like I click at the field, press a and it types a and immediatly deselects the field. That is more than annoying :S
Best,
Sven

artician

  • 1.2 Beta
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 318
Re: Playmaker Editor Performance
« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2012, 12:56:28 AM »
It doesn't always happen consistently with number of FSMs, objects or states.  Sometimes I'll alt-tab to another program for a few hours, and when I come back the issue is gone for about 15 minutes (and then begins happening again).

Oddly enough if I restart Unity it doesn't go away. 

Either way, it has definitely been occurring on the last several versions of playmaker, including the latest version (unless there's something later than 1.4.3f5). 

Thanks for the reply.  Any more help would be really appreciated.

KJIB

  • Playmaker Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 20
Re: Playmaker Editor Performance
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2012, 07:16:27 AM »
I have noticed this issue too, even with just a single FSM.

I use both PC and Mac but I notice it more with the Mac.

It also seems that sometimes the key input gets redirected so I get perhaps just the 1st letter that I typed then there's a big delay (that I don't always notice is happening) and occasionally it seems the input is now being used else where in Unity.

This has the potential to be very annoying if I accidently delete some object (or whatever) rather than, (say), a letter on an input field.

It could be Unity rather than Playmaker or could be an OS issue (Mountain Lion) but I've only seen it with Playmaker input fields. I'm guessing that the Playmaker guys may want to investigate...


artician

  • 1.2 Beta
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 318
Re: Playmaker Editor Performance
« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2012, 07:08:25 AM »
It's definitely not limited to the OSX platform.

My assumption was that Playmaker was checking shared/global events or variables in real-time, and after a certain threshold everything just grinds to a halt.  Despite that, it still occurs when I uncheck all the error-checking preferences, so I don't know what else to do. 

I do want Playmaker folks to look into it.  It is severely limiting.


Sjones

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 203
Re: Playmaker Editor Performance
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2012, 01:31:11 PM »
it not an ideal solution, but a work around would be typing in notepad or other word document app and copy and pasting text in, this will prevent accidents like deleting stuff and will insure capital letters are capital etc.

artician

  • 1.2 Beta
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 318
Re: Playmaker Editor Performance
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2012, 01:47:46 PM »
I have actually been doing just that.  No, it's not an ideal solution. ;)

Can we get some acknowledgement from the devs maybe?  I am still relatively convinced that this is something PlayMaker is doing in real-time, to check for errors or global changes.  If my assumption is correct, I would gladly take a workaround for disabling such a real-time check in favor of a post-build manual checklist option (or something similar).  Basically: just being able to turn off whatever is causing it, and turn it on later before runtime.

That's all assuming it's caused by anything like what I'm imagining.


jeanfabre

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15500
  • Official Playmaker Support
Re: Playmaker Editor Performance
« Reply #7 on: October 15, 2012, 04:54:32 AM »
Hi,

 I do get slow playmaker editor text fields when editing the name of prefab with lots of instance in the scene for example. It's been improved but there is still a clear latency.

 I suggest you write bug logs using the "Submit big report" window from the playmaker menu.

bye,

 Jean