Mobile Apps - Lets Get Real

I've owned Construct 2 since it's early beta release, and held off doing anything with it because it was young and lacked support for I wanted to do. We have decent 3D game engines for mobile apps, but some times we want to do 2D apps.

Well outside of Game Salad (which sucks for ad networks and their owners don't give a rats behind about Android ad networks it seems) and Game Maker Studio (which is really new to the market) and the over priced Corona with no visual level designer...

I want to revisit Construct 2 again and see if it's ready to publish games for Android and possibly iPhone.

Is Construct 2 ready for mobile games?

What is the best way to publish/export AppMobi or Cocoon? Seriously what are you guys using.

Can you use a real ad network ie Admob/LeadBolt/Applovin with these exports?

I mean Android users are mostly free loaders and free games with Ads seem to work the best, if I can not make money off developing a game then no use doing it.

Thanks in advance!

Basically, iOS (iPhone & iPod) and Android (SmartPhones) aren't very good for HTML5 games.

It depends what you do with it. I have a game prototype that runs at 60 fps with about 100-200 enemies on screen on an iPhone 4S/ipad 3 in retina mode, but I'm also using every optimization trick I can think of for both rendering and code.

Physics is not realistic on mobiles currently, except maybe having very, very few of them (haven't tried it), but most types of games don't need them.

I have a game on the play store made with construct2 and cocoonjs.

It's also here on scirra arcade and on my website burps-games.com if u wanna check it out(Barff Brain-Training).

With CocoonJS you can include ads from mopub/admob. There is a plugin for cunstruct2 too. With that plugin you can set visibility and position of the ads through events. (e.g. "On Start of layout show adbanner on bottom center")

The results exported with cocoonjs are really nice, but you have to fix audio and screen issues/bugs.

Appmobi seems to have more options like analytics, ads, push-notifications available to c2. Just look at the appmobi-c2-plugin. I never got that far, because I haven't been able to export an app with appmobi which had clear graphics. Looked always horrible.

Worst thing with cocoonjs is not to be able to trigger device buttons on android devices. If the "back"-key is pressed the app is closing immediately. Thats sucks, because users dont expect that. Would be nice to call a "Do you really want to quit?"-dialog or to go back to another layout instead.

But to your question, yes it is possible to bring games, made with c2, to the play store and to monetize it through ads.

Right now it's not just done with one click, but the guys from c2 are working pretty hard on it. There are huge improvments all the time.

based on what? <img src="smileys/smiley23.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

> Basically, iOS (iPhone & iPod) and Android (SmartPhones) aren't very good for HTML5 games.

Actually, iOS is the best mobile platform for HTML5 games. A modern iPad even performs better than some desktop browsers!

Well, it depends for some performance. iPad is definetly the best.

I've had 'Ninja Fart Hero' on Google Play since January, but it's only in the last few weeks that I've been able to get a fairly decent framerate (25+) using PhoneGap / Cordova 2.2 and Eclipse, plus ads embedded using the Admob sdk.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jazzlebags.assgassfree&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5qYXp6bGViYWdzLmFzc2dhc3NmcmVlIl0.

We've done benchmarks showing iOS 6 performs very well for HTML5 games - rarely if ever falling below 30 FPS on our standard Space Blaster performance test. iOS are market leaders in HTML5 support in their browser. But if you PhoneGap a game, it's still horribly slow.

So what I have gotten there is still no clear best way for mobile and it's still in progress.

Don't get me wrong Construct 2 has came a long ways in a short time, but it sounds like it still has a little ways to go before prime time mobile apps are easily created.

It's great with mobile for my apps that require lots of power. Even 3D games made with construct work great!

I've found CocoonJS to be great for iOS. Aside from memory issues, my Construct game seems to work exactly as expected, and I can maintain a frame rate of around 30-40FPS. From what I hear, Android performance varies. One developer on the Ludei forums mentioned seeing a huge frame rate increase when he removed a tiled background - I suppose Cocoon is still in the "some features are more reliable than others" stage of development.

I wouldn't mind seeing a performance comparison between AppMobi and CocoonJS. It would be useful to see if certain assets are handled differently, and whether this significantly impacts the frame rate. On a related note, does anybody know whether AppMobi loads all the assets (except music) up-front like Cocoon does?

o what I have gotten there is still no clear best way for mobile and it's still in progress.

Don't get me wrong Construct 2 has came a long ways in a short time, but it sounds like it still has a little ways to go before prime time mobile apps are easily created.

Actually this not Construct 2 or either HTML5 fault, it's slow because the mobile manufacture still slowly improving their HTML5 browser support and look like they hesitant to enable webgl in thier browser too, but hopefully the day will come :)

right now i see cocoonJS and phonegap is the right way for apps.

It's great with mobile for my apps that require lots of power. Even 3D games made with construct work great!

Can I ask what you are using to crate the mobile apps. CocoonJS, Appmobi ?

—

I installed Barff Brain Training on my HTC Evo today. It worked beautifully. Great game! Looking forward to seeing more great apps in the future.

Simon

> It's great with mobile for my apps that require lots of power. Even 3D games made with construct work great!

Can I ask what you are using to crate the mobile apps. CocoonJS, Appmobi ?

Currently,and hopefully I don't get lambasted for it, Eclipse and Libgdx. Granted, I have to learn it, code it and test it through it's emulator, but it does give me the freedom to include any ad network that is available for the target. Don't get me wrong, C2 has much going for it and it does show promise, I'm just letting it mature a little more :) Don't get me started on GMS though. Granted it too is a excellent tool, but it can be pretty restrictive, not to mention, expensive for many (I don't wish to say too much regarding it as this is out of scope for a C2 forum).