Sprites removal doesn’t decrease CPU usage.

By Calibrae | Jun 11, 2009

This is my first post here, after numerous years of passive lurking. So, Hi people, and thanks all for the help I got browsing around here.

I wrote little classes to generate loading animations. A simple circle spawns other circles that disappear after a few ms. I intended to use the animation in a few other classes handling external content loading.
But, once I got the stuff up and running, I noticed the CPU usage climbs pretty high (around 30%) and doesn’t decrease once the animations are removed.
I tried everything I could think of, removeChild, instance = null and so on. Do you guys have a magical solution to that problem?

Here are the two classes:

The Auto disappearing Circle

ActionScript Code:


package  net.calii.flash.anim
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.Event;
   
    import caurina.transitions.Tweener;
   
    /**
     * …
     * @author nicolas bousquet dencuff - [email]nicolas.bousquet.dencuff@gmail.com[/email]
     */
    public class DecayingCircle extends Sprite
    {
       
        public function DecayingCircle(color:uint=0×333333, x:int=0,y:int=0,rad:uint=5)
        {
            //trace ("popping new dc at x:" + x + " y:"+y);
            this.x = x;
            this.y = y;
            graphics.beginFill(color, .8);
            graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, rad);
            graphics.endFill();
           
            Tweener.addTween(this, { alpha:0, time:2, transition:“easeOutQuad”, onComplete:deleteSelf } );
           
        }
        private function deleteSelf():void
        {
            try
            {
                this.parent.removeChild(this);
            }
            catch (e:Error) { }
            graphics.clear();
            delete this;

        }
       
    }
   
}

And the Animation Class:

ActionScript Code:


package  net.calii.flash.anim
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import caurina.transitions.Tweener;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.events.TimerEvent;
    import flash.geom.Point;
    import flash.utils.Timer;
    import net.calii.flash.utils.WeakRef;
   
   
    /**
     * …
     * @author nicolas bousquet dencuff - [email]nicolas.bousquet.dencuff@gmail.com[/email]
     */
    public class LoadingIndicator extends Sprite
    {
        protected var _decArray:Array = new Array();
        protected var circ:Sprite = new Sprite();
        protected var w:uint;
        protected var color:uint;
        protected var rad:uint;
        protected var previousX:int = 0;
        protected var previousY:int = 0;
        protected var coef:int = 1;
        protected var spawnDist:int;
       
        protected var _nuked:Boolean = false;
       
        public function LoadingIndicator(color:uint=0×333333, w:uint = 50, rad:uint = 5, aspawnDist:int=10):void
        {
            this.w = w;
            this.color = color;
            this.rad = rad;
            this.spawnDist = aspawnDist;
            drawCirc(color);
            initMovement();
            circ.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onCircEnterFrame);
        }
        protected function initMovement():void
        {
            trace (“init movement”);
            moveRight();                       
        }
        private function moveRight():void
        {
            if (_nuked) return;
            Tweener.addTween(circ, { x:w, time:2,transition:“easeOutQuad”, onComplete:moveLeft } );
            previousX = circ.x;
            previousY = circ.y;
            coef = 1;
        }
        private function moveLeft():void
        {
            if (_nuked) return;
            Tweener.addTween(circ, { x:-w, time:2, transition:“easeOutQuad”, onComplete:moveRight } );
            previousX = circ.x;
            previousY = circ.y;
           
            coef = -1;
        }
        protected function drawCirc(color:uint):void
        {
            circ.graphics.beginFill(color, 1);
            circ.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, rad);
            circ.graphics.endFill();
            addChild(circ);
        }
        protected function onCircEnterFrame (e:Event):void
        {
            var dist:Number = Point.distance(new Point(circ.x, circ.y), new Point(previousX, previousY));
            if (dist >= spawnDist)
            {
                _decArray.push(new DecayingCircle(color, circ.x, circ.y,rad));
                addChild(_decArray[_decArray.length - 1]);
                previousX = circ.x;
                previousY = circ.y;
            }
        }
        public function nuke():void
        {
            trace (“nuke”);
            Tweener.removeAllTweens();
            _nuked = true;
            circ.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onCircEnterFrame);
            for (var i:uint = 0; i < _decArray.length; i++)
            {
                removeChild(_decArray[i]);
                _decArray[i] = null;
            }
            _decArray = null;
            circ = null;
            delete this;
        }
    }
   
}

The methods DecayingCicle.deleteSelf() and LoadingIndicator.nuke() may seem a little messy, I left them as they were while I was trying everything I could think of the bring the CPU load back to 0.

Thanks !