Are there any performance gotchas?

I've been using C2 for a few weeks now, trying to get a feel for if I could use it to make hobby games in my spare time.

I've always found it fairly slow and jerky on my slightly old laptop. But now my test game has slowed down to unplayable.

I'm an experienced game developer so I'm confident that I'm not making any obvious mistakes and that my data is all tidy etc.

So the question is - what are the performance gotchas. Is it the number of sprites, size of sprites, number/complexity of physics objects, number of layers, event sheets, collision types, paralax scrolling.

Of course the answer is that it's all of these things but are there any that are a particular problem, that maybe you wouldn't think of.

What would be cool is some sort of profiler - but I imagine that's a way away, even if possible at all.

Have you read the performance tips manual entry?

Yes, I have read it, thanks. I'll go back and have another look at it though. My hunch is that the main problem I'm having is not getting WebGL to work.

However, even on a slow computer I've had a noticeable further slowdown though.

I guess I can track the slowdown to one or more of a number of recent changes:

* Adding a small number of large sprites (300*300 say)

* With fairly large amounts of transparency (is overdraw an issue?)

* Significantly increasing VRAM (would this affect performance)

* Creating additional layers.

It's hard to help without being able to see a .capx that is slow.

dl.dropbox.com/u/104684620/test.capx

It's layout3 that I'm concerned with.

L/R on arrow keys. Jump on space.

hmm I am running construct right now on a 300 dollar piece of crap walmart special laptop myself (so I dont have to move my desktop to my standing desk)

Your game runs the same on all layouts for me, seems smooth.

*** Awesome game btw =)

I know this is so annoying when asked, but are your video drivers up to date?

They are as up to date as I can get them, but that is 2009 apparently. Didn't realise the laptop was so old.

I've worked out that the problem is that physics object are not framerate independent by default. Have now set framerate independence - as reproduceable physics is not important for this game - and it all works much better.

Thanks for the compliment on the game. I am happy with level 3. I would like 9 more levels like that and then I will release it. (With a bit of wrapper polish)

OMG. I have just tried the game on Chrome and it is smooth as butter - rocksteady 60fps. Seems to be a significant performance hit on Firefox if handling physics.

This has made me happy - lovely smooth game - and unhappy - a lot of people use Firefox.

Still runs nice and smooth on Firefox here.

It runs pretty smoothly on both Firefox and Chrome for me.

And 300x300 sprites aren't really that large :P