Frame rate problems :(

I just upgraded to r227 after years of using a hideously prehistoric version (like 130 or something). Don't ask me why it took so long to upgrade, I was sort of afraid it would break my game. Anyway, I was having issues where the game would run 60fps windowed and like 25-30fps fullscreen, no matter what I did, and I found a lot of old forum posts where people were complaining about this, although I don't know that anybody ever got a solution for it.

So today I upgraded to r227 in the hope of availing myself of some of the new rendering options etc to try and improve matters and it's made the situation MUCH worse. My game runs like absolute crap now! Even in windowed it sometimes doesn't hit 25fps, and worse, everything seems to be moving in slow-motion - whereas before the game would just drop frames and act all jerky, now it seems like it wants to do every single frame, no matter how slowly. My platformer looks like it's set on the moon now! It's virtually unplayable

I swear, these framerate problems have been the bane of my existence for years and it's really stressing me out. I'm not developing for mobile, it's just a desktop game with pixel art - it shouldn't be hard to run this on a modern computer! Help

EDIT: I get about 25fps in Chrome, 11fps in Firefox, 20fps in IE, and 25 in NW.js (my target browser) if I'm lucky

Run it in debug mode, go into Profile view, look at your event CPU usage and work from there.

It is not normal for a PC game from C2 to run that slow, period. Even on old CPUs.

I'm monitoring the CPU load as well as FPS and it never seems to go over about 18%. But I will try the debug mode.

Bizarrely enough running it in Debug - profile is the only time it runs smoothly! It seems to hover around 59fps and the CPU load hovers around 30%. The biggest percentage of CPU usage is draw calls at around 16%. If I switch to the Inspect tab the fps immediately tanks to about 5fps and the CPU usage goes nuts (like 120%)

EDIT: Also just tested exporting the game to nw.js and then closing everything else on the computer and running the game in isolation. Still getting ~25fps and treacle motion

Look at this: http://s31.postimg.org/lqthi5dzu/badfps.jpg

19FPS, 6% CPU load. I've tried both WebGL and Canvas2D as renderer (for some reason on my old version of C2 canvas2D actually gave waaay better performance than webgl). There's no webgl effects in use (all the glow effects are done with plain Additive blend mode). There should be NO REASON for C2 to run my game this badly. It's not even set to full HD, it runs at 720p at the moment.

This kind of thing just makes me want to give up on Construct and not waste any more years of my life <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad">

Sorry for chainposting, but my tests continue! All of the results mentioned hitherto were from the laptop on which I'm building the game (just has Intel HD graphics but no proper graphics card). I just loaded it onto my big gaming computer running a Geforce GTX960 and it runs smoooooth, constant 60fps at all times. SO, it would appear that something about upgrading from r130whatever to r227 has meant that my laptop now no longer meets the minimum system requirements for running my own game...?

Ideally I'd like my game to run on as many computers as possible, especially since it's a not-especially-fancy pixel art affair - requiring people to have a relatively decent graphics card seems like it ought to be unnecessary. I wonder if there is any information on the minimum specs required to run C2 games?

Some Intel GPU has major issues with WebGL shaders so if your game uses those effects, performance will be neutered.

I had this issue with my HD4000 GPU so I had to avoid using those shaders.

It doesn't, though. That's the stupid thing. I specifically designed the game to use no webgl effects and the fps is equally rubbish whether I use webgl or canvas2d as the renderer

Well, HTML5 still hasn't become magically great performing on lowest end Intel graphics (the upper end of the Intel IRIS line performs significantly better). I'm afraid if the widest possible deployment base is your No.1 priority, I would consider other options, too.

We are at long last at a point where the situation on desktop has become bearable for mid-range GPUs and OKish for high-end. But that's it. It won't get better for the lowest end. So old laptops will always be a sore spot.

I understand that my laptop is rubbish for gaming since it has basically no graphics card, and I completely get that the game might be expected to not run very well on it, but why did the game run hugely better on ~r130 than it does on r227? Same game, same hardware, except now it runs at 25fps.

If you regress your game back to r130 now, today, what performance do you see? If it's not much different then the problem is caused by something you've done, if performance does improve in r130 then clearly the problem is something inside c2...

Yeah I was thinking I might do what some other users on the forums have mentioned and have two separate builds of C2 installed on their machine. I might run the old version from a different folder so I can switch between the two as needed.

I have a notebook with an i3 CPU (HD 4000 graphics). If you do an export from the newest version of C2 and post a link here (or send it in PM), I'll gladly test it for you. Just please include an FPS counter.

Thank you for the offer! I'm a little reluctant to share my entire game online at this point, I hope you understand? But I really appreciate it, and it's given me the idea to ask as many friends as possible to try to run it on their computers

I hope you understand? But I really appreciate it, and it's given me the idea to ask as many friends as possible to try to run it on their computers

Sure, I understand. I wouldn't like the idea either to share my game before I feel it's ready. I hope your game runs well on your friends' computers.