Juryiel's Forum Posts

  • > I've already completed both a game AND its sequel ... I need to first be able to reliably export my games to my target platforms.

    >

    > Scirra ... are aware of the state of mobile games with C2 ...So it is clearly willfully misleading.

    >

    Yes, the current state of mobile games with C2 is bad, I'm not denying it. But exporters don't help you either! Making feature-compatible native exporters for android AND iOS would take a long time, so you would have to seat on your games for at least another few years! Also, by the time those years pass, the devices in the market will already be powerful enough to run your games, so the exporter would probably be redundant.

    Now, I'm assuming you already tried to optimize your game and even sent a capx to Ashley for guidance, and those things didn't work. If so, right now your best bet is to hope intel exporter works better, or that C2 integrates with Ejecta, and that ejecta somehow solves your problems.

    There are no quick solutions to your problem. You are right to be angry that mobile sucks (but to be honest, threads complaining about performance are nothing new, why did you insist on making mobile games when the whole board consistently complains that mobile is broken?)

    I'm still finding workarounds to things to get my game to work and have largely moved on to my larger Unity project until an undetermined time, for now. The particular game is not the issue because these are small autorunner test games mostly based on the autorunner template and therefore SHOULD work (but don't) since the meat of the games is mostly made by Scirra themselves. The problem is, if I can't get these games to work right there is no way I can get a larger project to work right. In essence, these test-games demonstrate that C2 is useless to me for putting out games right now so I do not invest more time with it at the moment. I understand that there are no quick solutions, but I disagree with the problem. I think the problem is one of 1st vs 3rd party. The problem is that scirra doesn't control their own exporters, so no matter what the quality of their product as far as C2 goes, the resulting game quality depends on other parties, and many of those parties don't care about my game because I am not their main target customer (e.g. Ludei). So I think 1st party solutions are necessary, even if it takes long, effort has to be started sometime, or if not, at least official partnerships between Scirra and third parties have to happen. Scirra has to do something to ensure quality since they are the only party who has any responsibility towards me (as I am their direct customer, I am not google Chrome's customer). If it's not started now we'll be in the same boat a year from now.

    The reason I insisted on mobile is for a few reasons. CC is good for desktop, I don't need to use anything else. If I want something more than CC, there is Unity. The fact that CC exists largely allows me to not care too much about the money I spent on C2, I try to think of it instead more as a donation toward CC, which deserves it. Another reason for mobile is that I had tried CC and seen that Ashley is a great developer and very knowledgeable. His expertise gave his defense of C2's state more weight in my eyes rather than other users who complained. People complain all the time for all sorts of things, and it's hard to know if those complaints are valid, especially when Ashley, whose work and knowledge is proven to me, posts disagreements about how things are the users' fault. He's been getting a lot of push lately so he's been more willing to admit shortcomings especially in this high profile thread, but that was not the case for a while. The third reason is largely, again, because I trusted the people behind Scirra, I gave their 'sales pitch' page more trust than I guess I should have had. I should, in retrospect, have done more homework. Unfortunately that was not possible because mobile export is not testable on the free version. I think in retrospect, given my bias to trust Ashley's expertise, I think the only thing that would have convinced me that the users were right and Ashley was just overselling the state of mobile would have been those videos Arima posted earlier comparing C2's performance. It's a shame I didn't find those ahead of time.

    In any case I don't see why it matters. Clearly many mobile users seem to agree that they were mislead about C2 capabilities and that should be enough to conclude that it was not somehow just me misinterpreting the message Scirra was putting out. Therefore my specific reasons for picking up C2 for mobile development are not relevant.

  • Whoah, it's not like that! If I really cared only about myself, I would be pressuring Scirra to add more application-making features, since that's my primary source of income.

    What I'm advocating are features that help EVERYONE, not just mobile users:

    • Better/more integrated tilemap object
    • more/better modularity features such as widgets and nested objects
    • ability to run construct apps without draw calls - for server-side programming in multiplayer, so you won't have to code your server in a different language - this would make small MMOs possible within construct, for instance.
    • better ajax support
    • collaborative design capabilities (two people working simultaneously on the same game)
    • an IDE SDK
    • converting the editor to open web tech and opening it's source code (for the IDE only, again I'm not talking about the game engine or the exporter)
    • who knows, maybe even an exporter SDK, so people like

      tomsstudio can try making their own native exporters

    But how are these features useful to everyone? I've already completed both a game AND its sequel (by completed I mean they work on desktop) but I've been sitting on them for a while now because mobile export is not working well. How exactly does anything on your list help me or others like me? The issue is, all the things you ask for are extras in the face of basic functionality lacking from mobile users especially on iOS. Those things are all good, but before they become useful to me in any way I need to first be able to reliably export my games to my target platforms.

    As far as whether what Scirra is doing is 'malicious', I'm not sure if that's how I would describe it, but it is certainly willful. They are aware of the state of mobile games with C2, yet rather than making it clear they choose to only say positive things about it. My guess is because doing otherwise will cost them customers. So it is clearly willfully misleading.

  • If you guys want to pressure Ashley to focus on mobile exporters, then I am within my rights as a buyer to pressure Ashley to NOT focus on mobile and keep his current strategy of a pure-HTML5 product. When this product started (and when I purchased my license) it was all about the desktop, so when business decisions start impacting the quality for me (and make no mistake, if Ashley were to focus on native exporters, the desktop side would suffer), I have to speak.

    You have a lot of opinions about how what you want is whant really matters which largely makes those opinions irrelevant to many C2 users. I don't want to pressure Ashley into doing anything other than what C2 claims it can do, regardless of my own uses for it. If he doesn't have the team size to support those things maybe it would behoove Scirra to stop implying those things are supported. C2 and mobile is not ready, and the fact that there isn't a huge 'Beta' or even 'Alpha' tag when they advertise that means that Scirra is misleading us. Scirra can't have it both ways, where they tell paying customers their product can do something but it really can't. They should support both mobile and desktop because that's what they claim. They should not support only desktop but proceed to collect money from mobile game designers by promising a mobile game design product and then funneling that into only improving desktop game quality while mobile game quality is, at this point, unworkable in most cases.

    You're thinking about this only from Scirra's perspective and your own perspective, but not from the perspective of small design teams with small budgets who blow their budget on C2 due to misleading promises of mobile support only to find that they can't actually make their games. C2 is not CC, where Ashley is making it for free. Ashley is selling us a product and making claims about that product. The options are to either stop making those claims or to fulfill those claims for all customers. Anything else is not acceptable, nor do you get special preference because C2 originally started with desktop support.

  • Ok, will do.

  • I have since stopped using the toon shader (I only use shaders to mockup stuff that I later put directly into the art), but I can run some tests and figure it out, I think the browser was definitely a version of Chrome, and the device may have been the HTC One X on Sprint but I'm less sure on the device.

    Relates to this maybe:

    https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu ... ?id=245755

    essentially sounds like a bug in the drivers that allows chrome to detect available precision correctly, or maybe some other problem causing Chrome's detection to fail.

  • There's an argument to make a native engine to support older devices, but a native engine could easily take so long to develop to maturity that the next generation of phones and software updates would have already filtered down and far reduced the problem. This already happened with desktop. I dread the idea that we spend a year holding up everything else to write a native engine, and then by the time we're done HTML5 performance on mobiles is not a problem. What a colossal waste that would be!

    The appeal is that once the task is done it will be under Scirra's control. When it's 3rd party control and that 3rd party doesn't make C2 a priority there will always be serious issues cropping up, like the recent and sudden drop of support for XP and Vista. It just makes it difficult to justify using C2 on anything other than just messing around. People will try it, buy it even, find out it isn't a serious platform, and move on. If you were to track your users I would imagine you would find that this is a common pattern. Why not hire someone, do a kickstarter or something, so that it doesn't hold you up? I would be more than happy to donate toward development of exporting tools that are quality controlled by Scirra. I imagine many of your customers would be as well.

  • I have a small question, why use db for unit of audio volume? instead of a linear number.

    It makes sense for some applications when dealing with signals that can take values over very large ranges, but for applications intended for PC or phone speakers I agree, it's not very useful.

  • Some of you guys believe you can have all this...

    1- A cheap solution (yes C2 is really cheap considering the updates and how the scene is moving fast).

    2- Not learning programming in c#, java or js, everything must be click and drop.

    3- An intelligent assistant to tell you how to do events correctly and how to not use 5000px sprites for mobile.

    4- Push a button and magically it will export to all possible mobile devices with a perfect fps, with feature parity (and multiplayer too! ).

    I understand the hope, but you have to be realistic in your expectations, even if it is hard to accept : you can't have it all today.

    To make a polished and fun game in the mobile world today, it is a lot work or experience, or everyone would be able to do it.

    And the comment "pay 10k to make exporter to iOS, android", is naive at best...that about the min. monthly salary of a capable developer. If it takes years to millions-dollars-funded companies to create exporters, it is probably going to take a lot more than a month to one developer.

    The only thing I expect is what Scirra says their tool can do on their pages. It's not living up to that promise.

  • I don't think I was clear. I was looking for an object that can be resized in both the way a tilebackground is, and a sprite is. Not one command that does both, but I want to have both options available. If this is still unclear an easy way to understand what I mean is to take an image, and make a tiledbackground with it, and then also make a sprite with it. Resize each one in the editor and see what happens. The only difference is that I don't necessarily need it to tile repeatedly.

    It looks like I can do this with Rojo's spritesheet plugin by modifying the width and height vs the subwidth and subheight.

  • Is it possible to crop a sprite at runtime? I want to shrink a sprite without actually shrinking the image, but cropping it as the sprite gets smaller. Exactly like what tiled backgrounds do when you shrink them, though I can't use those because I also need to be able to resize the sprite in the regular way.

    So in essence, is there some way to get both of those functionalities in one object? Perhaps another plugin I'm not aware of?

  • The engine can't do it on mobiles because the exporters are lacking. Why do you want to argue semantics?

    It's not semantics. That's like saying "the engine can't do it because it's actually incomplete, even though we advertise it as complete". Whereas you are trying to imply that "some engines can't do stuff, that's totally normal." A 2d engine can't do 3d stuff, that's acceptable. I wouldn't complain about that. Advertising that you support mobile and implying that it's ready for production when in fact that's not true is not acceptable. Advertising that you have a 3d engine when really it only does 2d would get complaints.

    EDIT: Specifically there is no reason to think that 'HTML5 is not ready' unless you have already used the wrappers C2 depends on. So if it tells me it's ready for mobile, without being able to test it I think it's ready for mobile, and I buy it. For all I know before buying it, the HTML5 implementation C2 uses could easily have been ready for production. There is no global reason to assume that just because it's HTML5 it's not ready. People only find out it's not after they pay for it, and this leads to complaints. This should not be hard to understand or seem unreasonable.

  • Me saying HTML5 isn't there yet is not equal to saying its defective. It can't do everything you want it to do. Neither would any game engine in fact. You work with what it can do.

    To me with comments like this it just seems like you don't get how this works. HTML5 is not an application to be ready or not. It's a specification. Specific implementations are ready or are not ready. It's not that HTML5 can't do something in this case (though there are things that can't be done), it's that EVEN THOUGH html5 spec includes these things, Crosswalk/Ludei wrappers do not fully support those things yet because they are beta products. In essence it's like someone selling an incomplete runtime with unstable basic features as a complete product ready for deployment rather than a beta, leading people to believe it's generally complete and stable. It's not like an engine not having a feature, instead it's like an engine misleading you that it has stable features when those features are actually heavily experimental. This is true with C2 and mobile, and it's why you get so many complaints. Talking about "Oh the engine just can't do that" is just .. well it's just so off the mark I'm not sure why you insist on continuing this when you are clearly not appreciating the issue.

  • The question is, what kind of game do you want to make and is it possible with C2 and Crosswalk? If it isn't, you either change your game or you look elsewhere. That is the price you pay for using a HTML5 easy to use game engine. The price is compromise because again, HTML5 isn't there yet.

    I understand that I can use another engine. I am doing just that. I don't see what that has to do with anything. C2 advertises its ability to make mobile games and doesn't say that HTML5 is not ready, instead Ashley preaches the opposite, that it's the same as native and blah blah blah. People use their money to buy it based on that. So they have every right to expect C2 to be able to make games rather than serving as a beta test for some buggy third party export wrapper.

    Anyway I think this conversation is useless. People who buy a product because its advertised to be able to do something will complain when they can't do that thing with the product. You coming into threads telling them to go buy another product or that the product is fine because YOU are not having problems so therefore any problems they are having are not due to the product is just useless. I don't see why you do it, and I don't see how you can justify doing it without offering to buy them the other products you are recommending or at least covering their C2 expense. If you're not buying them another engine, covering their C2 expense, or fixing their bugs, there is no need to reply to their complaints.

  • When did I say Crosswalk doesn't have bugs? Are you kidding me? I noted it was improving quickly.

    When you design for mobiles you compromise, especially so with HTML5.

    Ok, improving quickly, but then your whole 'if someone isn't having problems then you shouldn't be either' stuff is both unnecessary and missing the point.

    As far as your second statement, again missing the point. The test game I'm making for mobile would have no issues with a better export solution. So you only have to make sacrifices when designing for mobile if using C2 with such simple games. Using another engine this would have no issues, it's just so simple and not a real game, just a game designed to test the state of C2 before investing into a real project.

    Anyway I'm not really interested in convincing you, I'm just interested in you understanding that your experiences do not represent other people's. For many people, C2 is not working as advertised. And those people just don't care that it's working for you or that you're willing to excuse its shortcomings.

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  • If we're not talking about bugs but actual engine features, then if I use a particular native engine and I want to do Z and it doesn't do it, do I then blame that engine also? You do what your engine is capable of, if it isn't capable of doing what you need it to, then use another engine.

    I'm not sure what you're not getting. HTML5/WebGL implementation in chrome / Crosswalk are incomplete, especially so on mobile versions of chrome. It's not that 'the engine is not capable', e.g. I can do a lot of the things on the desktop version of chrome / node-webkit. It's just that wrapper C2 depends on for mobile is in a BETA stage, Crosswalk labels itself as such. And yet here you are telling people that they aren't experiencing bugs, even though crosswalk itself calls itself a beta wrapper.