It's been suggested in the past. It means making layers into a tree structure. It would be great, but would also be a complex and time consuming feature to implement. As with all feature requests, we're a small team with limited resources, so we have to carefully prioritise what we do. There's several years of feature requests already filed on the suggestions platform.

I understand. If we do not take in consideration the grouping layer, it would be possible just to disable any effect applied to a specific object or layer? This would solve the problem anyway. Like a toggle options or a behavior that says "do not apply any effect".

For instance, I have a sprite that makes all the hud graphics.In the layout effect, I use the effect to make the level looks like really dark changing the contrast, brightest and the colors. I could achieve the same effect by changing the textures of the game (and then apply the effect to sprites I need), and that actually would work saving some GPU (maybe). However, I use a dynamic light, meaning that depending on where the player goes, the light change according (like if the player goes into the cavern in real time, all the lighting and color changes smoothly). As you would imagine, if I apply the layout effect, the HUD will get affected by it. If I have an option to disable the effect to a specific layer or sprite, then we wouldn't need the grouping layer. Also, changing the texture in this case would be really hard to do it (adding more layers, changing opacity...etc. So effect would be the best and easy solution I guess.

PS: I see that you are working on the scene graphs and that is great (it is also sound really complicated), however I think that the grouping layer is something more helpful for a vast majority of people and should be a core options on construct 3. But I understand how difficult would be implement this feature.

PS2: is there any JS script that would allow to disable the effects to the specific instance even if the effect is applied to the layout?

Thanks again

If you need to control instances individually, then you don't really have a choice, you have to add the effect to individual objects and not use a layer effect. If you have an effect on both the object and the layer the object is on, it will process the effect twice, which is wasteful so probably makes it worse.

It's also not guaranteed that a layer effect will be faster. It depends. There is quite a high CPU performance cost for each effect, so one layer effect has a lower CPU overhead than lots of objects with their own effects. But a layer effect must process all the pixels on the entire layer, which can be a larger area than just the objects on the layer, resulting in more GPU work. So whether or not it's faster depends on the precise balance of number of objects, rendering area, CPU work and GPU work. It's not easy to say conclusively that it helps either way, it's just an option to try - and as usual the only way to know for sure is measure it.

Ashley, I have a question:

It would be possible to apply the effect to a group of layer? or exclude an effect to a specific layer/sprite in the layout effect?

In my game, I applied the effect to the whole layout (the layout has like 14 layers). The effects are used to make different lighting options. The problem here is that I have 2 layer that are the HUD of the game, and I would like to exclude these from the layout effect. If I apply every single effect to each layer, I notice that the GPU % increases a lot, while if I apply the layout effect, the GPU % is much less increasing the total performance.

I don't know hot it works in the back-end, but a sort of disable effect to specific object and layer under the layout effect would be great if possible.

Thanks

Hello there,

I have found some time to make the website and make some content. I'm still working on some dynamics, however the gameplay is almost defined.

The game is inspired by super mario world, donkey kong country and yoshi island.

here the website: http://www.supercandyland.com

Soon, I will post some gifs. You can visit the instagram/facebook page to check out some videos.

Hello there,

I made the APK, installed the game, and everything works as expected.

So, I have tried to check how much memory (RAM) my game consumes on my android phone while I play. The memory usage avarage is 330mb (Does not matter the size of the layout, the memory goes between these 2 315mb/350mb).

Then, I tried to do the same experiment in the remote view (from the google chrome browser) excepting that would take more memory... but I was wrong! On google chrome, the game consumes only 150mb vs the 330mb in the APK.

So, I knew that the game should run smoother when it's installed, but I guess I was wrong? Why there is this gap between apk and remote view? PS: I tried the game in the same layout/full screen...

Also, what would be a nice limit for memory usage? I'm still making the game, and I'm worried that I would encountered some limits.

Just to conclude, the game run smooth 60fps. So, I want to keep this standard.

Thank you