Ashley ,graphics card drivers upto date...

with XP I could not use internet explorer, so not something I'm in the habit of, will give it a go...

Just tried it on win 7 and I'm amazed it's running at 66FPS in canvas 2D...

Scratches head...it outperforms chrome and node webkit, both using web gl...

any explanations?

I noticed the same a while ago doing testing on an old laptop with an integrated intel gpu, IE rendered far faster than node webkit, but its event execution speed was lower. If I recall correctly, using a flag to disable the driver blacklist in node webkit/chrome fixed it. As such, it does seem like your card's driver being blacklisted is the problem.

For simple games C2 performs great, but do fear for anyone developing anything remotely complex, when it reaches the end user with far lower spec than the Dev developed and intended it to be played on...

Welcome to the world of developing for a target platform with a variable spec. :/ Pro devs working with c++ have this problem, too, it's the reason there's a listing for minimum system requirements for games. At some point you have to make a decision whether your going to go for the game you want or scale it back to hit older computers. It might be possible to simply have something like a setting in the options menu so people can turn off shaders or something if their computer can't handle them to try to accommodate both.

As far as I am aware windows 7 supports and uses hardware rendering for 2.5D displays (desktop windows), and XP does not, so if what you say is true, I'd have expected increased performance on Windows 7, but, I am not 100% up on all the Tech regarding video cards, so bow to Your better knowledge on that...

2.5D displays? I don't know what you mean by that. There's another potential performance issue with win 7 - are you using aero or the old windows style? If you're using the old windows style, then you're not getting hardware acceleration with windows' window manager, which hurts performance. Also, as others have said, win 7 is more complex and has higher requirements than win XP, so it just might be requiring more CPU/GPU time to the point were it starts negatively impacting other applications. 256 mb for a card is very low - you also might be having problems with running out of VRAM, which means the os and game would be competing for that VRAM, and moving textures over the system bus is a slow process.

I understand your frustration, though. Performance seems like a simple concept, but it turns out to be this crazy complex thing. That's one of the reasons ATI came up with its mantle API recently - to help optimize some of the places where the CPU and GPU are just sitting around waiting for instructions on what to do because of bottlenecks from the os and such.

I've been meaning to bring up this issue again, as there has been reports of problems with long loading times for the game 'our darker purpose' of up to 5 minutes: http://www.scirra.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=79206&PID=497902&title=our-darker-purpose-has-launched-on-steam#497902

As such I want to reiterate the importance of having control over the way C2 loads assets, as I described here: http://www.scirra.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=83807&PID=489467&title=suggestion-load-the-necessary-images-of-layout#489467

Ashley - please consider adding this! Loading everything at the start into RAM is not optimal for all games. You could have it as an option so only advanced users would use it, if you're concerned about confusing newer users. Many, many pro games do this sort of thing, and with the extra controls we could do things like make loading screens ourselves and make the game start faster as we control the rest of the game loading in the background while the player plays.

2D games are rendered the same way 3D games are, as polygons with textures on them, so increasing 3D performance improves 2D performance as well. They're really the same thing. The amount of polygons a card can push isn't the whole issue - there's a bunch of other things like pixel fill rate and shader performance to take into account too, all of which continue to improve at quite a fast rate.

The video card isn't the total issue, either, as things like physics can cause the CPU to be what holds up the next frame.

There's compilation time, where a game is being compiled in the background at start, so it can take a few seconds before the game is running optimally while it's compiling in the background. My current game requires about 10 seconds before the framerate gets smooth.

There's also the issue that chrome and node webkit are currently on version 32, which has performance problems on some pcs as it's reverting to software rendering when it shouldn't. Chrome when fullscreened has a framerate in single digits on my machine currently, but chrome 33 should fix it. By switching to windows 7, you're probably using different video card drivers, which might have affected the performance, or caused your card to now be blacklisted when it wasn't before.

Anyway, in my experience and testing, C2 actually rendered faster than CC, but it has been a while since I checked. Event performance I tested CC to be 1.5-3x faster than C2, but in general I don't need that speed (though I would certainly like it).

As for the other problems with previous versions of C2 being faster, I can't comment because I haven't noticed a difference, though that doesn't mean there hasn't been one - the game I'm currently working on doesn't have very many sprites on screen at once. I don't have nearly the most powerful computer either, it's an AMD 4400+ with an Nvidia 9800gt. Have you been able to isolate the issue with a .capx?

You can try posting it, someone might be able to fix it for you.

Is there a .backup file in the same directory?

You should make manual backups regardless. I make a new one every day I work on a .capx.

Don't create multiple threads for the same topic. Keep it to one thread. You can bump your topic if you don't get a response after a while instead of creating a new thread.

For the first issue, use family variables. That ensures all objects in the family have that variable, and you can set it to 'ordered' or 'random' and check it via a condition to set how they talk, leaving it so you only have to have one batch of code that works with the family rather than specific objects, and removes the need for secondary families.

- The debugger allows you to pause the game, and even frame by frame it!

C2's debugger can do that as well.

I was paraphrasing, that's why I said "you said basically" instead of "you said." I didn't mean to imply you said those exact words, just the basic gist of what they meant. Perhaps it's the language barrier, but I apologize for the confusion.

However, I don't apologize for deleting the post (though as I said, I agree that I should have hidden it instead).

Saying that it's not really your problem that the workaround exists does not absolve you of promoting it. Perhaps you missed it, but the very next poster after you mentioned how it was easily found via google.

Also, if it was really your intention to bring the issue to the attention of the company, then as shinkan said, perhaps you should have emailed them privately rather than posting here publicly in direct response to someone asking how to circumvent it. You've got to realize how that doesn't look like you were doing it for their best interests.

This isn't a big deal. Even if you disagree with me, it was at best a questionable post. It's not like I was unleashing tyranny on the forums. You didn't get banned, or even get a warning.

You said basically "there's a way you can circumvent something, I won't tell you how though." That person would then know there is a method and keep searching themselves, resulting in more people using that method.

I suppose though I should have hidden the posts rather than deleting them, I agree about that and will do so in the future when something is potentially up for dispute.

Don't pretend though like your post wasn't promoting awareness of how to cheat your way past something that the people who set it up don't want you to do. It could damage relations, and the only real reason to post something like that is to get people to search for the info themselves because they didn't know it was there. So yes, it's promoting piracy. Don't do it.

Edit: it's also technically possible that a thread could have been hidden inadvertently due to a forum bug. When we ban spammers, any threads they posted in get hidden unless we delete the posts individually first. If they posted between when we thought we had deleted all the posts and then banned them, the thread they posted in would be hidden. Tom's working on converting the forum to different software, so once that's completed that shouldn't be a concern anymore.

Arima what's most appropriate?

Deleting his thread or deleting my post?

whatever we didn't post a method or source, it was a question and awareness which is considered as theory.

If you feel you made a mistake, you should apologize.

Don't put words in my mouth. I don't feel I made a mistake.

Deleting your post was entirely appropriate, as it was basically promoting piracy. Even without telling the person what the method was or linking to it, you were revealing its existence, which would cause more people to use the method by searching for info themselves.

I don't know what thread you're talking about, though. I don't think I've deleted any recently, aside from ones created by spammers. Perhaps it was moved rather than deleted? Often people post threads in the wrong forum.

You posted revealing a method to circumvent something which basically resulted in breaking a terms of service. You did not post the method itself, but were promoting awareness of it, since it could be easily googled. As such, I deleted the posts.

Please refrain from promoting awareness about such methods.