Game stutters a lot when it runs under target frame rate, even at 90FPS!

Well, thanks for your input, that sounds very demotivating... Yea i never got the reason for constrcut animate... I mean its a company and fixing every issue might not be reasonable from a business perspective, after all, you and me are still subscribed... sooo, yea. As much as i love constrcut it goes for me like this:

Have 10 ideas, throw 9 away, programming 1, at some point running into performance issues, making it a steam game, not realeasing it bcause its to bad XD So on PC the issue seems not to be to bad, bcause we have the performance but the mobile market is still way more interesting for smaller projects... So i dont get it, if its the same, just a headless chrome in the background, why is it so bad then? And why is there no option to limit the tick/frame rate? I mean with everythign constrcut can do fixing bugs should be the top priorety. I get it that its maybe chromes fault or cordovas fault but i pay for CONSTRCUT not for cordova or chrome... So i expect it somewhat to work as advertised.

If even the basics not working after all those years, idk what to say anymore.

Anyways, i will test through some other options before giving up. But regardless of what i do something seems to be always not working. For example the fog exponential does not work for the node js or webview export but is working just fine in the preview...

Hear hear!

Construct 3's mobile department is hopeless, no one is even bothering to check for any issues.

It is pointless to argue since it's apparent that the Construct 3 developer isn't even aware of the issues or chooses to ignore them. So many people have tried and just gave up.

Most tests the Construct 3 developer makes are about how fast JS is in the web, since that's what he only ever truly does. And then advertise how fast JS is, and make it look like even mobile is as well. Not after those benchmark tests that have no relevancy to actual issues of performance stability and performance throttling on mobile builds.

For new users, if a game isn't as simple as Flappy bird or Angry Birds, then don't bother making it. If you think performance will get better after export, you'll be surprised it will be at least 30% worse after export than preview. And that's before the stability issues.

Back in 2016, the Construct 3 developer said devices are getting more powerful and the performance will get better. Well, that's true, but not that you will benefit from it, Construct 3 performance is getting worse.

Every tick needs to be light on mobile, but even the actual event sheet is so heavy and bloated, it's almost like a JS sandbox. I've fixed that by coding with JavaScript, but wait until you hear about a bigger problem, refresh rates on mobile.

The browser is still as slow, but the demand for graphics is getting higher. Dealing with 60Hz on mobile exports is bad enough, but now we have 120Hz, and the Construct 3 developer is acting like it's no big deal, they made another product Animate since they probably feel like they have so few things to improve in the actual game engine.

And then we suggest for frame rate locking, and the Construct 3 developer indirectly says it is a horrible idea for some technical reasons in which Chromium doesn't support, yet other engines like Phaser support. We then get linked to that everlasting Chromium issue that everyone already abandoned, forgotten or worked around.

What's worse, is that people who either are clueless or only exports to web, web mobile or desktop, will also reply and say that the performance is fine, making us getting ignored even further. That is until they have to experience it themselves, and then be the ones to complain in the future.

It's so easy to brush something off you don't experience or care.

Bingo!

I only develop for mobile. And Construct 3's performance on mobile is very-very bad. I literally have to change my plans to make things run better on mobile

But why is it so bad, from what i read and understand Ashley does a lot in the performance departement. I can remember from a few years back that with intel XDK stuff ran nearly like native apps. Jea not 100% but maybe 75%... What happened? And can we do something about it? XD

I think one of the first things that come to mind is to limit the fps... However i dont get why the hangs / stutters are so bad... When i play another game and it runs at 40FPS it still looks good, but with construct it seems more than one frame is skipped in a row and then there is this big stutter / jumping happening on screen... I mean when from 120 frames 10 are dropt in a second it should be hardly noticebal, but in construct games it looks horrible. I did a lot to optimize, going so far making a "spaning que" in an array so that only one object is spawned per tick...

It runs somewhat ok now, but it seems like especially 3d requires a lot more cpu power...

I do agree that a frame limiter would be great, and I do see other engines that have this (you mentioned Phaser, also GDevelop allows you to choose a maximum FPS). I trust that Scirra haven't implemented something like this for a fair enough reason, whether it's chrome interfering with how C3 is designed, or whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, I would love to give people the ability to choose to have vsync/frame limiters on or off, much like all games allow you to (I always have vsync off whenever I play games, especially rhythm games or quick-reaction games such as platformer or FPS games).

On my own project, a desktop rhythm game, I have different settings for visuals, and when on "Ultra", I do see jank when cpu and gpu usage are both about 60% and the FPS is always stable, maybe dips lower by 1 FPS now and then. Whilst I could optimise my game and visuals, the thing that teases me is that, the jank is significantly lowers when vsync is set to "ticks only". I have not been able to reproduce this in a minimal project though. But when I can just flick a switch to turn vsync off and get the smoothest experience, it makes me wish we could just set a max FPS cap and be done with this, allowing the player to decide whether they want to use vsync or not, limit FPS or not. I have a 240hz monitor, and playing on ultra, some players may wish to lower the max FPS, just to keep the FPS stable, but I can't expect players to have to go into their computer settings to lower their monitor hz just to play. I really do wish there was a max FPS cap option.

I do not agree about Scirra being unaware or choosing to ignore the issues, and I don't agree with Construct Animate consuming Scirra's time, and I am someone that is currently not the target audience for CA - you have to imagine that since CA is literally C3 but with different things enabled/disabled, the development process must be very trivial rather than Scirra starting with an entirely new base for CA - not to mention that most updates get applied to C3 too, and only video exports have been the unique feature for CA so far. Also, if Scirra do work on a CA-only feature, they always seem to multitask and add a bunch of other fixes and changes within an update, so it's not like C3 gets abandoned whilst they work on CA. If Scirra turned a blind eye to issues so that they can work on CA, then yeah that would be a problem, but so far I have not observed this. Assuming those starred chrome bugs end up with a solution from Google, I'd bet that Scirra would be straight on this.

But! The thing is, yeah, some of those chrome bug reports haven't been updated for months now, so it does give a sense of "what now?", like are we relying on chrome devs to resolve this, which have no timeframe or deadline or anything, whilst C3 devs (particularly mobile devs) are patiently waiting and we are all at the mercy of Google? If they cannot resolve anything, is it up to Scirra to find a workaround or solution? I do not know.

I totally agree with Chadori:

The mobile department needs quite a big rework is not only stutters:

1-Stutters

2-Frame cap

3-Memory management to give total control over what assets are loaded at the start of the layout to make the loading faster for games that have many assets

4-Effects:

What's the point to have effects if we cannot use them on mobile?

In my 7+ years, I have never used effects because the performance is really bad. And now that I really needed a water effect just to make a minimum underwater effect the phones are getting really hot, the phones are quite powerful, including iPhone8 and any model after.

There is no reason why it couldn't handle it, as there are just two sprites objects in the same layer and I apply the effect to the layer to save performance:

CPU = 5

FPS = 60

But still, the phones are getting hot not sure why as you can see the stats are super low.

These are to name some of the most important.

Back in 2016, the Construct 3 developer said devices are getting more powerful and the performance will get better. Well, that's true, but not that you will benefit from it, Construct 3 performance is getting worse.

I say the exact same thing, this point from that time it stuck in my head as I believed that will be the case as it makes sense that phones get better so fewer issues we will have but now the phones are super powerful and they cannot get any better so it should be no reason for any performance issues stutters or any other issues.

Also, if Scirra do work on a CA-only feature, they always seem to multitask and add a bunch of other fixes and changes within an update, so it's not like C3 gets abandoned whilst they work on CA. If Scirra turned a blind eye to issues so that they can work on CA, then yeah that would be a problem, but so far I have not observed this.

I think there is a misunderstanding with this concept as we dont judge if they are capable to work on both products, what we are saying is that any time spent on that new product could be used to improve C3 which there are many issues to fix like the ones I mention above. If C3 had no issues or just minor problems then it wouldn't look as bad working with a new product, so you can understand the frustration of many users, especially when they dont have new employers as they said when C3 was in beta they will add in the future when the user base grows, so were already in the future and the userbase grew but we didn't have any improvements on those issues. After all, we are just asking that after working on those Games for years which is a big sacrifice, the only thing we ask is that the games run decent when you release them, I think everyone will be happy with that and probably you wouldn't see users completing about the products etc...

-I didn't see any advertising for C4

-Or we dont have roadMap

So the question is are these issues gonna be resolved or not? maybe dont reply on (Chrome + Cordova) and try something else.

I understand, and I shared the same frustration when CA was first announced, but after thinking about it, I don't really feel that way anymore. I mean, whether they're working on CA, or more 3D features, or whatever new C3 feature, then this could always be perceived as "why spend time on these features, when there's major bugs to fix, such as the jank issue?". I personally wish they would focus on the event sheet editor as top priority, but many would disagree (and for good reason, since jank is an unacceptable issue when releasing a game). When there are major bugs with C3, you tend to see hotfixes get released ASAP, which is good to see, especially if it is a bug that affects saving project files or something, but some bugs are either not clear to Scirra (hence them asking for bug reports, I know this jank topic comes up a lot, but I don't know if anyone has posted a bug report), or Scirra are at the mercy of those chrome bugs being answered.

I agree with the "employing new staff" point, hopefully that's incoming, as this seems like a win win, allowing staff to focus strongly on specific areas of programming or research and such.

Hypothetically, let's assume they stopped focusing on CA and even new C3 features, and let's assume they got some new staff, and then they focused 100% of their attention on this jank issue - Judging by what has been said, I think we would still be stuck, as it relies on these chrome bugs to be answered(?) If there was a solution or workaround, I like to believe that Scirra would be trying that solution now, or at least working towards it, and Ashley mentioned they have indeed done work towards this (although the issue continues, so yeah, get dem bug reports out there). If it is the case that we truly are at the mercy of those chrome bugs being answered, should Scirra find a completely different approach? Maybe, maybe not. Do other HTML5 engines like Phaser or GDevelop suffer the same issues? I have no idea, but this could be good to demonstrate to Scirra.

I 100% agree with having choice for vsync and frame limits, and I definitely can see the benefits for both PC and mobile if this was implemented.

I was under the impression Android performance was generally working fine for most people, as my own tests look fine and I hadn't seen any complaints about it for a long time. The problem in this thread appears to be enabling worker mode, which runs in to a known issue. Turning it off (which is the default) should mean problem solved.

If not, please file an issue following all the guidelines! I'm not telepathic so I can't solve problems by reading descriptions or watching videos, we need the details requested by the bug report guidelines to investigate, and I don't believe any Android performance issues have been submitted that way lately, so as it stands we have nothing to investigate.

Think we should have more staff to work on Construct? Then we need to grow the business, and a new product is potentially a great way to do that. If it went well it could double the size of the business - perhaps even more if it's a hit - and we could hire more developers as a result. Alternatively we can do nothing and remain a smaller company with limited resources. So if you want us to grow, it makes sense to be in favor of new ventures like Construct Animate.

Jase00

> I do not agree about Scirra being unaware or choosing to ignore the issues

> On my own project, a desktop rhythm game, I have different settings for visuals, and when on "Ultra", I do see jank when cpu and gpu usage are both about 60% and the FPS is always stable

Of course you don't, I reckon you mainly export to desktop.

This is exactly it, no one in other platform exports have any idea. They think the same performance issues they have on desktop or web are the same, it literally isn't. You can still make rhythm games on desktop and reach 60% CPU usage while playable. However, mobile can reach 5% CPU usage and already starts lagging, because there is performance throttling and horrible stability issues.

The desktop export is very powerful, not because of your device performance, but the browser itself, yet you still complain about performance issues. Imagine our case with weaker devices, very problematic browsers and zero engine features to alleviate it.

You shouldn't use your case as a reference to our issues. This toxic positivity just makes our situation overlooked even further.

> If they cannot resolve anything, is it up to Scirra to find a workaround or solution? I do not know.

Please just don't make it worse, ignorance of mobile issues and trying to make it look alright is a quinquennial problem now.

Agree with each & every alphabet

And number of object spawning each second is NOT only & the perfect way to figure out performance of a game engine. One can't even use a effect in mobile games whereas that same device rocks complex 3d games with ease.

Even changing layout is very laggy & headache for me