Pixel Shade's Forum Posts

  • Problem Description

    A Strange problem which I have always had with Construct 2. I have bought it through Steam, and it doesn't matter which project I am running, or which computer I use. I usually tend to use two computers, an overclocked i5 4Ghz with a nvidia GTX 960. The other computer is a slightly under-powered laptop with an AMD A4-5000 APU. The result is always the same. At first, Construct and the level design tool works flawlessly at ~60fps, after a couple of minutes (10-15) it becomes super slow. the core i5 with GTX960 is still manageable at the first stage of slowdown, while the AMD A4-5000 APU is having trouble producing a responsive environment. after a while Construct goes into the next stage which is make the i5 sluggish, almost unusable. While the A4 freezes the environment with momentary responsive states. (I have managed to save the project by clicking the save-button constantly during a time span of 1 minute)

    UPDATE - Workarounds

    Throughout the discussion in this thread a couple of workarounds have surfaced.

      turn off the auto-save function. Risky thing to do, but as long as you save your work often manually it shouldn't be a problem. Disable Steam In-game Overlay either, even though I haven't experienced any improvement. Minor slow-downs in the front-end is seem to get solved by Minimizing and maximizing the main window

    UPDATE II - Problem solved?

    I can see that many turn to this thread whenever there are UI performance issues. However, I think they derive quite a bit from the original behavior where Construct 2 as a editor became increasingly sluggish until a state of complete "freeze". From my experience, this issue is fixed. Ashley's latest replies state:

    Well I think we can chalk this one up to the icons and Windows GDI weirdness then. If you have a large project and the editor becomes sluggish after a while, it seems the new icon caching mode is a workaround.

    Does the new option to completely disable unique icons in r229 help? (it reverts all Sprite/Tiled Background etc to their plugin icons)

    It might be GDI playing up again. It's a pretty crappy part of Windows.

    So far so good, no sluggishness at all.

    It seems to work better now but I will still give it some time and share the results at the end of the month again.

    Ashley thanks for this surprising update, I really didn't expect that.

    Attach a Capx

    I know that a capx is a must, but this issue is not related to a specific project

    Description of Capx

    none

    Steps to Reproduce Bug

    I know that this is the worst kind of bug to reproduce, I would love to have some guidance on how to give you more information on this matter. The strange thing is that the same bug occurs in similar manners in two completely different hardware environments independent of project and project size. The problem has been around since I bought Construct 2 through Steam. I think it was release 186. I'm thinking of downloading the free version and install it stand alone in order to see if I can reproduce it outside my steam license. I have actually managed on working with my game by saving and closing the application every 10 minutes.

    • Step 1 - Open the level designer and populate designer with 2D objects and drag them around
    • Step 2 - Wait and do nothing during a period of 10-20 minutes. Pan around the layout in order to determine when the slowdowns begin
    • Step 3 - Continue to wait, in my experience the sluggishness starts in two stages that are quite distinguishable in terms of speed/sluggishness

    Observed Result

    The application freezes, When looking at the task manager, the application doesn't show any excessive CPU-usage, no unexpected I/O-operations or excessive RAM-usage. The only thing that is looking odd during freezes is a 0.1MB/s disk writes from both Steam and Construct.

    Expected Result

    That the application should work flawlessly.

    Affected Browsers

      Chrome: NO, FireFox: NO, Internet Explorer: NO

    I use chrome as my default browser and haven't witnessed any difference using the others.

    Operating System and Service Pack

    Windows 7 (latest updates) tested by TheRealDannyyy

    Windows 8.1n 64-bit (Latest updates)

    Windows 10n 64-bit (Upgrade from Windows 8.1n)

    Construct 2 Version ID

    Version 212.2 (64-bit) Personal License (Steam Version)

  • I would love to have more options in the profile section for social details i.e. Instagram, Vimeo, DevianArt,Soundcloud, Linkedin (and more) You often use as many channels as possible these days to spread your game creations. It would be nice to have them available on your profile here at Scirra.

  • — - you can use the "anchor" behavior along with a 0,0 parallax to keep your controls on the same relative spot on the screen. It's quick and easy.

    PSI That's an even easier strategy. Thank you for sharing!

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  • Ah ok, glad to hear its better now. You can make sure your buttons are always where you want them by setting a new layer's parallax to 0, 0 - and then setting the X.Y positions of your buttons using the ViewportLeft( 0,0 LayerNumber) + pixel amount.

    Here is an example.

    Thank you kind sir! This helped alot! I have come a long way with assets and animations, and even though the game looks okay visually I'm still a newbie at construct. It would be terrible to start a really big project realizing halway through that you did something completely nuts in the beginning.

    — - this really reminds me of a problem I have been having with either C2 or the graphics card determining when to use mipmapped (downscaled) textures in a very wrong way. If you go into Project properties - View - and set Downscaling to low - does this still happen (on high-res mobile devices)?

    I had an issue that involved the scaling quality as well, it wasn't this one, But I managed to work that out by putting the downscaling quality to low. This issue was resolved by changing "Use high-DPI display" to "yes"

  • ... Sometimes we can't do balance between graphics and gameplay, if is lower resolution, it would better 60 fps, if is higher resolution, it would lag.

    I know, it's a shame, but it is all about finding that sweet spot of visual quality and good performance looking two years ahead in the future. I'm guessing that I will stick with 720p for now. the problem is that It would require a lot of effort making scale everything to a 1080p-canvas, as long as there isn't a really good technique for it.

  • Hey g3nki, are you using point sampling in the configuration settings? It's hard to say what resolutions will be in 2 years but in general you want to use the lowest you can get away with graphically and then use the scale outer option to give you more space on the edges on wider screens.

    I use linear scaling, but I think a know what I did wrong, Theres property on the Project Properties that says "Use high-DPI displays". This was set to "No" and that's probably why the browser chose to render the canvas according to the Pixel Ratio set on the phone. Once i clicked "Yes" the game looked amazing on the LG G3 screen. I can't really tell if the resolution is 2560x1440 or if it just upscaled from 1280x720. But it looks really good!

    I used the scale outer option you suggested (which was great by the way), but now I'm having a problem with touch controls depending on screen size. I defined the layer parallax to 0, 0 making the controls hover over the screen. But once I change aspect ratio, from 16:9 to 4:3 or 21:9 are no longer displayed as left-bottom and right-bottom anymore, is there a trick to keep them in the same position?

  • are you using your graphics unscaled? if so try adding any sprite at 2 or 4 times the size you want to use it in game, for example if it should be 100px in the game, the imported graphic should be 400px and then scaled down to 100px in the editor. hope that helps!

    I'm scaling the graphics to a size that I feel fit the scenario, it is asset resolution is often a bit bigger, not 4x bigger, but it could be 1.2x - 1.5x the native resolution scale. To me, creating 2x or higher resolution assets would be an enormous waste of resources. (it would require excessive use of graphic memory or RAM)

    The problem is that it actually scale nice on browsers on PC. On mobiles however it looks terrible, It seems as if it has to do with the device pixel ratio (something that is determined in the browser in order to give better web experience viewing text on high ppi displays) I made a comparison, you can clearly see the reduced pixel quality on my LG G3 compared to the PC

    Any suggestions anyone? or is the pixel ratio corrected once exporting it as a native app?

  • Hi Everyone!

    I was thinking of making a high-res game in 1280x720. It worked out fine on the computer, but I realized that it became a bit pixalted on my Nvidia Shield Tablet(1920x1200). Then I tried it on my LG G3 (2560x1440) and it became even worse. I'm guessing it has to do with the Pixel Ratio of Chrome which is probably 2x on the Shield, and probably 3x on the LG G3 and thereby rendering the canvas in an incorrect resolution.

    • Is this going to be a problem once I export it as a native app (through Cordova)? Will it render in native 1280x720 or is the canvas going to be scaled according to the pixel ratio of the device?
    • If the native app is going to get pixelated. Is there some kind of solution to this problem?
    • ...And one last question. Is 1280x720 the right way to go? Or should I make the game in 1920x1080? I still have 2 years of work left before releasing the title. I'm guessing mobiles and tablet will become pretty powerful until then. But I would like to know if there's somekind of technical limitation of what construct is able to render or limitations of mobile phones with the use of WebGL? is there something else that I should think about?

    The game uses six layers of parallax as well as two invisible layers. WebGL will be a requirement.

    Thanks for everything

    Kind Regards

    Dennis

    _______________________________________________________

    If you're interested follow the development of my project, you can always follow me on instagram: http://instagram.com/_g3nki or have a look at my homepage: http://pixelshade.se

  • walk-to-run..without Shift key..

    Thank you, i didn't have any use for this now. But I will look into it, because I'm going to use timers for sprint mechanics, this seem to be of great help.

    Because whenever A or D is down you set group running deactivated and walking activated. Personally, I would give the sprite a variable for whether the character was running or not. Then under the 'A is down' and 'D is down' events, include a sub event with a value comparison on the variable, and create an else to it then have the walking and running methods under there and just have shift toggle that variable.

    Thank you! This helped me a lot getting on the right path.

    This is my Event Sheet today, There's so many things that are being declared over and over again. many things may look a bit necessary, but this was the only way I got everything to work. I use two kind of forward movement, "running" and "walking", I also have two kind of jumps: a "high jump" and a "long jump". It's a lot to take account for, especially since it's just standard jump- and run mechanics... Is there anyone out there that can explain how to make cleaner, less redundant event sheets?

  • Hi Everyone!

    I have stumbled upon my first logic problem with Construct 2. I'm creating a game where I want the main character to shift between walking and running while holding down a key. (i.e the "shift"-key.)

    The running mechanics works if I hold down shift before I press ASWD-keys, but I can't toggle between the modes while walking or running. is there any obvious mistake in Event Sheet? Can anyone give me some kind of clue on how to approach this problem?

    (I case you're wondering what's up with all the groups in the picture: my initial thought was to reduce instructions per clock cycle by activating and inactivating groups in the event sheet, but actually don't know if it is doing any good?)

  • A shot from my Point and Click Adventure Game! It's an incredible amount of work, I have been working on it for quite some time. The artwork is still not polished, in time ill have a gameplay video or demo and hopefully put it up on greenlight/kickstarter.

    Wow, I can see that —! and looks really impressive! I hope that you can find a balance between your own ambition and something that is manageable. I'm still struggeling to keep my ambition at bay, otherwise i will never be able to release the game. However, I would love to see yours it in action one day! Keep up the good work!

  • — The game looks really good Nice art style and interesting concept. So best of luck to you!

    I'm also from Sweden så lycka till på Gamex

    Thank you! Are you showing up on Comic Con / Gamex? If you are, please give us a visit. our studio is called "Pixel Shade"

  • I've been working on a game for about 6 weeks now. I still have a ton to do in order to complete it. But I started pretty ambitiously to create a finished look for people to gaze upon on Swedish Comic Con on the 30th of October. What do you guys think? The game will be an action/platform adventure in an open world setting (once it is finished). Estimated release will be in late 2015 or early 2016

    Project Catnip (Working title):

  • I don't know if my game lives up to the expectation of this forum thread. I've been working on it for about 6 weeks now. I still have a ton to do in order to complete it. But I started pretty ambitiously to create a finished look for people to gaze upon on Swedish Comic Con on the 30th of October. What do you guys think? The game will be an action/platform adventure in an open world setting (once it is finished).

    Project Catnip (Working title):

  • Hi everyone! My name is Dennis, formerly a web developer within the banking industry. I gave that up, moved into a cabin and is currently working on creating a pretty ambitious adventure platformer, I am really impressed with construct 2 and hopefully I will be able to achieve my goals due to the active community.