Scene Graph roScene disposal best practices

Archived
1

Hello

I am developing an app with Scene Graph where more than one scene is shown.

Each screen is abstracted to a controller and each controller presents its own Scene, like this example:

      ' Create the splash screen'
      m.screen = CreateObject("roSGScreen")
      m.port = CreateObject("roMessagePort")
      m.screen.setMessagePort(m.port)
      ' Create the component'
      m.scene = m.screen.CreateScene("splash")
      m.screen.show()

When i present another screen, i repeat the same process.

It all works fine.

What i notice though is that when i debug with

sgnodes all

It will tell me that previous Scenes are still there. I am worried this is a memory issue.

I tried removing each Scene individually with scene.Close() before presenting a new one but i get the error

BRIGHTSCRIPT: ERROR: roSGScreen: create screen interrupted.: pkg:/source/controllers/....

What is the best way to remove all nodes in a Scene before presenting a new one?

Thanks,

2

I am not sure creating >1 scene is a good idea in RSG. I’d feel better if i see scene transitions API (i.e. how to replace one scene with another, animations etc) - but i dont find that.

What is the reason to wish for >1 scene? Why not just use multiple “subscenes” (ok, so just a Group nodes) under a “One Scene to Rule them All”? https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Scene as such has rather un-interesting features.

3

I agree with EnTerr. All of my SG channels have one “Controller” node extending Scene. It’s lifespan is the duration of the app. It creates and destroys “Screens” which extend “Group”

4

Thanks for your replies.

I had one Scene per controller only because it seems more organised. I come from a developer background in iOS and i guess i was trying to have a paradigm similar to each view controller having a view that gets shown/dismissed.

I understand from your replies this is the wrong approach, and i had suspected as much. Thank you for confirming.

So usually you just create one scene and remove nodes manually before inserting others. Can you share some sample code?

Thanks again.

5

“juantwc” wrote:
I understand from your replies this is the wrong approach, and i had suspected as much. Thank you for confirming.

So usually you just create one scene and remove nodes manually before inserting others. Can you share some sample code?
I don’t know for a fact that multiple scenes are the wrong approach - just suspicion. If i learn more, i’ll let you know.

I imagine you can also hide/unhide whole Group trees - whether usable would depend on the real life performance though

6

I got a chance to ask someone privy to RSG’s mysteries and here is what i heard back:

“Scenography Swami” wrote:
Our recommended usage pattern is to create one RoSGScreen and one Scene node for a channel. You can treat the child nodes of the Scene (or one of its children) as different “views” and add transitions between them (e.g. crossfades, slides, etc.). This provides the same functionality as multiple Scene’s, just a different implementation.

I don’t think there is anything to prevent you from using multiple RoSGScreen’s but setting things up that way might fail to take advantage of future improvements to channel launching transitions, etc.

7

Thanks man, you are doing God’s work :slightly_smiling_face:

Would be cool to see something like this in the SDK documentation (wink wink if anybody out there has the right connections)

8

RokuDanny can has :sunglasses: