Jayjay's Forum Posts

  • — Games

    Agreed, there are limits to the amount of heavy-hitter stuff that can be used, and that will apply in any engine, but we also have taken them into account and avoided using them for the majority of cases, especially physics which does not get used at all.

    I like that you blame user code, both of us devs on our game ( which isn't little <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink"> http://store.steampowered.com/app/334190/ ) are coders outside of C2. In fact, that reminds me that nesting is completely broken in C2 and most code that we would do in programming has to be extremely dumbed down and expanded into more events/conditions. That's a nice "gotcha!" to run into <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz">

    I'm not crazy enough to expect C2 to even be able to run the title screen on mobile, just desktop performance is what I want <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile"> Mobile is a whole different beast to tame and cram stuff into.

  • Aurel Thanks! We actually did do that but found we also needed to have the "on collision" events left in as it didn't work on platforms. There's so much stuff I'd love to test more if I had the time to make more comparison/example capx and cap's, as CC tends to run much smoother than C2 at any framerate.

  • I would say engine meaning C2, there really seems like a problem with game logic going haywire if it's running slower than 60fps (perhaps that's boiling down to the way JS is though), but there's also issues in the Node-Webkit and/or Chrome as well.

  • newt It's not blaming Scirra for things that they didn't say and that I can't do, it's blaming them for literally the games they show on the homepage that are having performance problems, or games like mine which has performance problems on PC's with better specs than mine with the latest graphics drivers and etc.

    It's when my game drops to 59FPS instead of 60FPS and suddenly characters are jumping higher or collisions are not being detected when they were at 60FPS.

    Those are things that we've had customers show us, and we never saw in our own test environments. It's not that there is no proof, it's that I can't just hand a capx to Scirra because they might not even get to see the issue either.

    We are all (mostly all?) game devs here and we know what is "impossible", that's not what we mean when we are upset with C2 advertising that we can make great games. It's that C2 can't make the most basic of arcade games from the 80's (most of my game is "jump and shoot! eg: jump, shoot, jump, climb a wall, jump, climb a ladder"), or a simple clone of Broforce, without extreme lag or random issues out of our control.

    So in effect:

    Can you make games that work on a large number of platforms, and devices with it? Yes, but they won't run properly most of the time once they get bigger than a phone game.

    Can you make every thing imaginable? Nope, you can't even make the real games from the 80's/NES era.

    That's thanks to the engine/runtimes not working properly.

  • alspal (comment missing? it said something similar to: it looks like HTML5 is here to stay for Construct though) Agreed, but there are other options within HTML5/JS/WebGL that are worth considering, including the very promising asm.js that Ashley said he'll likely work on implementing further into the engine.

    It's likely that technology will continue to keep improving and "standardizing" according to the W3 HTML5 standard as well, but I'd rather put my money towards Scirra acquiring more control over (or direct dev time and support from) runtimes similar to CocoonJS and Node Webkit (or now: NW.js) than a new editor.

    I feel like C2 can be so much more than just a tool for prototyping, making small games, and education. I don't know many arcade-style platformer games made in C2 that have 3+ hours of game duration so far (eg: not endless runner, but something that's large editor side and runtime side), but having made one with damainman I can say that the editor is still bearable as-is. With a fully compatible and functional runtime C2 would be able to advertise making "advanced games" without exaggerating and then everyone will really win. I'd even love to pay a monthly subscription towards a "future fund" for Scirra which benefits everyone if it lets them get more control over the runtime.

  • szymek Not sure newt was trying to go for that kind of meaning, but sometimes it does feel very defensive rather than progressive in discussions like these with most people of opposing opinion finally deciding to be silent or leave entirely.

  • newt But there are also other 2D engines that can do tonnes of things C2 still can't right now (without the issues mentioned previously) when it comes to the final exported product. There is no point as a for-profit game dev in having the best 2D game engine/dev tool in the world if your exported game doesn't run on any client's computer with reasonable specs.

    I feel that toning down the hyperbole of the adverts is the first step to improving the situation, rather than encouraging people to leave the community and Construct. This tool is the future, but pretty much all of the runtimes other than the pure HTML5 export (which is at the mercy of whatever browser you use) are certainly not.

  • — Games

    The problem is that the errors aren't in the game logic. The errors damainman is describing are completely random engine issues across a variety of customers and completely unseen in any of our own desktops. Low spec machines do tend to have more issues, but even high end ones that wipe ours across the floor seem to have problems we've never seen even once in any of our testing.

    Another reason why giving him the entire capx won't work beyond copyright ( we offered for Scirra to sign NDA/etc to access the source with no reply at: ) is because there is just so much going on that it would probably take him the same 1.5+ years we've been working on it to fully map everything out. We worked on this code nearly every day for that whole time and know it best, if there was something more we could do to fix it or debug further we would (and, we are!)

    And if the problem turns out to be Node Webkit or Chromium you know what will happen? We will get told to contact them and pray that they can fix it. That's just plain aggravating considering that this middleware is supposed to be the end-point where we report bugs as customers of Scirra directly.

    I love Scirra, and have since the first time I saw Construct Classic in the real early stages, but in the same way that CC ran into limitations and a total re-write was decided upon, C2 has now done the exact same thing but C3 won't even be a different runtime so the same issues I have now will be there waiting for me.

    I don't want Ashley to abandon C2, that's part of why I want it fixed, in fact I want Scirra to invest in their product and hire the contractors/staff and make something really professional out of it. For big game devs we would certainly be willing to pay at a minimum the cost of Unity pro, because we don't care about 3D (but Quazi's Q3D is looking really good!), we just need 2D to work.

    It's not just art, it's sounds and the event triggers attached to those sounds. Taking out those would probably break the game and between supporting our game, our day jobs, and other commitments there's just not enough time in the day.

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  • Schoening Well right on the homepage it says "Build Once. Publish Everywhere." with "True multiplatform support" and yet my game does not run properly on almost every Linux or Mac computer I've tried, or WiiU at all (due to WebGL but also performance). Mobile was never my own goal so I won't mention more than that I've read many difficulties people face there.

    Ashley's blog post is also often used to show how "HTML5 [is] faster than native [games in Construct Classic]" ( https://www.scirra.com/blog/102/html5-g ... han-native ), while there have been a few times where this is simply not true such as the performance tests in this thread here: viewtopic.php?f=146&t=123580&p=879768#p879768

    That example was used to improve C2 though, so it would probably be really beneficial for more comparison files like it to be made/to have more facts behind the arguments on both sides.

    Ashley also said that C2 should scale to handle "large projects" in their Reddit AMA ( https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/commen ... us/clmarke ), while now many well known large projects are moving onto other tools in future. By the time your game gets large enough the editor slows down and can crash while adding objects or events, I had to hack my windows registry just to be able to edit events but still have to wait about 5 to 10 seconds each time I try editing or adding an event that opens the object list (and yes, icon cache was off too).

    Definitely agree, trolls don't help.

    I also think that'd be a great suggestion <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

  • digitalsoapbox

    Agreed, based on the way Scirra operates full native doesn't work for their timeframe.

    For our game we ended up with a 500mb project at export (lots of graphics and music and sound, lots of levels, lots of other layouts, and lots of things going on in-game, and about 3 to 4 hours of gameplay), and after finally releasing the game we found that the performance was very hit-and-miss across machines with almost the exact same (great) specs and that screen-recording software like FRAPS or even a Skype window share would cause glitches like characters jumping higher than they should ever be able to. For some customers even having Chrome open at the same time caused noticeable issues.

    Right now we are only able to use Node Webkit 10.5. We figured updating to NW.js 12.0 would be better, but performance has not been near what we get in 10.5 (and upgrading C2 also drops performance for some reason, we've tried each new release since r196 with no luck).

    This isn't a small game admittedly, but it's also not the largest I've seen for 2D games made in middleware like Construct 2. We invested a large amount of time into optimizing performance and still see things happening from customers that have never happened in our testing. Things like this are almost impossible to "produce a blank cap demonstrating the bug" for and are also why we had to make some tough decisions on which platforms to release on based on how many people will likely be unable to run the game at all (not an unnoticeable amount based on Steam's hardware surveys).

    So yes, it's partially humour to say C2 is still early access, but when it comes to stability in larger games and selling to a fairly large customer base, it's definitely the rough and early stages for us, bugs that would be tolerable in freeware or unnoticeable in smaller games matter and the ones we don't have control over are what hurt the most.

  • digitalsoapbox Awesome, can't wait to hear how Xbox One is looking! I agree that Unity has its flaws and that's actually why I really want for C2 export formats to be able to get into a position of having more stability and performance, I just feel that it's not yet the time for the website to say "We're stable and you can make whatever 2D game you want and it'll run amazing!" all over its product pages and then turn around and say "Well, it's kinda early access so just wait for the next update/technology" when people are having issues.

    TiAm definitely agree it'd be nice to have either more forces working together on node-webkit or competition to let the best ones survive/rise to the top.

    Schoening again attacking people who are having legitimate issues that are within the bounds of what they were promised the engine would do is not fair. I agree with you that full re-write is insane for just one programmer, but now with C3 in development it's worthwhile to have people voicing their concerns of what they want in the future (and doesn't that mean that C2 is going to someday too be retired like CC?)

    I don't get extra slack from any customers or reviewers when my 2D 80's inspired arcade game doesn't run properly on decent machines just because we are a "2 man team building an HTML5 game". It's great to be a fan of Construct, I have been since almost the earliest betas of Construct Classic

    It really sucks that people would ever need to "f*** off", and it doesn't look good on the community or development tool as a whole if they do. It's not the people trying to make a 3D MMORPG leaving, it's people making simple arcade platformers and top-down racing games who just can't get their professional games working the way they need them to. I think I'm just saying that it isn't "you're with us or you're against us", it's a community of people who all have very different goals and aspirations under the same promise, the same things we see in the advertising material and feature lists of Construct 2.

    volkiller730 Very true too!

  • Ashley hmm, my point was that the same bug being someone else's problem (while still technically being our problem as paying customers and therefore also a problem for you) doesn't make it any better. Google release updates that try to be one-update-fixes-all, and so when they introduce bugs for us it's not really their problem and it takes more effort to get the whole community to report the bug so that they realize it's important.

    Sure, they have connections and contacts that you don't, but they also have way more projects and people to support in their day job. Perhaps hiring an expert in low-level driver/OpenGL issues who can experiment and debug and fix while you can focus on the next features would make native extremely viable, and everyone would benefit even if the cost of C2/C3 was increased for it.

  • Ashley Well I wouldn't mind the customer needing to install proper DirectX files, even now we are finding that customers need to install DirectX updates or the latest versions of their graphics drivers in order to avoid the game having the strangest glitches/bad reviews, so it's not really that much of a difference in our case.

    There probably are nasty bugs hiding somewhere in each layer that you are working on top of for sure, but the ability to fix it or do a work-around at one of the lower levels rather than relying on a slow giant corporation to contact another slow giant corporation seems better for consistent stability (as a driver or DirectX/OpenGL issue will still exist in our games but be further out of reach as it may require a driver update, and also modifications to Node Webkit, or even Chrome itself). I know well that it's tough enough getting anything to run properly across a variety of machines, so it definitely is nice that the runtime is able to slowly expand its compatibility and stability every day, but it also feels like it's taking a lot longer for fixes to trickle down the chain than even making an in-house webkit style runtime would take to fix some of the most pressing bugs right now.

    Yeah, it is pretty cool that Google is putting some help into fixing their own product, but that's also a situation where you are just as helpless as your customers, as the problem is further up the chain. At least with the AMD bug you were able to fix it and then release it as soon as you had the solution. Google could tell us the secrets to all of our Node Webkit issues but if we aren't compiling the source code ourselves we can't fix them.

    And that's great, I really love C2 and all the hard work you've done since your Tigerworks days. I do see the future of HTML5 and WebGL, but my customers aren't buying the future they just want to play my 2D game on a PC that is more than fit to play Half Life 2, and any bugs that I created/I am able to fix myself in my capx, or that you can fix in a future update, are A-Okay

  • Egyptoon

    Yeah I agree <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

    but also I would acknowledge that there have been quite a few professional games made in C2 of varying genre and size, here's a list of Construct 2 (and some Construct Classic from the looks of it) games on Steam Greenlight (some of which have been Greenlit/are already on Steam): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =103535227

  • digitalsoapbox as someone who has made both 2D and 3D games from scratch I can confirm that it actually is better in some cases than being completely held hostage by a third-third party (as it's not just Construct 2 and driver vendors we are waiting on, it's also Chrome, Node-Webkit, and the HTML5 standard in general).

    The main reason we don't re-invent the wheel is because we want to actually finish the games we make instead of producing tonnes of unfinished abandonware before we finally settle on choice of programming language, memory usage/allocation, design pattern(s), and other low-level things. Prototyping is a great time to switch engines around, and being half-way finished or further is not.

    Middleware that works roughly the same way every time can be accounted for with work-arounds, while random engine-breaking updates can stall or kill a project entirely.

    The reason why I personally want native desktop is because I know that Scirra can and has done an AMAZING native DirectX 9 runtime before with Construct Classic: http://www.scirra.com/construct-classic

    Literally the C2 editor exporting to CC would be all I'd ever need ( as CC had a buggy editor but pretty solid runtime...except on Vista <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz"> ).

    Point is though, we want to use Construct 2, as a game dev tool it is literally the best we've ever seen, especially for 2D games. However, when you want to release commercial titles and pay say $500 for a copy of a "professional business edition of a game development tool" for each member of your indie studio to do so, you really want said game engine to actually perform the tasks it promises, especially after you've just raised all your funds in a Kickstarter and now have to release a product on the budget you initially planned (and other, less specific, cases).

    Unity is where a lot of serious C2 developers seem to be going, and each one I've seen hasn't blamed the editor in Construct 2, just the lack of control that Scirra has over runtime/export.

    Also as a side note I've been following Sombrero for some time and it's looking really good, reminds me of the Friendly Strike series I played in my Clickteam TGF/MMF days <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">