thehen's Forum Posts

  • Hi all,

    Just wondering the best way to retrieve the project version from a plugin. Essentially the same value as the projectversion expression.

    Cheers

  • BluePhaze all audio worked fine for me except any of the advanced stuff (effects and psoitioned sound) as well as changing the playback rate.

    Be sure to read my Windows Phone tutorial too before approaching audio on Windows Phone. It's a bit trickier.

  • szymek if you really wanted no loss in quality, then designing assets for 2048 � 1536 would be the way to go.

    To me that's OTT though, so I just design for 1080p.

  • szymek Not exactly.

    The sprite will probably scale proportionally with the resolution. So if your layout is 800x640, and you target a 1600x1280 resolution, you'll need an image twice the resolution of how it appears in Construct 2, for it to be fully crisp.

    iPad 1 (non retina) = 1024 � 768

    iPad 3 (retina) = 2048 � 1536

    The same sprite is always used, it's just the maximum resolution of a sprite is determined by the image resolution.

  • moonraystudios yep, not supporting retina will use less resources. If you want crystal-clear artwork though, it may be worth considering. Personally I only notice lack of retina support on 3D games with aliasing.

    szymek it just increases the resolution of the canvas. So if your assets are 600x400, then scaled down to 300x200 in Construct 2, you'll still get the definition of 600x400 on retina. It all depends per-asset and what its dimensions are.

  • Hello all,

    1 - Our understanding is that retina support is either 'on' or 'off' so all iPads will render retina level detail even if they don't support it. Is this correct?

    Pad 1 and iPad mini both aren't retina. Those devices will render at a lower resolution with noticeably larger pixels.

    2 - If (1) is correct, has anyone experienced performance issues with iPads that don't support retina displays?

    ou may get performance issues with Construct 2 games with retina support enabled, but only on hardware that supports it. More pixels requires more power. If that happens I'd consider disabling retina support or trying alternative optimisations. Always test early on hardware!

    3 - Our experiments seem to suggest that file size and load times are related directly to the size of the games assets. Is there any other increased overhead when we support retina displays?

    ou'll be downloading the same assets on retina and non-retina devices, so there's no additional overhead.

    3 - Can construct 2 support transparent backgrounds? If so we could use media queries on the page to load in background images at the right resolution to offload it from the game. Would there be any issue with that in terms of performance?

    ou *could* do this, but it would quickly become hard to maintain. Realistically, in the context of a complete game with multiple assets, the savings would be nominal if images are heavily optimised to begin with.

    Our game Mortar Melon is artwork heavy, but only weighs in around 5mb. Your best bet is to properly research PNG-8 optimisation as that is by far the biggest way to reduce download overhead.

  • If you want to support Windows 8 for backwards compatibility though, you won't be able to use some advanced audio, webgl or custom cursors (I built a CUR cursors plugin that you can use).

    Considering Windows 8.1 isn't a mandatory update and users have to go through the store to update, and Microsoft has said it will support Windows 8 for two more years, it's probably best to do your testing in IE10.

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  • I'd be really interested in a WebGL implementation too.

  • szymek's solution worked for me in the simulator, but I can confirm that orientation works fine on the device.

  • I understand that this might be time consuming to implement but is it possible that there could be a text code editor mode that is 1 to 1 with the menu structured scripting?

    think this could be cool. Something similar to Haml, using abbreviations and indentation to aid the power user. Added benefit, if it was saved in this format, is that logic changes would be easier to track in version control

    Arrays and Dictionaries:

    Is there a possibility for an in-editor method for setting the initial state of Array's and Dictionary objects outside of having to use the menu style scripting for each cell of these objects or having to use a 3rd party plugin to import csv's or the like? My hopefully accurate assumption is this shouldn't be to difficult to implement and would make designing an RPG-like game MUCH easier.

    ou can use external json or xml without a plugin.

    Effect all instances of object: (not sure if this is already present)

    se the System -> Pick All condition.

    If 2 objects share the same or similar art it makes it a bit difficult to identify what object the menu style script is referring to at first glance, tool tips showing the name of the object would mitigate this to a degree.here are you looking? In the layout view? When you click an object the name appears in the properties window.

    Unrelated to C2's interface: I know that these have been asked for already at some point in the past, I'm just chiming in with a +1 for support for tile sets and vector based graphics. Things I hope to see in the future.

    could be wrong but I don't think vectors play to the performance strengths of canvas, especially for complicated games. Even in Flash many games just used rasterised graphics to optimise performance. I can understand there are some use cases though - hopefully the third-party canvas plugin should fulfil those. I agree with tile sets and I think that's on the todo.

  • Has anyone noticed that WebGL now magically works for them? I would always get black screen when enabling it before - now it completely works. It's noticeably less performant, but the effects are working great for me.

  • thehen Certainly, I have read the entire article tens of times over again, but as I have stated, 22hHz and mono channel is not an option.

    On the other hand, I also don't think it applies to "Any mobile game". My identical Android version clocks at less than 20MB at decent quality, even when maintaining multiple formats for the same files. I have also seen countless (music-based) games with high-quality at a respectable size.

    This issue seems very specific to exporting to Visual Studios from Construct 2. It is unfortunate that audio happens to be important to me this time.

    PS: Looks like 22kHz will do. I also cut the gameplay music shorter since the player is not likely to listen to the entire song. Still a compromise, but perhaps it's the best it can get.

    The Android version is less than 20mb, because Construct 2 compresses the audio for you. I'm assuming you're using uncompressed wavs in Visual Studio. 22kHz worked for me, but if the quality is too low, then experiment with different audio settings. From the tutorial:his will reduce audible quality, so play with these values to determine what works best for your game.

  • Thanks again everyone, you're all brill!

  • JunoNgx Please read the Converting Audio section of the tutorial.

    You need to optimise your audio. If you unzip it (rename the xap it zip and extract) you'll most likely find your audio is 90mb or so.

    If audio quality is super important, then you'll need to reach a compromise. Any mobile game is going to struggle with hundreds of megabytes of uncompressed audio.

  • You need the Tizen SDK to create the wgt file, and you can submit this manually instead of using appbackr.