Halfgeek's Forum Posts

  • cesisco

    I tested XDK beta with my own game and found it running smooth. On a LG G-Pad 8 inch, with Snapdragon S600.

  • Game is nearly finished, just doing final polish and bug-hunting. Looks like I will make it for a June launch on Android first, then I need to get some Apple gear (I have a really old iPhone 4, which is just crap) to test on it then release on iOS.

    Here's the latest gameplay video:

    Thank you all for the encouragement and feedback. I gave a shout out to Guizmus in the credits for helping me with the Nav Icons and — for the positive words and some pirate taunts. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

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  • Would love it if the Ludei logo wasn't blinking and there's an actual loading bar instead... so sad panda.

  • Here's my current project: Star Nomad (Thanks C-7), a tribute to classic spacesims of old, designed for mobiles and tablets. Nearly ready for launch on Android!

  • No such thing, since Apple uses 4:3 ratios on their Tablets and 16:9 on their Phones. So that platform you have to make two separate versions if you want your game to look properly.

  • Most mobile devices are 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratios.

    720p is a safe bet, as it scales up very well to 1080p which is the most common PC/Desktop resolution.

  • Could you share the testing capx?

    Sorry, no. It's my work in progress (nearly done!), Star Nomad Sandbox RPG/RTS.

    If you want context, the effects are used in scenes like this:

    I can't say what it will be like for your own project, but considering this game is already quite complex with multiple fleets engagement and AI, I had thought adding WebGL shaders would be impossible, but its not! And good for me (and you guys too, give it a go) since the effects takes the entire game up a notch.

  • Ashley

    My RPG used 450mb with CocoonJS and it runs very well on all devices I've tested which had at least 1GB of ram. Still it was excessive and the load times were horrendous (40s!).. XDK got it down to around 240MB and loaded in 12s.

    100mb is a very conservative limit.

    I do agree the target is around 200MB, so that it can run on 512mb ram devices of which there are still plenty around.

    Does Spriter work for mobiles via CJS or XDK?

  • IntelRobert

    In regards to the visual clarity (or lack of), this was raised awhile ago, is there a solution upcoming?

    I compared the same build and scene with CocoonJS and the latest XDK, there is a large drop in clarity in the XDK compiled game compared to CJS. Performance is very similar between both.

    These screenshots are captured from my device running the game, LG G-Pad 8 with native 1920 x 1200p resolution.

  • I've been a vocal "anti-WebGL effects for mobiles" guy on this forum since forever, due to a bad encounter with a few of them in my game which I had to remove. But recently I've just had the chance to do some testing on several effects that are quite useful to have to spice up presentation on mobiles.

    I will just list what it is and how much performance loss it was to have it. This was run on my LG G-Pad 8 inch, with the Snapdragon S600 SoC (which is around the same as the Nexus 7 with Snapdragon S4). It's about 60-65% of the processing power as devices with newer SoCs, such as S800, S801 and Samsung Exynos Octa (In their S4 and S5), so its by no means the fastest thing out there, but its still got plenty of punch. Also tested on an Asus TF700 tablet with Tegra 3 SoC (quite weak now).

    Vertical and Horizontal Glows = 10 sprites (32 x 32 pixels) on the screen, moving random with bullet. Performance loss ~50%.

    Warp Mask/Ripple and Water Background = 3 transparent sprite (256 x 256) of one effect at a time only, not all combined, static no behavior (used to cause a ripple effect to generate fancy fx or water scenes). Performance loss ~30%.

    Glass = 4-6 sprites, (128 x 128), with fade behavior and onscreen every-tic change its size to grow larger by 16 pixels (a circle shockwave). Performance loss ~10%.

    All of this was in the context of a proper game (Star Nomad), not a blank screen.

    This was compiled using Crosswalk/Intel XDK.

    I got the same result with CocoonJS for the V/H Glow Effects, but didn't try others with CJS yet. (Edit: Just tested Glass with CJS, same condition as XDK, very similar result! YAY!)

    It definitely looks like some WebGL effects are very fast on mobiles while others are extremely wasteful to use.

    Feel free to chip in if you have some experience with the other shader effects, I'd love to try more but due to my horrid internet connection, uploading my 30MB game each test is a chore.

    Anyhow, I love that the Glass shaders are so efficient, because there's a LOT you can do with it to spice up the visuals.

  • CocoonJS is 2.3+

    Crosswalk is 4+ only

  • mmm ok

    i just tru to optimise my game by reducing at maximum all collisions and polygone colisions

    i get results ... gameplay is fast but just first 5 secondes

    that mean when i lunch it on iphone 4 and go playng game, it run normal but after 5 , 6 seconds game go slower

    on iphone 4s no problem all seem to be good

    any idea about that mr.silver or mr.ashley ?

    iPhone 4 is just shit, the hardware is pathetic and weaker than my my android phone from 2010 for handling java.

    4S is better, heaps better.

  • —, thanks for that. So does that mean that streaming in this case, doesn't mean online streaming? But refers to whether the game will actually load to memory?

    Haha sorry if my question is quite noob, as I really am a bit clueless in this aspect.

    Streaming in this case is loading the music file (.ogg or .mp4) into memory and playing it. As music is not automatically loaded into memory unless its called.

    On older devices, its highly recommended to do a Preload first, then wait ~2s before playing to ensure the file plays correctly (as it takes time to read and load into memory). I found my older phones would not play a bigger track without that preload time.

  • Music needs to go into Music folder because of the streaming, if you place it in Sounds, it will try to load entire file and then play, which would cause a big delay. Whereas Music will start streaming and play with about 1s delay only (close to 0 on newer devices).

  • PCs will often (in my experience, nearly always) run even if you load more than they can handle, it just swaps it out, from vram to memory and vice versa for your textures, this causes stutter and momentary dips in frames per second. If you load MORE than the system ram can hold, it will go into virual mem on the hard-drive and thats just not playable.

    Still, making a PC game, go crazy with the art and shaders and try to make the best looking game that you can first.