Disappointed over bad communications!!!

Make this about .capx files and measurements, not just long forum threads.

But then everyone will see how bad a game maker I am. Its easier to just blame you...

There are some serious games being developed with C2... the difference between flappy xyz and these developers - these guys have mastered the software.

Ashley If I had the time to put 1.5 years into a game made just to demonstrate areas of slowness in C2 so you can be able to check it out then I'd really love to, but right now I don't, and I can't recreate the issues on smaller scale. In the end, if a customer with way better hardware specifications and latest drivers has issues (that I don't with a 5 year old PC) then I think the issue is not in reaching the limits of the system.

The Next Penelope does appear to run pretty good, and I'm starting to wonder if that's because there is no platform behaviour. In our game almost all the enemies and player objects have platform behaviour, and based on discussions on the forums that is where others find slowness too. It seems like TNP is heavier on GPU usage than CPU usage as well, so that's probably another reason why it runs better than most big C2 games. Racing games in general seem to perform and look better than other games though too.

Would it be possible for you to add an export mode in C2 that embeds debug controls and data capturing? This way people who can't replicate issues in a small capx, and who can't give their source code away freely, are able to produce information you can use.

I'm sad to hear that a custom exporter is not on the drawing board, even for C3. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad">

I don't want to use months or years of optimizing my games, and then suddenly a 3rd party destroys it all, anyway.

I know for a fact that unity runs super smooth with all the latest small game ideas i've been doing. So something is definitely wrong with C2. And i don't think any amount of Capx files will help, when there is no control over the exporters.

But i think its time for me to learn other tools, and in the meantime i will drop by every month to check up on C2/C3.

But i still have huge respect for the Scirra team, they developed a great editor, that is easy to learn and understand. That is your biggest plus in my book.

I don't think something simple like this would even be possible in C2 for mobiles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL9B ... tDaDgb6dhU

But yet, Unity runs wit no problems whatsoever, with many collisions, and not lag..

Ashley

[quote:12w7ntui]On page 4 of this thread, all I can do is shrug and say I don't see what you're seeing, apart from maybe acknowledging that Chrome has had a rough patch of bugs which has affected smoothness and performance (and NW.js and Crosswalk inherited that), which is Google's responsibility, and not to do with Construct 2 or its engine.

so we should contact Google and blame them that we paid for Construct 2 and we can't have smooth games on Android?

Even crappybird clones?

Jayjay

[quote:12w7ntui] I'm starting to wonder if that's because there is no platform behaviour. In our game almost all the enemies and player objects have platform behaviour, and based on discussions on the forums that is where others find slowness too. It seems like TNP is heavier on GPU usage than CPU usage as well, so that's probably another reason why it runs better than most big C2 games.

You might be right.

Ashley If I had the time to put 1.5 years into a game made just to demonstrate areas of slowness in C2 so you can be able to check it out then I'd really love to, but right now I don't, and I can't recreate the issues on smaller scale.

Minimal .capxs is just for bug reports. For performance testing I will happily profile an entire project. If you can't send it over then there are a couple of options:

• signing an NDA (this is a pain in the **** but I will do it for special cases if say the publisher requires it)
• just run the Chrome Javascript profiler yourself, which is what I would do with your project to examine its performance. This should show up any bottlenecks in the C2 engine. I think it also lets you export results so they can be shared, or failing that, just print screen the top results and send them over.
• For a high-level view of event usage the C2 profiler gives a good indication of any performance bottlenecks in the events, but remember events are yours and up to you to optimise. A super fast engine will only help so much with inefficient events. I'd only use this to give some general advice on which of your events are the slowest.

Hello;

95% of the people who buy C2 never get close to finishing a game. Sad, but this is even true of Game Maker. We all have big dreams. I think C2 caters to the right audiance when they make it very easy to get up and started.

I think C2s great, but I'm not close to finishing the 8 or 9 games I've started.

yours

Winkr7

Well, but depends....I mean, so much people need more performance...sometime is true, but in the most case is because people made bad process and use a bad way to make their games... in the forum I see a lot of mistake in the examples, I see a lot of bad ways to reach something...

Actually I never finish a game, I made different prototipe of some games, and they works great, my problem is how to make the gameplay/level....

I had to quit just one game because of the performance, but because I was using a lot of graphics in HD,

in the mobile, is crazy to think "I want a perfect performance..." if you want the perfect performance, you have to programm everything with the native code, that is the easiest way to make your game better, HTML5 isn't ready now the mobile game if you want to make a fancy game...

anyway, in the future will be easier to make games in html5, and the hardware can be ready for that

I had to quit just one game because of the performance, but because I was using a lot of graphics in HD

Lots of HD graphics is a classic case of hitting the GPU fillrate limit, which is a hardware limitation. This is exactly what I was talking about: you seem to think it's HTML5's fault and that a native engine would be faster, but it would still have the same hardware limitations. It's entirely possible this type of game would perform exactly the same in a native engine - no faster at all. This adds to my skepticism when people ask that we develop a native engine. It is not a magic bullet that makes existing hardware any better than it is.

Nesteris - please only report bugs to the Bugs forum following all the guidelines and one thread per bug. If you don't want to run in to beta-related issues, stick to stable releases. By using beta releases you are opting in to this testing process.

I think a lot of what/how people feel, and the things discussed over many past forum threads including this one, can be described in your own words Ashley. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4714446/AshTweets.PNG)

I don't want to feel like a guinea pig, but I will try to do some profiling and debugging (if it doesn't crash / can even run at full speed), but sometimes I get a sense that even if you just played the finished game in various conditions (different software open, screen capture tools, average/mid level PCs, etc) you could really discover the issues we're seeing or hearing about.

Please do add http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =424930565

If you want me to take a look send your .capx over to with an overview of the problem areas/what to do and I'll take a look. I may not be able to do this for everyone since we have thousands of users, but hopefully a few real-world examples will allow me to make some engine improvements if necessary.

Looks like ranting thread, so here are few thoughts of my own.

I, for one, think C2 is a great tool. Haven't encountered anything with similar productivity. It has it's limitations in performance, but don't think it is all C2 fault.

For example, recently I made extremely simple game https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... shapematch

primary reason to test exporting capabilities with admob ads, I disabled what ever I could, and had interesting testing results.

For starters I probably made mistake when didn't checked uses media on export, but there is audio on some devices, probably will upload new version soon, to test that and few more things.

So what are the results, with export as normal Android app (I just can't justify crosswalk size overhead for this game):

performance wise, ZTE Blade 3 is the worst, it can't event work as intended, when sprite is moving to a place, it never finds it, just circles around

also on all tested 4.x devices there is no audio, but there is audio on 2.3 and 5.0

on Alcatel Idol, it works, not great, but let's say it's usable

on Galaxy S4 it works with few frames dropping, on S5 situation is better, just to mention that in regular browser on those devices, game works better than installed version which I can't explain, should be the same browser.

on LG G3, with Lollipop it works as intended, and what is most interesting, on LG P500 (android 2.3.3) it works perfectly, well, it doesn't show ads, but it is admob plugin for Cordova responsibility, not C2.

Tried also on same noname 4.x tablet, antutu score ~26000, it also works fine

So, in my opinion, it is a question of stock browsers, and blacklisted GPU (crosswalk export), I didn't, on purpose, changed any of the settings via XDK, just to see what will happen, and will app pass on Google Play. Also since C2 is simple tool, I think that export should be simple also, to spend more time on exporting, than development is pointless, if that is the case, I can go back to Java/Eclipse <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad">

Also if anyone could make one table with what is supported where in export I would really appreciate it, something like columns (Cordova, Crosswalk, Canvas+...) and rows (Android 4, 5, iOS 7, 8, Win, WP, ...), and then maybe even sub rows ( audio, webgl, admob...)

Anyway, back to C2 great features, recently I was asked to do some promo pong-like game for one company. I made a demo in 10 minutes as a proof pf concept, there is no way I could do that in anything else. Exported to apk, works fine for now.

All in all, I am satisfied with C2, don't expect much right now, and blaming Google rather than Scirra right now. If problems persist with newer versions of Android then Scirra should think about native export if they think that C2 should be tool for publishing game on a mobile platforms. And I still think it is doable with some cooperation outside Scirra, I think I mentioned that somewhere before, that guy from Basic4Android, he can work some black magic with conversion to Java. I am sure there is more people like him that can think of something, or maybe Crosswalk Lite is a way to go, I don't now, It is for Scirra to decide. But keep it simple and usable.

— - LOL - I think he should also make a small but not-so-subtle change of the loading icon to this: