Cocos2D project with many scenes does not release memory properly

Question

I\'ve got a great problem and I don\'t understand very well why occurs. This is the case:

• Have a great project in Cocos2D with 10 scenes. Each scenes is a page of

Answer 1

After months of working, I learned the most important lesson on Cocos2D. The retain increase by one when you put any CCNode object on a CCArray or NSArray or NSDictionary... This means you must release the objects from this objects before the CCLayer or CCScene dealloc.

You must put a [array removeAllObjects] or [dictionary release] on the - (void) cleanup and after all your objects has removed, then put a [super cleanup];

In the meantime, on - (void) onExit you must remove all scheduler from the instance. Not only a scheduler itself. Remember to stopAllActions on any CCNode. But, carefully, because stoping actions from CCNodes (Sprites or something) must be on cleanup, before any removeAllObjects.

And remember: if CCLayer or CCScene does not remove properly, SimpleAudioEngine not will release the audio too.

Answer 2

I was having a similar problem with memory retention and no leaks showing up in instruments. I couldn't get -(void) dealloc to even get called until I wrote the following into every scene's .m file:

-(void) onExit {
    //unschedule selectors to get dealloc to fire off
    [self unscheduleAllSelectors];
    //remove all textures to free up additional memory. Textures get retained even if the sprite gets released and it doesn't show as a leak. This was my big memory saver
    [[CCTextureCache sharedTextureCache] removeAllTextures];
    [super onExit];
}

After implementing this, my memory was released after every replaceScene: was called. Hope this is of some use to you.