Two Node-webkit problems still on v.168 [Temp Freeze fix!]

I too have had the freezing problem. There doesnt seem to be anything in particular that you could say triggers it. Sometimes it never happens. Very frustrating.

I don't think it's anything to do with Construct 2. AFAIK games run smoothly on other platforms, so it sounds like a node-webkit issue.

Thanks for the quick response. I also don't think it's a problem with Construct2 itself. But is there an alternative export for getting an executable since node-webkit is the only way at the moment as far as I can see?

The freezing is not a huge concern/problem at the moment, but releasing a game in this state is not very desirable.

Edit: After searching a bit more I stumbled upon this post about node-webkit and occasional freezes, might be related? Apparently I cant post urls but I found it on Github: Roger-wang / Node-webkit. The issues title is: NW would freeze occasionally #1363

The issue was closed since it didnt seem related to node-webkit but with js engine's (v8) garbage collection.

This is beyond my skillset/knowledge so I don't know if this is related at all but maybe its usefull to someone here.. Is this something that Construct2 uses? This freezing problem is haunting me at the moment.

Yes, c2 uses v8 and garbage collection, there's no way for html5 games to not use it on chrome and node webkit.

Ah I see, so that means as long as that is not going to be fixed, the node-webkit export is not able to make a proper executable that doesn't freeze up?

That is quite a bummer. Is this stuff known? I mean, it seems like a big problem? Because at the moment im not able to release my game in it's current state. I have no idea if this might be fixed in the following weeks/months, so kinda worried now:)

Is it really freezing because of garbage collection? Any particular reason - large images, loads of code, or something else?

Yeah, it could potentially be running out VRAM, for example. I was getting pauses for a while when I didn't realize I had accidentally asked my computer to use more VRAM than it actually has, and so node webkit had to pause to swap data from disk whenever something it didn't have in VRAM came on screen. Once I fixed that, I haven't had a pause since.

Yeah, it could potentially be running out VRAM, for example. I was getting pauses for a while when I didn't realize I had accidentally asked my computer to use more VRAM than it actually has, and so node webkit had to pause to swap data from disk whenever something it didn't have in VRAM came on screen. Once I fixed that, I haven't had a pause since.

Cool, thanks... do you know what the limit would be for vram?

I'm going to do some extra tests this weekend and hopefully it's a problem on my end. I showcased the game for 8 hours long on a Macbook Air and didnt run into this problem, that was with the node-webkit export. That one seems to run fine without problems.

Max object count on a stage is about 720 objects. I don't use large images, inspector says 41.4 mb images and runs at 60. Total project consists of 720 events, not every event is for the main game itself.

On four different high end and mid end windows (7 and 8) machines I run into this problem. Also with a laptop that has a clean windows install. My current machine for testing is an i7 2600k with 12 DDR3 and a 7970 with 3GB GDDR5. I will check the vram settings.

Thanks for sharing the info.

I also found this thread on steam forums. No solution, but the game is using NK and if I'm correct was made with c2, so just proves the point more.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/262790/di ... ?l=english

It's not a VRAM issue. Pauses still happening for projects with only 1 or 1000 objects. They happened on my old geforce 570, then on my Intel integrated graphic card and now it's pauses on new geforce 780 with 3 GB of VRAM. But not always, it's very random, In some projects with few hundreds of events and objects I've never had any pauses. And on some projects with only few events/objects it's pausing every time after few seconds in the game.

It's not a VRAM issue. Pauses still happening for projects with only 1 or 1000 objects. They happened on my old geforce 570, then on my Intel integrated graphic card and now it's pauses on new geforce 780 with 3 GB of VRAM. But not always, it's very random, In some projects with few hundreds of events and objects I've never had any pauses. And on some projects with only few events/objects it's pausing every time after few seconds in the game.

So basically it's shit sandwich. All we can be certain is that things will work in FF and Chrome. That's charming. What I've got from that steam thread is that even if the game works perfectly for you, others will have issues.

Seems like it but the game on that steam page seem to have bigger problems than just this one. Not loading at all, crashing or freezing for 20 seconds is not what im experiencing.

My experience so far is that the node webkit export will freeze for about 4 seconds but the game will continue afterwards like nothing happend. The interfal of the freeze is quite random, it can happen a few times in just 2 minutes and it can happen just once in 5 minutes. If it's usefull in any way I can upload a clip that shows the freeze in action, atleast it shows how it is a big problem if you want to export your game to a proper exe since it makes the experience quite bad in the end.

So far playing the game in chrome with preview is smooth and doesnt have any freezes.

Guys, I know you are trying to find things on the project that are freezing the game. But I'm quite sure it is something related on C2 or Node-Webkit. Yesterday I let my game running for 11 hours to see if it was stable using the new C2 version. The game is running way better than a 2 weeks ago, but sometimes it is still freezing. Two weeks ago my game froze twice during A MAZE in Berlin, and it was consuming more than 2 GB Ram after a couple of hours running. Now the memory leak is over, the game is way more stable (it still freezing, but way less than before), and the only difference is that I'm using the new C2, but my project is exactly the same. I didn't change anything.

I'm really concerned about it because I'll publish this game and I have no clue what is happening. And it looks like a lot of people is having the same problem, that is even more scary. I could launch the game with this "small issue", but isn't something good at all. I'm talking with Ashley since a while about this problem, but so far looks like there is no way to fix it and there will be tons of C2 projects freezing around without fix. This is really, really bad!

It's hard to pin down what is actually going on since its really random when it happens. Have been testing the game now for about 4 hours, causing heavy actions to take place or just idle around and doing nothing within the game.

So far my observation is that my problem happens in 2 different ways/patterns.

Once in about 10 to 15 minutes

Or a couple times within 2 to 5 minutes. Even had it happen after 1 minute and then again after about 1 min.

This makes it way hard to figure out what is causing it, since it seems very random.

So it doesnt seem to be tied to a certain action/event in my project, or I think so atleast. Wish and hope it is a problem on my end so I can fix it.

I used a few proces monitors and I don't see anything weird going on with the memory. It seems steady and during a freeze I don't see anything that seems odd or out of place.

Another observation I made today is that when an audio file plays before a freeze happens it keeps on playing and I can still hear it. It doesnt get cut off. So the game just stops playing the events?

I'm going to do more testing today. This thing is making my head hurt at the moment. Going to disable some events and see if that is making any difference in the occurance.

Ashley Did some further testing and hope you can respond to this problem, if there are plans to fix this and what can I do to fix this?

Did some further testing and it didnt matter what I changed it still happened. So I made a new clean project and didnt change any settings.

The project has two sprites and only one event. Once the sprite with a player behaviour makes collision with the floor sprite it jumps and plays a sound. As simple as that.

You can see the result here: youtu.be/i635UHoviMk

At 1:19 it freezes up till 1:46. Then it continues playing again. This is a huge problem with the node-webkit exporter and if there is no alternative way to make an proper executable for windows then heck what can I do now?