Konidias's Forum Posts

  • Is it not possible to show memory consumption somewhere in Construct 2?

    It would probably save a lot of headaches if people could see just how much memory is being consumed.

  • Yeah... lately I've needed to do it a lot, across a dozen actions at a time, and it can really just be annoying and time consuming. A quicker method would be extremely appreciated.

  • What I'm saying is to replace say... a "set object 1 x position" event with a "set object 2 x position" event, I need to left click a total of 8 times, through multiple menus.

    The solution I'm requesting could be done in a single drag and drop. It would save a ton of time. Especially on large projects where you might have to look through 50 objects to find the one you want to change to.

    Even better would be to drag an object from the Objects panel directly on top of an object icon in the event sheet to replace it.

  • Not sure what you mean

  • I'm not thinking this is possible, but maybe I'm wrong. If it isn't possible, it definitely would be a nice feature.

    Anyway... is there a way to quickly replace an object in code with another one? For example, say I have two sprites, and in my code I have just:

    "On start of layout - Object 1 Destroy"

    Now... I want to copy/paste this destroy action and change the second action to Object 2 Destroy...

    To do this currently, I have to double click the action, go in and go back to the objects, change it to Object 2, and then click through the menus until it's done. But what if I have a piece of code that utilizes Object 2 already?

    Wouldn't it be easier if I could like alt+click on the Object 2 icon in another piece of code, and then drag/drop it on the Object 1 icon for the Destroy event, and it would automatically update to Object 2?

    Is something like this possible and I just don't know the shortcut for it?

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  • Ashley You say a lot of reasonable stuff, but I still have my doubts that HTML5 will ever perform at the level of native apps on mobile devices.

    1. Running a game through a browser just eats up more resources than it needs to. Does it not? If I'm running mobile safari on an iPad, is it not having to process the game PLUS the browser? It's eating up processing power that could be used by the game. The browser is the middle man.

    2. Apple may *never* fully support HTML5, because Apple likes to dominate their corner of the market. Do you really think that Apple will enable webGL and continue improving HTML5 support if it could mean losing a ton of money from app developers going the HTML5 route and circumventing the app store?

    I very much wish to eat my words and be totally wrong about everything, but it isn't looking good to me. I know you had to choose a direction and run with it, but I feel like you're defending HTML5 partly because it's what you went with. You even said yourself that there are lots of problems with browser support, etc... yet Scirra boasts that Construct 2 is a direct competitor to other game development tools that export natively. This just isn't true.

    I don't think I'd have so much of a problem with Construct 2 if it was just advertised as an HTML5 game maker with a warning that it's not really meant for top end mobile games. Instead it's marketed as a replacement to native apps. Also I just think Construct 2 is so damn good... and I just want to create native games with it and get maximum potential from it. :( There's no possibility of hiring someone to work on the exporters on the side somehow? Not even if we kickstart it?

  • maybe a kickstarter campaign?? [<:o)]

    I would totally be up for contributing to that.

  • I feel like there's just too much trust being put into too many hands.

    1. Scirra, obviously you trust in them to keep updating and fix any issue that arise... this *should* be the one and only group you need to worry about

    2. CocoonJS/AppMobi/3rd party exporting tools. If you need to get your games exported to specific platforms instead of HTML5, you'll need to trust in one of these companies to keep working on their exporter.

    3. Browser companies. You need to put faith in these companies to keep updating their browsers to improve HTML5 compatibility. If just one major browser decides to shun HTML5, that's a huge audience being lost for your game. At the current time, Safari and IE both either have the worst support for HTML5, or virtually no support at all. Two of the biggest browsers, no good.

    4. Mobile hardware improvements. You have to trust that mobile hardware will continue to improve each year. Well this one is pretty easy and Moore's Law would suggest that mobile hardware will be on par with current desktop performance in a matter of a couple years or less.

    Ashley also keeps defending not building exporters because they will cause issues with third party plugins... This is the absolute least of my concerns. First of all, this is a problem with EVERY game development tool that has third party plugins and multiple exporters. You just work with the third party plugins that work. As long as all default plugins inside of Construct 2 work across all exporters, then it's fine. I avoid using third party plugins as much as I can because I understand that if something goes wrong with them, I'm relying on yet another person/group to get my game completed.

    Another huge issue with all these third party exporters... I'm building Construct 2 games at my job, and I work for a pretty big company and they have lots of security concerns, etc... With most of these exporters, we have to upload our entire game to their servers for compiling/exporting... This means I have to get clearance to upload our project to foreign servers, and as of right now, I have yet to get clearance to do so... Meaning some exporters are already not even available for me to use.

    I would think if we pitched in money to hire outside help, then it wouldn't pull Ashley and team away from their current work as he keeps saying. "it will take 6-12 months" but I really feel like that's an exaggeration. Either way, it COULD be done, it just seems like Ashley has made his decision already. Which is the whole point of my thread. C2 is a fantastic game maker... it's just too bad Ashley has this mindset that native exporting won't be an improvement and isn't worth the time.

    Also I don't like the straw man arguments popping up about "oh you just need experience making games" or "you aren't designing the game well enough" or (insert "it's your fault somehow, and not the fault of HTML5 being poorly supported and underpowered")

    All of these arguments just pull away from the actual debate here. I'm debating that HTML5 games are not as great performance wise as native. Nobody here is proving me wrong about this, instead they tell me I should design better, etc. Yes, I realize CS2 is made for HTML5 games, but the potential is there for it to export natively, and it is just disappointing that it won't happen.

  • I know there are limitations with everything. I'm just ranting a little about how I wish this wasn't the limitation that Construct 2 had. I'd trade some other limitations for the ability to natively export.

    Like just reading the latest release notes there is talk about doing tilemaps and such... This time couldn't be spent doing native exporters? I feel like Construct 2 is already "there" in terms of being able to create games. Now I just want it to be more versatile in terms of exporting (which in turn, would open up some features that aren't available because of HTML5 exporting). I don't *need* tilemaps or layout alignment tools as much as I need native exporting. I understand the team is small but it's just disappointing to hear Ashley being so against creating different exporters.

    To me it just never seems good to totally shut out something like that and put all your eggs in one basket. I guess my problem is a two parter... 1. that construct 2 can't export natively and 2. that scirra has made it pretty clear it will never do that.

    It's just disappointing.

    There's a pretty big difference between needing to keep texture filesizes small, and not being able to even add some features to a game because it will bring performance to a crawl.

    With the last game I worked on, I was already doing everything I could to keep within mobile limitations... Crushing down images, reducing frames, optimizing code as much as I could, just flat out removing some effects I wanted to do because workarounds would have still created performance hits, etc. I fully understand working within limitations. That doesn't mean I can't still be disappointed with the one track direction Scirra has taken with exporting.

    They treat HTML5 like the "golden boy" and I just don't feel the same way about it.

  • Fimbul hit the nail on the head. I'm not bashing Construct 2 at all. In fact I stated many times in my posts that I think it's a fantastic piece of software... which is why I think it's a shame that it's limited strictly to HTML5 exporting (or wrapping the HTML5)

    It just sucks to me that I have to weigh different software in each hand to see the upsides and downsides... I want that perfect piece of game development software to exist... Construct 2 basically gives me nearly everything I want in a dev tool, it just hurts with the exporting. Other game dev software is a pain to work with, but gives me the exporting options I need.

    I suppose one day I will get the best of both worlds... but for now I can only dream of that day and rant about it here. :P

    It's good to see that some other people agree with me. I see a few people in this thread who just seem to be blindly defending Construct 2 and blaming ME for not being able to design games within some ridiculous limitations.

    How about the classic "flashing an enemy or player when they are hurt"? With a simple effect I could just flash the sprite to white... but I can't do that for mobile games since iOS won't support webGL. Which means the only alternative I can think of would be to create separate white versions of each frame of the sprite... which can get ridiculous if the sprite has 4 directions and many animations. We're talking near doubling the amount of sprites needed just to create a flash effect? Totally inefficient. Could I design around it? Yeah. But should I really have to do that? Is there a simpler way to do this? If so please let me know. I'm sure there are some things that can be done with workarounds that I'm just not aware of... But there are other things that you just simply can't do.

    I'm not expecting to create Halo for an iPhone 3 or anything, but I would expect more from mobile exporting than Construct 2 can deliver at the moment. Maybe by the end of this year my opinion will change... Maybe it won't. I can't really just cross my fingers and hope that things work out with HTML5.

    Apple looks like they will NEVER fully support it, because it's direct competition with their app store. Why buy games through the app store when you can just play them through a browser? Because the games currently just can't compete with native apps in terms of performance and features. I don't see Apple letting that change and losing their 30% cut of sales.

    What I see from Ashley is a lot of wishful thinking and predictions. But there is nothing solid to say that HTML5 is really the future. For people who want to release high quality mobile games within the next 6 months, I don't see HTML5 or Construct 2 being good enough. Maybe in 2014? Maybe? I'm sure eventually mobile devices will be so powerful that you'll rarely have to worry about browser limitations at all. But that isn't going to happen tomorrow.

    Also it's a bit silly to say "well if you use this specific phone with this specific version of this specific browser, you get really good results!" because you aren't going to convince everyone to use that exact setup. Everyone has their own different phones and their own preference of browser, and you have to work with what you get. I just see it as another headache to deal with for mobile devices that we really shouldn't bother with.

    Not only do you have to deal with the huge variety of mobile devices, but with HTML5 you also have to deal with the huge variety of browsers and options available. At least with native apps you know it's going to look and perform the same across multiple devices. I don't have to worry about a user running the "wrong" browser for my game and getting poor performance. They just pop open their native app and it's good to go.

  • Another excuse thread.

    It depends on your design.

    Not an excuse thread in the least. I'm not saying I can't make ANY games with Construct 2... I'm saying I can't make BIG games with Construct 2. I'm also referring to mobile games when I say this, not PC games. There is only so much designing can do for a game. The whole argument is that I want to keep the designs I have. Not have to dumb them down or remove them all together in order to get playable performance out of HTML5 games on mobile devices.

    My last project actually pushed HTML5 mobile gaming to the limit and it wasn't even that intense of a game. It merely couldn't be optimized any more. Don't believe me? I sent the project to Ashley and he looked over it himself and told me basically the same thing. That there wasn't really much room to improve performance, and that it was an issue with the browser and the power of the mobile device.

    The problem is that mobile devices need native apps. Playing games through browsers on a phone just isn't going to cut it... at least not any time soon.

    So, knowing that Construct 2 is designed to create HTML5 games, you decided to complain that Construct 2 is designed to make HTML5 games. I'll let you sort that out on your own.

    Yes and no. I'm complaining that such a great piece of 2D game development software is limiting itself by forcing HTML5 only exporting. I'm not demanding that Scirra adds in more native export options... I'm merely expressing my disappointment that it doesn't offer them. Also that Ashley tends to address the issue by saying "it would take too much time" and "html5 is good enough". It's not good enough.

    Maybe it's fine on a good PC with chrome and full webGL support. It's not fine on an iPad 2 running Safari with only canvas2D.

    I think my problem with Construct 2 is that it's advertised to be super fantastic and export to everything, but it leaves out all the details of "well it's not going to be as great on iOS devices due to no webGL... oh and it's not going to be that great on most mobile devices if your game is doing anything more than displaying a few images moving around... oh and it's not going to be great for saving/loading levels or player data..."

    I mean if Construct 2 wants to be marketed as a "simple game maker" then fine, but it shouldn't be saying it can compete with game development tools that can export natively and then brag about how it creates more optimized games.

    Taken from this blog post:

    scirra.com/blog/86/gamemaker-has-no-competition-we-beg-to-differ-html5s-scalability

    "We don?t currently support other exporters because we don?t need to. We?re extremely excited by the future of HTML5. New technology means that we can now reach, or will soon reach, all the platforms YoYoGames claim they do.

    Take for example CocoonJS and AppMobi?s directCanvas. CocoonJS on an Android phone averages 34 fps in our benchmarks, and directCanvas on iPhone 4S can surpass 50fps. And it?s early days - we?re confident this can be improved further. Other technologies exist to wrap HTML5 games in a desktop app. We are reaching a point where HTML5 games wrapped in other technology is comparable to native.

    We?re certain that HTML5 will imminently be able to deliver on all platforms, and it will allow us to focus our efforts on developing the best possible software instead of maintaining multiple exporters. HTML5 is going to allow game developers to create truly multiplatform games and we?re almost there. Maybe YoYoGames mistakenly don?t consider us a direct competitor yet, but they should: consider that you will only need a single Construct 2 license to reach all these platforms."

    Not supporting more exporters because they don't need to? We can reach all platforms that Game Maker does? Yeah, except the games don't run as smoothly and are severely limited in features.

    CocoonJS and AppMobi don't really deliver much of a performance improvement... not to mention they are still just wrappers that are running the HTML5 through a browser window. They are still limited by HTML5 limitations.

    "We are reaching a point where HTML5 games wrapped in other technology is comparable to native."

    This is just blatantly wrong and deceiving. Again, this is comparing simple games... not heavier games. It's a lot of misdirection. Just because HTML5 *can* work on most all platforms, doesn't mean it can match native speeds.

    In the end I know this post can't possibly change much of anything. I really just wanted to vent some frustrations. The software is fantastic. Creating games in Construct 2 is like a dream. I've managed to complete games with Construct 2 and they are great. But I had to hold back.

    I can't take advantage of any of the effects Construct 2 offers... blurs, color replacements/tinting... distortions, overlay/screen/multiply... None of it. Because it won't work on iOS devices. Yet other game development tools that export natively can do all of that no problem. I can't add screen shakes to my mobile games, because that would surely kill performance. So yes, Construct 2 can export to nearly everything. But with many limitations.

  • Let me go ahead and start this off positively by saying that I think Construct 2 is by far the best 2D game development software available today. It has nearly all the features and functionality that I want in a game development tool.

    So it's sad for me to state that I just can't use Construct 2 for the majority of my projects. The reason for this is the limitations of HTML5, and the odd love affair that Scirra has with it.

    My problem with HTML5 is that it just isn't there yet. It won't be "there" for a long time... if ever. It just isn't fast enough. It can't handle big games. It's incredibly challenging to work with saving/loading information for games. But the biggest problem is HTML5. Yes, it's great... yes, it's so cross platform that it basically runs on everything. But how well it runs is the issue.

    iOS does not support webGL. Which means throw any special effects or processor heavy operations right out the window. Everything else mostly supports webGL, but mobile devices just can't handle heavy HTML5 games. The same games that could run flawlessly in native mobile applications, slow to a crawl with HTML5.

    But you can export Construct 2 games to native apps right? No, not really. It's just the same slow HTML5, only now it's wrapped up to look like an executable, or an iOS app, or an Android app. There is really not much performance gain to be had, since it's still just pushing everything through a browser window. The problem with mobile devices is that they just can't handle running the OS plus running a browser, PLUS running a large game inside that browser.

    I constantly... CONSTANTLY hit limitations with HTML5. I hit brick walls with no escape.

    I feel like until Construct 2 can truly export natively, then it will just be a tool I use for small games. It's a sad truth, because the other game software I use that performs better (and creates native apps) isn't as fun to work with. I have to do a lot of workarounds and extra steps that Construct 2 handles beautifully. It's just unfortunate that Scirra is 100% gung-ho about HTML5, because HTML5 just doesn't match up to true native apps.

    The proof is in the pudding. I could create a game that caps at 30fps with Construct 2 and no matter what I wrap it up in, it's still going to give me 30fps. I can make the same game and it would run at a buttery 60fps with full special effects support. Just look at what some phone apps are putting out these days and then picture the higher end phone apps being made in Construct 2. What sort of framerates would you imagine they would get running through a browser?

    Is it totally out of the question that Construct 2 will ever support true native exporting?

  • Well it's running on iOS in canvas2D... which is where the problem is, since it can't use webGL to let the GPU handle some of the load.

    I have the sprites in game as a global object but they are on a layout that isn't accessed... Do I need to have it go to that layout first and then jump over to the main layout?

    I think I was having worse results by having it destroy at start but remain in the main layout.

    Do you think maybe creating the objects at start and then destroying them would load them while also removing them until I need them?

  • While both of them give a great performance boost they are not even remotely close to native performance which is a thing that has to be considered, if you want complete freedom you need to go native (or Stencyl).

    I agree with this. I've only tested CocoonJS but the performance increase was next to nothing. I was expecting native performance but got basically the same performance I get in Safari on an iPad.

    I'm going to give appMobi a try tomorrow, hopefully... but from the sound of it, I shouldn't be expecting much improvement there either.

    It's really disappointing that Construct 2 doesn't have a way to just export natively to mobile devices. I know HTML5 is "the future" but right now it's pretty terrible for mobile platforms. I don't see Apple allowing webGL ever, as it would directly affect their own app sales, since people could just circumvent the app store and host their own games without Apple getting it's 30% cut.

    So basically unless some miracle occurs, don't expect to release heavy HTML5 games to any iOS device because they just won't run at playable speeds. Without hardware acceleration, games have to be pretty simple and light.

  • I'm having some performance issues that I feel are being caused by sprites loading on creation instead of being loaded at the start.

    I have about 6 *heavy* sprites (heavy meaning over 100 frames of animation in a 128x128 dimension image) which seem to be causing me problems.

    The thing is, my game runs at a nice steady framerate until these sprites need to be created. Then it nosedives for a couple of seconds until the sprite is "loaded". But doesn't Construct 2 load this stuff at the start?

    Further evidence that the sprite creation is the problem, is that after a while, my game's framerate actually improves overall, even with more of these sprites on screen. Which tells me that now they are "loaded" and not causing stress on the hardware.

    Is there some way to preload sprites or images? Is there a way to preload other things as well? I thought perhaps setting the sprites to global and putting them in another layout, they would be "preloaded" but this doesn't really seem to be working.

    So what's the deal?