Construct 2 Mobile Performances

Before I buy an upgrade license for C2, I would like to ask community opinions. I am still curious that is Construct 2 games will be very laggy in Android and IOS? I got a useful reference from this video youtube.com/watch?v=3PeGbMvpz4M . I am now actually comparing between Construct 2 and GameMaker: Studio.

The first answer anyone will give for this question is: "It depends on your design"

This is because it does. What do you hope to accomplish with Construct 2? Meaning what do you plan to build with this tool based on what you've read.

Now that that's done.

The main thing with HTML5 and Construct 2 is that performance of games will get better the more time goes on, since phones will become much stronger and the limits will be less prevalent. With my experience, mobile performance with Construct 2 has been good. I'm currently developing a twin stick shooter and there's quite a lot of enemies on screen and I've tested the game on about 20 devices so far. All of them were in the range of 50-60. Except my Galaxy Tablet (THIS THING SUCKS). I'm not supporting Construct 2 though, you NEED to be smart, clever, and skilled in order to have a good experience with mobile.

If you want to get an idea on how the performance is, you can send me a CAPX file of what you'd like to test and I can send you a ZIP Folder by exporting through CocoonJS. With the ZIP Folder, you can launch the game via the CocoonJS App Launcher.

What is CocoonJS? But many people so far with some reviewer websites tell that C2 games run so laggy on mobile devices. What do you mean by "NEED to be smart, clever, and skilled in order to have a good experience with mobile" ? What should I do then?

me too i see many reviews and comments confirm that construct 2 games suffer a lack in the performance in android and IOS devices . but in html platform construct games work perfect

Depends how you design your game. Phones are less powerful than computers of course, so if you keep this in mind and optimise your game you can still create games for mobile. Depending on how you structure code/events efficiently you can save a lot of CPU usage.

The tests in the videos arn't actually fair either. It only demonstrates the performance of physics. Another thing to keep in mind is development time. I personally don't grasp coding at all and is very off-putting to me, but the event system in Construct 2, is really intuitive and flexible so I like it a lot.

I don't understand why C2 games are lag in mobile devices. Could you tell me why? I just saw in in internet somewhat about C2 games are not native-thingy... Well don't quite catch the meaning about that.

Construct 2 exports to android using android exporter, right? Why it still need browser-supporting WebGL? Why can't it run in standalone APK? I have few questions after reading scirra.com/tutorials/298/performance-tips-for-mobile-games

On Android you can use slow+big Crosswalk or faster+smaller (but still in BETA) Cocoon.io; and you have to remember that your apps will use only 1 core from your CPU.

I don't know how it is with GameMaker: Studio but if you will have any problems (i.e. tragic performance) then you will hear advices like "Wait for Chromium bugfixing", "Wait for Crosswalk bugfixing" rather than serious support.

Nothing Construct 2 does escapes the games being run as HTML5 (+ WebGL where available), it can be wrapped in an APK for distributing but all that does is put an APK of a reduced browser (made slightly better for games) that has your game inside of it. I believe GameMaker: Studio has native export to a variety of platforms including mobile.

Newer phones and computers seem to handle HTML5 + WebGL better, but there is indeed a long way to go before the wrappers and exporters can truly perform well with HTML5 and WebGL games compared to native games exported from certain other engines (and like szymek says, with Construct 2 we are often waiting for Chromium [Google!] or other third party things to update). Mobile is probably a good target as people often get new phones every few years (old one breaks, contract upgrades, etc), so you will get a greater percentage of people on devices who will be capable of running HTML5 + WebGL games much sooner compared to desktop (where people can still be using Windows XP, pentium 3, low RAM, 10 year old graphics cards, etc and then blame your game when it runs poorly, despite WebGL itself only releasing 1.0 in 2011!).

Older devices will probably not be able to play your games at all once the game is too large, that is partially if the code isn't optimized in your events, and partially because the moment you drop below 60fps (from my experience on PC) you will probably find things like the Platform behavior bugging out in weird ways (eg: falling through floors, jumping higher than you are supposed to, and so on).

Edit: From the sounds of it "Set Minimum Framerate" was added to C2 lately, which should fix the problems of unreliable collisions!! https://www.scirra.com/forum/dear-ashley-a-big-giant-thanks_t150026

That video says it compares game development tools, but it only actually compares their physics engines. At the time it was posted we only supported box2dweb physics. Since then we added support for asm.js physics, which is based on the compiled C++ codebase for the physics engine, and should run close to native performance. In that type of test it should make a radical improvement. Unfortunately they never updated their video, which is a shame, since it has been way faster for some time now.

iOS 8+ is supposed to work great with phonegap.

Android is hit and miss. And, given how massively fragmented it is -- on both a software and hardware level -- it will likely remain that way.

Cocoon.io Canvas+ is hands down the best option for android perf-wise, as it is blazingly fast and smooth, and supports cordova plugs and webGL now. However, you have to change one line in the C2 runtime for it to work:

https://forums.cocoon.io/t/construct-2- ... g-issue/41

For targeting more powerful devices, XDK export with Cwalk 14 is probably the best; it's a full browser engine that supports more features than Canvas+. Exports are larger though, and perf can't hold a candle to Canvas+ on weaker devices.

How to export game to android? I don't see any option there to export my game to apk file..

Okay guys, let's discuss a bit with desktop gameplay

I just played this two games:

scirra.com/construct2/demos/ghost-shooter

scirra.com/construct2/demos/space-blaster

Both of it freezes which unallow me to play on the website. And I thought the project was failure, so I download the project file to make sure. I opened it in my Construct 2 free edition, and I ran the layout which redirects me to my Firefox again with localhost, and it works! Anyone figure it out why the game freezes as it is posted into the website?

because you didn't export correctly?

because you made some changes that cause error?

post error log?

anything else ?

What? No.., it is officially Scirra's demo games, not mine saiyadjin

I'm using Firefox play this game.