Exodus Software's Forum Posts

  • Problem with testing is that it has never happened for me. As I'm developing the game I've run it extensively. That area is right where you start the game so I see it constantly.

    My guess is that it must be hardware for specific users. And given the number of people who have played it and it being reported twice I assume an extremely small group have the issue.

    Really I just wanted to know if anyone knows what it is. It looks like something used by the engine to do something.

    As for webGL effects those particular tilemaps have no effects attached to them. Even the lighting in that image is just sprites set to a certain blend mode.

  • Got a question, I'd normally post a bug report, but I would have no idea how to replicate this. Sort of just wondering if anyone knows what it is.

    The screenshot is below. The thing in question is that white wavy texture. It is appearing over the wall which is a tilemap. According to the player it showed up when they were playing not from the start. There is no asset in the game that's even close to that so it isn't coming from the game files.

    Sort of just wondering if this is some sort of graphical glitch, like a driver issue or something to that effect. Its only been this one player so it isn't wide spread whatever it is. Still trying to get their specs. If anyone has any insight its appreciated.

  • I don't honestly know about the node worker bit. Like I said I just found a setup that seemed to work. But I agree if you uncheck "use node worker" it probably doesn't make a difference.

    As for the Mac bit because I wanted to address it. Yes, if you unzip the Mac export on Windows it will break it. But as I found out, if you just open it in winRAR and edit the files it works fine. I assume the file permissions get busted during the unzipping process but just viewing them doesn't tamper with it I guess.

  • Hey dcadjust. So as far as I know it is fixed. Here's the steps I take to export every time. I don't honestly know if it does anything or if they fixed the issue. I guess if you are still experiencing it then its still happening though.

    So. As far as I know this happens due to the greenworks plugin not playing nice with NWjs. At least that's what I remember being the issue.

    First you go here. construct.net/en/make-games/addons/84/greenworks. Download the most recent greenworks plugin if you don't already have it. Make sure the version of greenworks matches your export version of NWjs and Steamworks. (This seems to rarely change so you probably won't have to do it often.) Install this plugin, restart construct to make sure it takes.

    Next, go here. greenworks-prebuilds.armaldio.xyz

    From that site you can use the section on the left (click the three bars) to select various versions of the greenworks.node file. You want to find the ones you need and download them. You will probably always want the most recent version (89 at time of writing). When you export as NW.js on the last step where you pick which version of NW.js to use the same area will say "Chromium 'number'", replacing 'number' with the chromium version. On that above website you want to match versions with that number.

    Your runtime will be nw.js. And last your architecture, depending on what versions you are exporting, Win64, Win32, Mac, or Linux you will need to download all the different versions, or just the ones you need. Also of course match to the steamworks release you are using.

    Okay so now that you have all your files there is one thing you have to do before you actually click export in construct. In the command line options box type "--in-process-GPU" without the quotes. I don't think this is related to the issue, but its in my notes so I'm adding it just in case. From what I remember, this command makes using shift tab in your game function properly.

    Anyway, after all of that, you should have your exports and all the node files. So here comes the tedious bit (as if this wasn't already stupidly tedious). Before I continue I should mention that if you don't have it you'll probably want to get winRAR or an equivalent. (https://www.win-rar.com/start.html?&L=0) the free version works fine. Its just a zipping program like 7zip, it will basically help with looking through zipped folders.

    First unzip your node files that you downloaded. Do NOT unzip your game. Next you'll go to your exported game (the zipped version) and double click it, which if you have winRAR should open it up so you can see inside. I'll use a Windows 64 version for this example, but I'll list stuff for the other exports below (most are the same anyway). So you will see all your files within the zip folder. First, locate the "package.nw" file and double click to go into it.

    Within the package.nw file there will be a ton of stuff. You are first looking for a file called "package.json". Double click to open it in notepad. You'll find some gibberish, near the bottom should be a bit of text that says "--enable-node-worker" without the quotes. Delete that text and save the file. Don't touch anything else, you'll probably make something explode.

    Okay so back in package.nw you will see several files called "greenworks-"insert OS architecture here".node. Remember those node files from before? You are going to first delete the relevant file from package.nw. So in the case of Windows 64 delete the one that says "win64" at the end. Then you are going to take your shiny new node file and drag and drop it in. If winRAR ever bothers you with questions along the lines of "are you sure" just say yes. General rule of thumb for this, always tell winRAR yes, unless it asks you to buy it cause nobody has time for that.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you already know all the other tidbits about adding your steam appID and the proper dlls and all that. So you're done. Close the winRAR windows, say yes to anything winRAR asks and then upload as usual.

    If you need to export for Mac look below. Windows 32 bit is the same just replace 64 with 32. Linux is also laid out the same as the windows ones in terms of finding package.nw.

    Path to "package.nw" in Mac

    Open normal zip > mac64 > gameName.app > Contents > Resources > app.nw (at the bottom)

    Where you are at now is the equivalent of package.nw, just named different, follow the steps above.

    I recommend testing all this stuff before you just put it on Steam because I'm pretty sure if you screw it up, especially the node files part, the game just black screens on launch every time. Anyway, hopefully that helps. I don't know if I've ever gotten confirmation that it 100% works, but no one has mentioned a black screen issue to me since I started doing this so I'm assuming it is fine. Good luck bud, hope your game does well.

  • So, I was literally in the middle of typing up a response. I was exporting on the side to verify how long things take, but then the export actually just went quickly. My original post was from back on r210. I'm currently on r228. I exported most recently I think on r227 or r226 and the problem still existed from what I remember.

    However, on r228 it took half the time, image below. 4 minutes still isn't ideal, but its still half the time which is great. At this point I'd think its 100% on the size of the game not the engine. So I'm happy, I guess whatever they did worked. Thanks for the suggestions, I figured this thread was dead and gone until last night.

  • As the title says I noticed something this week. I've done exports twice now. I'm using the desktop version of Construct 3, Version r210.2. I probably wouldn't think to much about this, but each time I export I export for Windows 64 and 32, Mac, and Linux 64. Each of these exports is now taking about 8 and a half minutes to perform. Based on what I see the export seems to hang on the "minify script" portion. I have my minify mode set to "simple".

    In the past, each export would only take a minute or two, usually it would go faster after exporting once, I assume that is due to how compressing images works for exports. I don't know if something magically happened in my project or if an update to Construct did this. Simply put, exporting now seems to take a very long time, seemingly because it hangs on the "minify script" portion of the process. It isn't technically a bug so I'm just reporting see if anyone else has experienced this. My system specs are also listed below, but I don't think they are the problem as they have remained constant

    Specs

    OS: Windows 10 V1902

    CPU: Intel i5-4670 3.40GHz

    RAM: 16GB DDR3

    GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (if it even matters for this)

    Screencap of one of the exports as well. This one in particular was the Mac export but they all looked like this.

  • Only do this if your game doesn't run in worker mode. It would still be better to find a clear way to reproduce instead.

    Yeah, I did for curiosities sake try it while worker mode was enabled, game just crashes on launch, no surprise there. The couple of times that I took it off worker mode and deleted the argument it ran fine, but that probably doesn't mean too much since it runs fine 95% of the time.

  • Thanks for the info I'll try disabling node workers in the next build. I usually patch on Fridays so it will be a few days.

    As far as reports go, all the occasions I've heard of it popping up the user was on Windows 10. They didn't specify what version of the OS, but this has happened on and off in rare occasions for several months now, probably as far back as April. Whatever the issue is it seems to be pretty rare, like I said I've only seen it a few times and others very rarely report it.

  • It's posted below. I just copy pasted it from the document. If you actually want the file I can upload that, I just figured it would be easier this way. The only change from the default file that I'm aware of is the addition of "--in-process-GPU" to my knowledge you have to have that included or the Steam Overlay doesn't work properly.

    {

    "main": "index.html",

    "name": "Verdant_Village",

    "description": "",

    "version": "1.0.0.0",

    "window": {

    "icon": "icons/icon-256.png",

    "title": "Verdant_Village",

    "width": 512,

    "height": 288,

    "position": "center",

    "resizable": true,

    "frame": true,

    "kiosk": false,

    "show": true

    },

    "user-agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (%osinfo) AppleWebKit/%webkit_ver (KHTML, like Gecko, Chrome, Safari) NWjs/%nwver",

    "chromium-args": "--enable-node-worker --disable-plugins --disable-internal-flash --disable-popup-blocking --allow-file-access-from-files --ignore-gpu-blacklist --in-process-GPU"

    }

  • I'd try to report this as a bug of some sort, but I can't replicate it and therefore the report would just get closed. I've made a game using Construct 3, Version R210. It is on Steam.

    The game is exported using NW.js, version 0.47.0, Chromium 84.

    It has the greenworks plugin running, version 0.47.0.

    I've been downloading the matching node files needed at the link below and replacing them. Currently I'm getting the v84 node files for NW.js.

    greenworks-prebuilds.armaldio.xyz

    All this said, I still have people who are playing the game who say that the game will either fail to launch. Or it will launch and sit on a black screen forever and never actually load the game. Alongside this there are reports of NW.js leaving processes behind after the game is closed.

    The general assumption I've made is that if you force close these tasks it will allow you to start the game, which seems to work in most cases. However I've also had two people report that it doesn't fix the problem.

    My question, after all this, is does anyone know anything about this? All I could find was a thread from 5 years ago talking about the issue happening in C2. Despite like 8 pages of thread there was seemingly no fix. Based on how the thread went it looked like the Construct devs just chose to forget it was a problem, but perhaps I missed something. Anyone else having this issue or know what to do about it? From what I can tell this has nothing to do with the project itself, it seems like an NW.js thing. Any answer is appreciated, thanks.

  • I'll be honest I've sort of forgotten, and I don't have the original file anymore to see when it was made. I believe I started on it sometime in mid 2017, so 2 and a half years.

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads
  • Been working on this game for some time. I don't usually post on the Construct forums, but I figured why not. It just got put into early access on Steam. The game is a fantasy farming sim, sort of like Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon.

    store.steampowered.com/app/1236900/Verdant_Village

  • Strange. Like I said I don't really expect a fix, just curious as to why it happened. Maybe my chrome is corrupted or something and needs a fresh install.

  • So I'm not reporting this as a bug because I have no idea what could be causing it, could be my computer but I doubt it as everything else is running normally. Basically, yesterday Construct 3 worked fine. Today when i started to work in it the program lags horribly. Not my game mind you, the actual C3 software lags. Things take like 15 seconds to copy paste, it can barely load layouts or event sheets, even typing things into text boxes lags significantly. The debugger hardly works as well, and if you try to mess with something in construct while the game is previewing just forget it.

    Nothing changed on my computer from yesterday to today as far as I know, no windows updates or anything. The only change I've noticed in construct itself is that some of the UI for the engine seems to have changed slightly. It's a bit hard to explain but check boxes are different and in game text boxes have a slightly different feel as well, I uploaded a quick image of the check boxes below. I find it hard to believe that a minor UI change caused the entire engine to die, but like I said it's the only change I can see.

    I'm running version r201. This happens in both the desktop version and the browser version of the engine. In case a dev looks at this my computer specs are also listed below. I don't know that I expect anything to be done about this, I'm mostly just curious if this is just happening to me or if other people have seen the same issues. I can work in it but needless to say its quite a hassle.

    Specs

    OS: Windows 10 V1903

    CPU: Intel I5 3.40Ghz

    RAM: 16GB

    GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

  • Good to know that I'm not just going crazy. Thanks for all your hard work.