Jank in Construct 3 Mobile Games - Not Fixable?

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  • Hi everyone!

    I loove Construct — it's always been a creative sanctuary for me. But even today in 2024, testing on powerful mobile devices, I’m not able to achieve smooth gameplay. I get the same familiar frame skips and jank I've always associated with Cordova games on mobile, and it's a bit disheartening.

    As an example, I created a barebones demo with an object moving in a circle. Exported through Cordova for both iOS and Android, there are noticeable, intermittent frame skips. This issue makes gameplay feel sloppy and unreliable. I extensively tweaked the Project Properties according to ideas on the forums, trying different renderers and settings, but the issue persists.

    Is there or will there ever be a stable fix for this, or should I accept that Construct 3 (and web game engines in general) might not be suitable for achieving the smooth feeling I want on mobile? Ashley, I’d appreciate your honest take on this. Do you have any tips to eliminate the jank manually within the Cordova project, or ideas about alternative export options?

    I’m attaching video links and relevant demo files to demonstrate the issue I’m facing. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

    On another note, I just want to give a heartfelt thanks to Ashley for his incredible vision and consistent efforts in bringing Construct 3 to life and supporting it. I feel so grateful for this tool and the empowerment it has given me to create, even if I might not be able to use it for my mobile game projects.

    Demo Project File:

    https://parthdalal.com/other/Frame%20Skip%20Test.c3p

    Demo Videos:

    Subscribe to Construct videos now
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  • Make sure to watch videos at 60 FPS.

    I'm not able to edit my post for some reason.

  • The browser controls frame scheduling, rather than Construct - so if you have issues with jank the best thing to do is report them directly to the browser maker (Google for Android, and Apple for iOS).

  • Construct had this issue with poor performance and frame drops on mobile since forever. And yet it's somehow not Scirra's job to fix it, but us, end users should contact Apple and Google support.

    I can tell you how it will go:

    Me: Hey Apple/Google support, my game runs poorly on Android.

    Them: Millions of games run perfectly fine on our OS. There must be a problem with your game or with the game engine you are using. Address your question to them. Ticket closed.

  • Have you actually tried? Do you have issue reports you've filed where you've had that response? I find Google are usually pretty good at responding to issues. If you haven't yet tried you should at least give it a go - as I said you can complain as much as you like to us but there's nothing much we can do about it, as it's scheduled by the browser engine, not Construct.

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  • there's nothing much we can do about it

    Ashley This is not true. You can contact Google/Apple support and explain them the issue in proper technical terms. And provide correct answers to their questions, logs, code snippets etc. Because you understand how your engine works, we don't. An frankly, it's your job, not ours.

    We pay money for the software, which claims to work everywhere and leave other engines in the dust in terms of performance. It's on the main page!

  • Ashley This is not true. You can contact Google/Apple support and explain them the issue in proper technical terms.

    We already do that routinely. In fact IIRC I've already reported this issue to them. If something isn't getting enough attention, then the more customers who report it to Apple/Google, the higher a priority they will give it. And in this case you don't really need to understand how our engine works. You can just file an issue that says "my game is janky" and they should look in to it.

    You can either just complain on the forum and nothing much will happen, or try to do something about it, and it might be fixed. It's up to you! I'm actually trying to help by pointing people in the direction in which things are most likely to get sorted out. If you don't co-operate it makes it less likely to get sorted out.

  • Hi Ashley, just recently subbed to C3 and found I'm having the jank issue as well. I appreciate everything that's gone into providing a great engine and have read enough around the forum and the Chromium bug reports to see that you're trying hard to get a result.

    To be honest though, I understand the frustration people have been having around this. I also appreciate you taking the time to respond here.

    Elsewhere you mention that competing game engines are having trouble as well, but I've recently found this not to be true. I've replicated a simple test similar to OPs identically in C3 (using all possible combinations of project settings), Clickteam Fusion 2.5 and Unity and found no issues on Unity and only minor stutters on CF2.5 - tested on Pixel 4a5G.

    I'd love to use C3 for my project as it does indeed leave CF2.5 (and Unity as far as ease-of-use is concerned) in the dust when it comes to performance. However there's this issue of jank, caused by a complex third-party system that the C3 Android build depends on.

    You've also mentioned that you're not considering the option to build an APK without the WebView/Cordova wrapper process. I'm sure you have your reasons for not going native, but is there no question of investigating an alternative Android implementation that doesn't have the jank issue?

    I've upvoted this Chromium bug report page and will be submitting a separate complete bug report.

    This is a deal-breaker for me, I'm not sure I can be satisfied a project that will be janky on some devices, not others. Regrettably I'll be cancelling my C3 sub if this can't be resolved.

  • In fact IIRC I've already reported this issue to them. If something isn't getting enough attention, then the more customers who report it to Apple/Google, the higher a priority they will give it.

    Could you provide the links to your reports? I would be happy to leave a comment to them, or we could use them as references. Opening a new request with a different support team and having little information to offer, other than "my C3 game is janky", would not be very productive.

    EDIT: I missed the link in the previous comment, I can see your report. Upvoted!

  • dop2000, hello,

    we can't send a private message here on this forum, so I sent you a message on FB, but it seems you haven't seen it yet, cordially.

  • Construct had this issue with poor performance and frame drops on mobile since forever. And yet it's somehow not Scirra's job to fix it, but us, end users should contact Apple and Google support.

    I can tell you how it will go:

    Me: Hey Apple/Google support, my game runs poorly on Android.

    Them: Millions of games run perfectly fine on our OS. There must be a problem with your game or with the game engine you are using. Address your question to them. Ticket closed.

    I was still using c2 with nw/node. In the past I thought junk was there because cpu wasn't strong enough. But what I've discovered just today really surprised me: I have been developing something with my laptop set to low power consumption, and the game worked flawlessly in nwjs, and today I decided I wanted to see how it works with laptop set to balanced and max power, and to my huge surprised frequent micro stutter started happening!! And it dawned on me that those jitters seam to be related to cpu clock and amount of cores engaged, and that there is a sweet spot for cpu ghz where things perform fine. But that's c2, and I am aware that c3 is way better written.

  • I have the same issue.

    This happens when I test using a debug APK, pretty sure this will happen in my final APK. (60 FPS with jank)

    Sadly some people here cannot even see the jank so they've been developing games and posting on google playstore.

    I've tested some of their games and the jank is there (not to be rude). I've tested on 5+ devices already (J7, A30, A71 and few others)

    Also some of us are new and want to develop without much coding and now having to report most of the things ourselves is a bit hard.

    It took me too long to read and understand about chromium and android web view and the jankiness, instead of developing my own game.

    At the end, I just hope there's someone with spare time to actually develop/test and do the reporting following the dev's response...

    (I'm already working full time, so I'm out) 🫠

  • Whatever the brave browser is doing seems to work much better then chrome on android for me.

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