Currently I am working on a shooter type game on a tile map using sprite kit. The "enemies" are loaded from a set of texture atlases that I store all their animation frames in. So far the textures on the map along with all the enemies and player are averaging around 110 to 130 mb of memory consumption. The problem I'm observing is when I switch levels. Basically the new textures for that level will load along with textures of the enemies. Now when I navigate away from the first level I try to deallocate all the texture atlases but memory consumption still seems to be going up. I have seen it go to 150 to 180 and even occassionally 200 mb.
Are texture atlases kept in memory after they are dereferenced? Considering that I have a few different levels, each with it's own unique map and unique enemies, I'm seeing this as a potential problem. Based on my other readings, it seems this might be the case. If sprite kit is handling when and where to deallocate texture atlases, I'm not sure if I will then eventually reach memory warning issues with the amount of textures that I'm using.
Make sure you have no references left pointing to the atlas and then use something like
myTextureAtlas = nil;I use the above in
-(void)willMoveFromView:(SKView *)view