Construct-2 performance

I carefully examine posts like

• http://www.scirra.com/forum/topic52233.html
• http://www.scirra.com/blog/83/optimisation-dont-waste-your-time
• http://www.scirra.com/blog/85/the-great-html5-mobile-gaming-performance-comparison
• http://www.scirra.com/blog/59/construct-2-vs-gamemaker-vs-gamesalad-vs-stencyl

and (most important) scirra.com/blog/58/html5-2d-gaming-performance-analysis

but I am still tormented with doubts: is it posible to make games on SC-2 like examples in this topic scirra.com/forum/topic52233.html (I am personally be delighted with Arima's

)

and make them run as fast and smoothly enough as games made with

Construct Classic's C++/DirectX renderer? Does Construct-2 performance enough to this?

p.s. Until I looked at Construct-2 only as on game play prototype-tool it's performance was not a question for me (15 or 60 fsp doen't matter for prototyping). But now I am interestion in Scirra Construct as full value gamedev tool, and this question now become a topical and urgent for me.

Yes, that topic interest me as well. Does C2 is the right choice for bigger projects?

I plan to develop a bigger game, witch I'll want to sell on desktop platform. Will the Awesomium export ability in r100 provide the necessary power?

And it would be nice to see some new performace test blog posts with the other game making software (GameMaker, Stencyl, GameSalad), because it was a while since the last one came out, and every software made developments since. I'm not sure how this works, is it possible for one to overcome C2 or not in that time...

So long as it's not a bullet hell shmup or something you should be fine. Just be aware of all you're adding per layout and heed the optimization tips. There are already more performance intensive C2 games than the ones you linked to.

Oh, and use Chrome. The .exe exporter will allegedly have even better performance too.

I've experienced Construct 2 as blazing fast.

rilem.nl/sheep2

This runs at 60fps on my 2 year old desktop.

I'm working on projects at the moment which are more graphically intense and still run like a charm (in web-browsers).

Check out this video I did on C2:

If you're really serious about using the scirra tools to make a full fledged game I strongly suggest using C2. You might only think about desktop publishing now. But what if you change your mind in mid development?

Is the extra bit of performance you might gain by using Construct Classic worth it, if you can only deploy to one platform versus basically every platform with C2?

Anyway that's my 2 cents.

I agree with Rilem. The exporting options alone make C2 more useful than CC (in my personal opinion). And of course as they continue to develop C2, performance will just get better and better. I would say just start working on your game and keep updating. You'll probably take a little while to complete it and by the time you do I'm sure C2 will be at least up to par with CC.

Rilem, NotionGames, sorry but please let me explaine clearly:

this it's not a topic "Construct-2 vs Classic". Classis is good software, but his evolution and development practically come to end. End of story.

The question is:

Is it reasonable to continue using SC-2 only as prototyping tool and build release games by using standart programm languages and tools (C#/XNA Framework, etc.)

OR

give to SC-2 a chance and hope his performance will be good enough to release projects with peformance nearly the same to Classic's C++/DirectX renderer

Here's a question for you - what is your criteria for powerful enough? What is it you want to make?

In my opinion, C2 is already powerful enough to make and play almost any 2D game ever made plenty well. The only thing it's lacking currently is an option for double or triple buffering to help smooth out the occasional frame that takes longer than a 60th of a second to process, but perhaps that can be an option for the EXE export. Even without it stuff generally plays quite smoothly (at least in chrome, haven't played with the other browser's performance all that much, and EXE is supposed to be even better performance than chrome).

You could simply make a quick graphical prototype to test it - simply throw in the assets of the most intensive scene your game will have and a text object showing the fps to see how it runs. Maybe some basic 'fake' events for collision detection and such to see if it can handle the processing of the code as well. One of the games I'm working on is managing like 1.5 million collision checks per second on an older AMD athlon 64x2 4400+ at generally 45-50 fps.

Also remember window size causes a significant difference in how many pixels need to be rendered by the GPU. Even a 640x480 game in a 1920x1080 browser window will get a hit to the framerate because the GPU renders the entire browser window. Shrinking it will improve performance (or at least that's how it works in chrome).

Here's a question for you - what is your criteria for powerful enough? What is it you want to make?

Right now we are working on 2D single player RPG, based on platformer-like scrolling style.

Game centered on quests with (we hope) a lot of humor storyline (we already have all text in out C# text based version of this game) and turn based battle system close but not equal to FinalFantasy/Heroes1-2-3.

Main character has up to 3 follofers with personal inventory/stats.

This is not commercial project, but we want to make it polished and run without lags on desktops/netbooks.

If all this can run stable with 50-60 FPS at 1024*768 resolution - it will be perfect, because SC-2 can help to develop this project really rapid, versus coding in C#. The difference will be in many months of human-hours. In same time I don't need .EXE as requirement. If SC-2 will allow to us receive same results with WebGL in HTML-5 - it will be great. I write about Exe/DirectX exporter because it's standart of performance.

One more point why I have doubts:

please look on "Trashoid Attack" (http://www.scirra.com/arcade/addicting-action-games/76/trashoid-attack) - brilliant game, imho, but it have max 37-42 FPS even in webgl mode in Chrome.

You could simply make a quick graphical prototype to test it - simply throw in the assets of the most intensive scene your game will have and a text object showing the fps to see how it runs.

Yes, I will definitely do it. But this topic was an attempt to listen developers who are already have their own personal experience with complex projects on SC-2.

Thank to all who help me with this question, especially to Arima. <img src="smileys/smiley9.gif" border="0" align="middle">   

p.s. If someone can add any info on this topic, please do it.

p.s.s Here is a good article about JavaScript/HTML-5 port of "Cut the Rope" http://www.cuttherope.ie/dev/ and performance questions. May be it will be interesting for someone.

Trashoid attack works at 60 fps for me in my ff14 with no troubles.

It's supposed to be the same performances in chrome.

(my computer's specs: Intel Core i5-2500K — GHz (x4), 8 Go DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (driver 301.42), Win 7 Pro SP1)

Be sure to update your graphic card drivers/browser. (chrome latest version is 20)

As far as I'm concerned, I believe C2 can be a full production tool, you're not limited to prototyping and you can make a complete game with it.

But the target (desktop recent computer/desktop "XP" computer/mobile device) for your game will considerably influence on the scope/optimisation of your game.

Those are things to consider while designing/making the game.

"XP" is a bit left behind as it is "old" OS, HTML5 did not exist at the time it wasn't supported by microsoft anymore.

You have almost the same specs as me. We have beasts man. I'm not sure how those games would work on older machines, which let's be honest are owned by most of people.

Trshoid only has ~150 objects, should run fine for everyone.