Is c3-runtime viable on android?

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  • I tested my game with c3-runtime on two devices (android 6 and android 7) - both times it didn't start, saying I need to update webview. Obviously, average user will not care to manually update webview, they will just close the game and forget about it (maybe even leave negative review). So I wonder, how common is this issue, and is there a way for me as developer to fix this while still using c3 runtime?

    Update:

    Comment here on the issue to encourage Google to fix it

    Google's representative said: "I'm going to take this bug for now to keep track while we think about and discuss it a bit more to see if this is something we're going to pursue.", but since discussion didn't get much traction - they didn't do anything yet.

    Tagged:

  • It's not common.

    Turn on updates.

  • newt For some reason it still doesn't work on my android 7.0 device even though webview on GP looks like it is up to date (so is Chrome). On android 6.0 device I had to manually enable and update webview which is still not very usable option for wide audience (maybe it has something to do with the fact that Chrome is not installed on this device).

    I wonder if there is some pattern, theoretically from what I understand - it should be auto-updated for all 5.0+ devices, yet in my cases it wasn't.

    Would be useful to hear from people who used c3-runtime in games with 10k+ downloads if their users encountered this issue.

  • Hi,

    We published a c3-android game with 10k+ downloads.

    I can say for sure that there are around 10% of all downloads who have issues with starting the game.

    The main problem:

    If they don't have Chrome installed (or very old version of Chrome), they just get a white screen when starting the game. There is no info shown that they need to install / update Chrome... just a white screen.

    That caused several 1 star ratings / reviews. On the reviews we could answer that they need to install / update Chrome and everything worked.

    But yes, that's a huge problem in C3 and I really hope that this will get fixed soon (if that's even possible)

    Best regards.

  • CGamez Thanks for this information. That's what I was afraid of. It almost looks like Construct 3 is not created for commercial games (so monetization, tracking and other important features are so limited, while some far less important features are actively developed). Not to mention it probably took them a year to add notch compatibility for Iphone even though I suggested a fix on their github months earlier.

  • And, of course, this issue with webview. Whenever someone brings it up - devs just suggest you to update webview and chrome and say they don't want to support outdated tech, and it makes sense if you just make a game demo for yourself, but on a scale of say 1 000 000 installs it's a HUGE issue. No big game publisher will take your game while this problem is present. And by the way, another thing that can cause white screen for your users can be audio webm format, while it is not explicitly stated (just like with c3-runtime), but this audio format also requires up-to-date webview and cuts off a lot of users even if you use c2-runtime, so try using mp3 instead

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  • Hey,

    I've opened a new topic and mentioned the 3 big problems we had when we published our mobile-game:

    https://www.construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/general-discussion-7/construct-mobile-feedback-148034

    The problem is that C3 focuses on minigames for devs who just want to get a game to work. But if you try to do professional game-developing with C3 it's more or less impossible. For Web it's ok (there you can use Javascript SDKs since JS is very common in Web) but for mobile... no chance...

    I hope there will be more updates for mobile-publishers in the future (like SDK integration for user-tracking so you can do advertising for your games).

    For making some little fun games, I think Construct3 is the best game-engine. Also for making big Webgames it's an easy to use engine. But for commercial projects in the mobile-section it's by far not recommendable.

  • Ashley Could you please clarify the issue? I've heard about it before, but didn't expect that so many devices are affected! Why does it matter for an exported game if a recent version of Chrome is installed on the device?

  • dop2000 Well from what I heard so far it seems like my situation when updating Chrome and webview doesn't help is kind of exclusive, but still, as I mentioned before - most players will not care to manually update Chrome or webview to play the game they just downloaded.

  • This has been discussed a lot in the past already. I don't think there's anything we can do about it.

    AFAIK it only affects devices that have not even updated the Google Play store apps for over two years, or have manually uninstalled updates to system apps (specifically the Android System Webview on Android 5-6). This should be a small minority of devices, and still shrinking.

    All you need to do is have Google Play updates enabled and allow it to update - or have done so at any point in the past two years - and it should work fine. We've designed an error message that tells people to do this that ought to appear if it's not supported, with links directly to the store. Why this message still seems to show up for people is still pretty much a mystery. Maybe a lot of people routinely disable updates and uninstall system apps? It seems unlikely...

    It's not feasible to backport the C3 runtime to very old browser engines - many of the huge performance increases and major new features rely on reasonably new browser technology. If you need support for much older browser engines, you could keep using the C2 runtime which has lower requirements - but then you'll miss out on all the features and performance improvements.

    I think the best solution is to be able to specify a minimum WebView version for your app, so it doesn't appear for people whose devices are too old/not up-to-date enough to run the app. Alternatively it could install any necessary WebView update at the same time as your app. I filed an issue with Google about this earlier this year. I think the best way to make this happen is for everyone to highlight how important it is to them on this Google issue requesting a solution to the problem.

  • The Ios version of this is much worse. As is any device under 10 will never get updated.

    No warning might even be less of an insult.

    Edit:

    Just to be clear. There are a lot of Ios devices that will never get updated because of their age.

  • If you need support for much older browser engines, you could keep using the C2 runtime which has lower requirements - but then you'll miss out on all the features and performance improvements.

    How we supposed to keep using the c2RunTime if it's not even possible now due to the "Touch plugin" bug that makes the GamePads freeze on Apple devices as you can see on this bug that you quickly closed, you just sent me to talk to Apple which I don't think that it should be the users job after paying 99$ dollars for renting your engine.

    At least you should let the users know in the front page about important bugs like this before they rent C3 or buy C2, as this bug left me no choice and I was forced to just switch to c3RunTime giving me double or triple job extra for the conversion of the Project as I been working on it for the last two years.

    Bug Link:

    https://github.com/Scirra/Construct-3-bugs/issues/3401

  • As far as I can tell, it's a bug in Apple's software, and so Apple would need to fix it. Unfortunately we cannot be held responsible for fixing bugs in other software such as bugs in iOS itself.

    It would be best if everyone uses the C3 runtime since it's got so many improvements over the C2 runtime, including modernisation that happens to work around that iOS bug. That's why I think the best approach is to comment on this Google issue to fix the problem with Android WebViews.

  • I tested my game with c3-runtime on two devices (android 6 and android 7) - both times it didn't start, saying I need to update webview.

    I thought web-view was disabled since android 7 and construct android games running 7+ would just use chrome directly now?

  • AFAIK the current status is:

    Android 5-6: uses Android System Webview app

    Android 7-9: uses Chrome app (not sure what happens if Chrome not installed, I think it falls back to the Android System Webview app)

    Android 10+: uses Android System Webview app again, with a common core shared with the Chrome app (presumably this is an internal system component? not sure)

    Anyway any device that shipped any time in the past 2 years should have come with sufficiently up-to-date software out of the box to work just fine. So it seems to be old devices that haven't had any software updates - not even app updates - for a few years.

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