Halfgeek's Forum Posts

  • Crosswalk does fine for memory management, if you have a really massive game, aim for 1gb ram devices and it should be fine. That's not bad considering most of the market are on 1gb now and all the new stuff is 2gb onwards. So your massive project will be fine.

  • Just to update its about a month since I posted that info, so far the past month my average is $2 per 1000 impressions. For my game, each active install its ~3 impressions per day.

    So to get 1000 impression you'd need around 333 active installs. ie. 333 = $2 a day. Or 3333 users = $20 a day.

    That's not too bad at all!

  • Arima

    It's a browser engine so crosswalk is dumping un-unused assets and reloading new ones you call into the layout if its running of of ram, that most likely is the spike issue.

    You put all of the assets into 1 layout and it ran at 750mb? Pretty impressive heh.

    Also, there's no more sound issue, fixed recently and I've just updated my own game on the Play Store with the new version! yay!

  • https://play.google.com/store/apps/deve ... %20Studios

    I've released Ninja Legacy but have not devoted much time or $ to advertise/market it yet. I am waiting for Intel XDK and C2 to add official AdMob support then make it a free game with a smaller banner Ad and then start marketing it. My Flappy Sperm game is actually making decent $$ and growing and I didn't even advertise it! O_o

  • There's no difference for mobiles as I am aware, they use the total system ram to load assets as it acts as a vram buffer as well (similar to iGPUs in Intel and AMD APU, reliant on system ram). Correct me if I am wrong though.

    All I know is that with CocoonJS and the peak 450mb ram usage, it would not run on devices with 768MB of ram or less, but ran on devices with 1GB of ram.

    With Crosswalk and the 250mb peak usage, it now runs on all the 512mb devices I have tested.

  • For the past month I have been averaging around $2 per 1000 impressions. Using AdMob via MoPub.

    Some days it went as low as 0.74, and others, as high as $4, it varies a lot.

    I notice a pattern, one day high CPM, next day low, day after that high, then low. It kinda alternates. My theory is the Ads aren't "new enough" on the 2nd day, and if ppl already seen/click on it, they wouldn't do it again, until more "new Ads" are shown. I have nothing to base it on, just a hunch.

    As for income, just recently released some games and now starting to earn enough to pay a few bills. Not too bad, hopefully it keeps on growing, and soon I'll have another good game out.

  • Arima

    That is a problem with CocoonJS, its lack of layout-by-layout memory management is a killer blow for large complex games.

    I have not tried Ejecta for iOS but it apparently handles memory load better. For iOS we can only hope Ludei improve CocoonJS major weakness. For Android, Crosswalk is heaps better now, with the final major issue fixed: sound volume/controls!

    Crosswalk only load into ram what you use on your layout, I use a lot of big animated sprites that's why my ram usage is so high. 250MB means it will run on most 512mb ram devices, that gives you only really ancient devices in which it cannot run, but even then, a native engine is not going to make it better when you have that much assets. Each 2048 x 2048 sprite sheet requires 16mb of ram regardless of how you do it, if you have a lot and they need multiple sheets...

    Edit: I have no problem with demanding the device have 250MB of ram free. Most older stuff on the market have 512mb and can handle that. On iOS it gives you a memory warning but it wont crash unless you use beyond what it has free. I had to double check that and other devs say it specifically. Devices from 2 years ago come with 1gb of ram.

  • IntelRobert Thanks for the PM, I can confirm that XDK compiling is working again! AND, you guys have fixed the music/sound volume and controls, working flawless now!! Great job!

  • By yourself? Indie Dev = doing everything.

    But when people ask me what I do, I tell them "software developer" and they all understand that.

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  • All this talk about C2 not being able to make larger complex games on mobiles... not true. I came to C2 with no former programming or art background.

    My first game idea was a huge RPG at HD res (some would say its a mistake to aim big as a noob, I think learning as you go helps a lot), and I stumbled and learnt my way around. When it finished months later, it was 83MB, wouldn't even run with CocoonJS due to its limitations (which I wasn't aware of at the time, my fault!). By trimming it down and changing a lot of assets into PNG8 (which turns out looking 95-99% the same as PNG32), shortening the music loops, removing a few sprites and BG, it went down to 27MB, but still CocoonJS had trouble since it took 450MB of free ram due to it loading all assets into ram at the start. It would run on Tegra 3 devices at 25fps, I thought that was the limitation of HTML5 and accepted my fate.. but its not true, after more optimizations, it now runs on the the same device at 50-60 fps!

    Even better recently with Crosswalk, max of 250MB ram required only. I am not saying my game is a great example of game development, polish, artistic sense or whatever (I had to trim a lot of the art and effects to get it to run well on mobiles). I am just saying its a huge game with over 3,600 events and it runs very well even on older mobiles (HTC Incredible S with a 1ghz Dual-Core and 512mb ram, 800x480 res).

    See how busy the gameplay is:

    Now its no Airscape or Penelope, but with being designed for mobiles and the limitations, there's no way you are going to get those games running smooth on older mobiles.

    My current project is a massive space sci-fi sandbox!

    http://halfgeekstudios.wordpress.com/

    Don't think such complex games are possible via html5/C2 on mobiles? I will prove its possible, alpha gameplay is already smooth on my Tegra 3.

    My only gripes is the lack of AdMob and Google Store integration for C2/Intel XDK currently but its coming soon, something to look forward to when my current project is finished.

    In summary, my opinion is that for smaller games, CocoonJS is actually fantastic for Android and iOS, but bigger games is where it falls flat on its face due to poor memory management, but its something Crosswalk can do (for Android only). Know the limitations and work within and around them.

  • Okay, then two things remain for CocoonJS to fix.

    1. Memory management (lack of).

    2. Horrible required permissions. Let us customize it like in Intel XDK.

    #1 is not crucial for most small games, but bigger games is a must. #2 is just plain sense, not sure why after years it hasn't been done. Few people like to see the huge list of permissions when they install an App.

    Either way its good to see improvements, we're nearly there with CJS and XDK!

  • Windwalker

    making games is serious business - where people invest money and they want profits from it. Which means that game developers try to minimize possible risks. And they don't have time to wait. Now, with 3rd party exporters, risk connected with Construct 2 is quite big. That's why Scirra have almost 1,000,000 downloads but can mention only a few, bigger, really polished games.

    To be honest, most games on the App Stores are absolute trash and the bigger really polished games are far and few between, and the majority are from bigger devs.

    This is more than indie, because C2 is so simple to use everyone can make games. Just because everyone can write, doesn't make them awesome novelists.

  • When I see games like The Next Penelope being made with Construct 2, all I can think of is "How do I get better?!" and certainly not "This game engine is flawed and lacking thats why I can't make awesome games". What one man can do, others can do also. If they can't, indeed it is down to talent. I'm not talented, but C2 has been great in my experience.

  • IntelRobert

    Great news about the audio fix, but I just went to try and recompile it and keep getting this message.

    No changes in code on my end, same game version exported last time.

  • CJS seem to fix their crash on device sleep with their recent updates, previously it would randomly crash or fail to resume on sleep. That was an issue for Samsung definitely.

    So now I think the only one left is the crazy blinking logo.