Poor C2 Editor Performance On Larger Projects

Problem Description

The issue is on larger projects, the C2 editor becomes increasingly slower and the performance lacks. I have attached a sample capx to try and replicate this issue. On a new project, adding an action takes a fraction of a second. Fast enough, you do not notice. On a larger project, it can take easily 1-5 seconds, slowing down your productivity and making C2 near unusable long term.

I have noticed on computers, the extended use of these poor performance projects can also lead to poorer performance over extended use leading to a computer restart required. Although this could be two separate issues that are just correlated.

Attach a Capx

http://humanescape.com/scirratempt/Fast.zip

— has created a better example here in this thread:

Description of Capx

Fast.capx: a simple project to show the initial speed of the editor. Simply edit the action in the CAPX and you will notice the dialog pops in a fraction of a second (a quick blink).

Slow.capx: a larger project to demonstrate the slowness. Do the same as the first CAPX, simply go and edit an action already there. The window will take 1-5 seconds depending on the computer you use.

Steps to Reproduce Bug

• Open both CAPX
• Edit existing action in both CAPX
• Repeat several times, noting the time it takes for the dialog to pop

Observed Result

Action dialog takes extremely long to open. Other performance issues exist, but this is the main concern. Adding actions, editing actions, copying variables, reusing variables, adding objects, cloning objects, moving objects into subfolders, it all goes unbearably slow once the project gets to this level.

Expected Result

Dialogs are reponsive and fast.

Affected Browsers

• N/A, it is the editor

Operating System and Service Pack

I have tried this on the latest Windows 10 version, on multiple computers. The same issue exists, the only difference is how slow the dialog pops open.

Construct 2 Version ID

r250

Edits:

• Edit (Dec 30, 2017):

  — found the following (each scenario was still slow to respond):

• Capx vs Project folder - no difference
• HDD vs SDD - no difference
• Disabling object icons - no difference

Edit (Jan 5th, 2017): Still no resolution. Updated workaround section.

— has created an even better CAPX to show the performance degrades terribly on larger projects: https://www.scirra.com/forum/poor-c2-editor-performance-on-larger-projects_p1156416?#p1156416

jan 6th: updated user count that are reporting this issue

jan 8th, 2018: updated user count

jan 11th, 2018: updated user count

jan 15th, 2018: — has created another demo CAPX here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/poor-c2-editor-performance-on-larger-projects_p1157777?#p1157777

Jan 20th, 2018: A few test ran, numbers, evidence, tear-down of a project, and so forth. Estimation of 20 hours lost to the bug in best case scenario, 2 hours on smaller projects. See it here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/poor-c2-editor-performance-on-larger-projects_p1158480?#p1158480

Jan 22nd, 2018: A beta release, r251 has been made available which addresses some performance issues when adding/editing actions. Results look good from my own testings and users are reporting big differences.

Some other facts found/reported:

• Not all Windows 10 computers are affected. It might also not be related to W10 specifically.
• Computers affected range from low to very powerful.
• Both laptops and desktops are affected
• When the issue occurs, CPU, RAM, DISK, Network, all resources are in high availability (nothing is straining the system). As shown in

  — post shown here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/poor-c2-editor-performance-on-larger-projects_p1155535?#p1155535

The issue is not due to NVIDIA graphics cards (as shown by using Virtual Machines, and non-nvidia onboard graphics).

C2 has very inconsistent behavior when the issue occurs (freezing at times, inconsistent load times)

it is not a recent W10 issue or driver update, as shown in digitalsoapbox post here:

(jan 15th, 2018) I have received a report that this bug exist on the original Windows 10 Build, meaning a windows update did not cause this.

Current workarounds:

• Rebooting the computer regains *some* performance, but dialogs still take abnormally slow time to pop
• The issue does not appear to exists in C3, but it is not a good workaround due to: " I had to delete my incompatible plugins. Because of the fact that C3 isn't cross compatible with C2, it's only a one way conversion. I would say this is an impractical solution for C3 isn't fully equipped with essential 3rd party extensions yet. It's way too soon to permanently move especially with the limited SDK of C3."

Current count of people that have reported this issue (as of Jan 12th, 2018): 14

Note: This is a count of individual users and not machines. The count of machines is MUCH higher. At the moment, roughly 95% of windows 10 users asked, are hit with this issue.

Please post here if you have this issue.

On an interesting note. Pulled out my extremely old Windows 7 machine. The first time I open the action for editing, it is super slow. The second time it is instant. All subsequent opening of the action dialog is instant too.

Perhaps Construct has an issue caching on Windows 10 ?

I Have a similar problem with construct 2. I started out with quick save loads and importing and now that the game is a lot larger the editor barely runs. To the point now where game making is all but impossible. I have a brand new computer, tried reinstalling c2 and updated all drivers, still freezes constantly.

I Have a similar problem with construct 2. I started out with quick save loads and importing and now that the game is a lot larger the editor barely runs. To the point now where game making is all but impossible. I have a brand new computer, tried reinstalling c2 and updated all drivers, still freezes constantly.

What are your specs?

Cpu?

Ram?

Hdd/SSD?

OS?

How long do dialogs to edit actions take to pop?

Does the issue go away partially, or get better, after a fresh reboot?

Sorry. Works OK for me.

There is no difference in time to open edit action dialog from each example. Tried lots of times, and they both still open instantly.

Did notice your project is using over 1.2 GB which will strain many graphics cards.

Windows 7 Pro x64 16 GB RAM I7 3770K 3.50GHz

GPU Nvidia GTX 970 4GB DDR5

C2 r250 x64

1TB SATA

Sorry. Works OK for me.

There is no difference in time to open edit action dialog from each example. Tried lots of times, and they both still open instantly.

Did notice your project is using over 1.2 GB which will strain many graphics cards.

Windows 7 Pro x64 16 GB RAM I7 3770K 3.50GHz

GPU Nvidia GTX 970 4GB DDR5

C2 r250 x64

1TB SATA

Thansk for trying it — Do you have a windows 10 machine to try? I am leaning on the side of it being a Windows 10 related issue. In one of my notes above, I mentioned on Windows 7 it worked great for me too but on all of my Windows 10 machines it is slow.

As for the 1.2 GB of memory usage, I did this on purpose to ramp up the project to reproduce the issue. I was not too worried about the memory usage itself, but simply getting the project to reproduce the issue (my project which has the issue, is well under 1 GB of usage).

I haven't but my nephew does. I'll get him to test and report back to me. May take a few days though as he's working over Xmas.

> I Have a similar problem with construct 2. I started out with quick save loads and importing and now that the game is a lot larger the editor barely runs. To the point now where game making is all but impossible. I have a brand new computer, tried reinstalling c2 and updated all drivers, still freezes constantly.

>

What are your specs?

Cpu?

Ram?

Hdd/SSD?

OS?

How long do dialogs to edit actions take to pop?

Does the issue go away partially, or get better, after a fresh reboot?

I just tested your example and it strangely seems to work well on my computer. And yes as I work it gets progressively worse, lagging more and more when I hit add action or sound, It takes a while sometimes like 6 seconds and at times it shows nothing in the action folder then freezes and says missing resources. When I restart it fixes it temporarily then jams again later on. I think its an error in the game file or something. I have windows ten, 8 gigs ram and 3.2 ghz AMD Ryzen quad core processor. The game has over 8000 events so pretty large.

I just tested your example and it strangely seems to work well on my computer. And yes as I work it gets progressively worse, lagging more and more when I hit add action or sound, It takes a while sometimes like 6 seconds and at times it shows nothing in the action folder then freezes and says missing resources. When I restart it fixes it temporarily then jams again later on. I think its an error in the game file or something. I have windows ten, 8 gigs ram and 3.2 ghz AMD Ryzen quad core processor. The game has over 8000 events so pretty large.

I don't get the freezing and missing resources all the time, but I have had occasional freezes as of late. Same thing, restarting the computer makes it all go away for a little while longer. Example freezing, copy/pasting lots of variables freezes construct for several minutes. On my windows 7 machine, copy/paste is instant. Note: this only applies to the "slow.capx" project. In the "fast.capx" copy/pasting variables is instant. In the slow.capx, copy/pasting brand new variables is fast, but ones with the same starting name is slow. Such as var1, copy and paste. Once you have Var1...20. It is super slow. If you make newvar1 and copy/paste, it is fast again.

It seems like it could be two different (maybe related?) issues.

1) dialogs taking forever to pop

2) Construct slowing down until next restart.

When you try the example capx (the slow.capx) how long does the action menu take for you to load?

Next test, when Construct is going slow for your other project, open slow.capx. Now how long does the action menu take to load ? (this is one thing I also noticed, is the slow down is across the board when it occurs).

Unfortunately, the second issue is harder to reproduce and get out there. I am hoping, by fixing this issue at hand (the slow.capx dialog popping issue), it might help the second issue.

[quote:10ccrk4t]=I don't get the freezing and missing resources all the time, but I have had occasional freezes as of late. Same thing, restarting the computer makes it all go away for a little while longer. Example freezing, copy/pasting lots of variables freezes construct for several minutes. On my windows 7 machine, copy/paste is instant. Note: this only applies to the "slow.capx" project. In the "fast.capx" copy/pasting variables is instant. In the slow.capx, copy/pasting brand new variables is fast, but ones with the same starting name is slow. Such as var1, copy and paste. Once you have Var1...20. It is super slow. If you make newvar1 and copy/paste, it is fast again.

It seems like it could be two different (maybe related?) issues.

1) dialogs taking forever to pop

2) Construct slowing down until next restart.

When you try the example capx (the slow.capx) how long does the action menu take for you to load?

Next test, when Construct is going slow for your other project, open slow.capx. Now how long does the action menu take to load ? (this is one thing I also noticed, is the slow down is across the board when it occurs).

Unfortunately, the second issue is harder to reproduce and get out there. I am hoping, by fixing this issue at hand (the slow.capx dialog popping issue), it might help the second issue.

Thankfully c2 didn't freeze but I did get a slow down when adding an action about 4 sec (which is way better) and when I switched to your slow file it still runs well, so we might have two unique problems. sorry I couldn't help. I'm going to try to resave my file, and reinstall c2 again and see if it fixes the problem.

Quick Update:

Different behaviour within a windows 10 VM. I would have expected worse performance, but it had similar performance to my Windows 7 Laptop. Basically, the first time you pop open an edit window, it would take multiple seconds. Then it would be instant after that (compared to my other W10 machines, which are slow to open the dialog each time).

However, switching layouts, going to a different sheet, saving, editing preferences, etc all triggered a long wait time again. Through extended use, the initial load would take upwards of 10 seconds to pop the edit action dialog. Again, after, it was nearly instant. But, the time got longer (along with unresponsiveness and freezing) and longer until I rebooted my VM and then the performance came back (similar to what zenbynature reported).

It would almost appear to me, that whatever triggers this slow load for the first time within the VM, is being constantly triggered outside of the VM. But we will need more people to chime in with results.

I confirm this.

Dialogs Boxes takes up to 10 ~ 30 seconds to pop up and sometimes even fails. At this point, the whole program gets weird.

This is very annoying.

With my current computer specs, it's impossible to be a hardware problem.

And my PC operating system runs very well too. I do 3D and Video creations with this laptop. And never had a problem.

I do admit that I have a lot of objects in my C2 project. But it's nowhere near 10,000, so it's unlikely that is the case. With that said, the bigger the project becomes the slower Construct 2 gets. Construct 2 / Windows, 10,000 object limit.

I have tried moving my project to another computer with inferior specs and have observed that the computer works as bad but slightly better than my stronger PC with a dedicated GPU, better RAM and a 7th Gen i7 CPU.

It seems as if it wasn't even using the resources available from my computer.

Ashley this is a very dire situation for us who invested time and trust to use the program you have created to create our projects but it can't even keep up with the pace unlike advertised.

My main specs:

Asus ROG GL553VD

Processor: Intel Core i7-7700HQ (Intel Core i7)

Dedicated GPU : GTX 1050

Graphics Card: Intel HD 630

Memory: 8GB , DDR4-2400

Display: 15.6 inch 16:9, 1920 x 1080 pixel 141 PPI, No, BOE HF NV156FHM-N43, IPS,

Storage: 128 GB , 1000HDD (Construct 2 has always been in the SSD)

OS: Windows 10

Normally, memory usage would be less than 10 percent.

CPU usage at peak less than 5 percent and Dedicated GPU usage would be 0 percent but as

you can see I have a lot of programs opened including numerous (~15) chrome tabs on youtube and VLC playing

a movie in an external monitor.

All working quite fast except Construct 2.

Other PC:

Acer Aspire Switch 12

Processor: Intel Core M 5Y10c

Ram: 4GB

Graphics Card: Intel HD 5300

SSD: 120GB

Display Size: 12.5" 1920 X 1080

OS: Windows 8.1

Surprisingly, it works better in Windows 8.1 and non-dedicated GPUs. But it is still very slow and sluggish.

My project contains:

• <,> or = 500 objects in the project. Not exceeding 1000.
• 300 to 500 layouts.
• 50 event sheets.
• Less than 30 families. (Stopped using families after encountering problems with loading them in the dialog, which we all confirmed and reported)
• 19000 to 20,000 UID instances
• Contains Spriter SCMLs and XMLs

Ashley please investigate this. We will gladly provide you with data you request as soon as you start the task to find out the culprit of this problem.

This might help C3 in the future as well.

Thanks, Scirra Team.

P?S?:? ?A?f?t?e?r? ?t?a?l?k?i?n?g? ?w?i?t?h? ?o?t?h?e?r? ?C?2? ?u?s?e?r?s?,? ?w?e? ?c?a?m?e? ?t?o? ?a? ?s?u?s?p?i?c?i?o?n? ?t?h?a?t? ?i?t? ?m?a?y? ?b?e? ?b?e?c?a?u?s?e? ?o?f? ?t?h?e? ?n?u?m?b?e?r? ?o?f? ?l?a?y?o?u?t?s? ?t?h?a?t? ?I? ?h?a?v?e?.?

Thanks for the details —

Layouts might be a "part" of the problem, but not the problem itself. We will need Ashley to confirm. But I have very few layouts and I hit this issue. In the example CAPX, there is only 1-2 layouts. My current project with the issue has 10 layouts.

Thanks for the details —

Layouts might be a "part" of the problem, but not the problem itself. We will need Ashley to confirm. But I have very few layouts and I hit this issue. In the example CAPX, there is only 1-2 layouts. My current project with the issue has 10 layouts.

About that... I double checked and I confirmed that the layout count doesn't significantly affect the performance. It's the actual objects themselves. I'm sorry about the confusion.

As the object count increases, the dialog delay increases.

Although now I just found a little workaround or possibly even the fix for Windows 10 users having unjustifiable difference in performance with other Windows OS versions. Updating the Graphics Card and NViDiA video cards help for those who installed the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

The NViDiA drivers and Intel Graphics Cards don't work at their optimum level after the Windows Update without updating the drivers manually.

It seems like Windows 10 see them as incompatible.

The update reduced the delay from (30 seconds to crashing) to (5 to 20 seconds) increasing the performance of the (Hardware - OS) to compensate for the original problem.

Compared to my Windows 8.1 PC, it is in margin of error, equal in performance now.

With that said, that was only a possible fix for Windows 10 problems not matching performance with other OS.

The original problem is still there. C2 just can't handle that many objects optimally.

I still have the 5+ seconds delay for every dialog popup like everyone else!

> Thanks for the details —

>

> Layouts might be a "part" of the problem, but not the problem itself. We will need Ashley to confirm. But I have very few layouts and I hit this issue. In the example CAPX, there is only 1-2 layouts. My current project with the issue has 10 layouts.

>

About that... I double checked and I confirmed that the layout count doesn't significantly affect the performance. It's the actual objects themselves. I'm sorry about the confusion.

As the object count increases, the dialog delay increases.

Although now I just found a little workaround or possibly even the fix for Windows 10 users having unjustifiable difference in performance with other Windows OS versions. Updating the Graphics Card and NViDiA video cards help for those who installed the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

The NViDiA drivers and Intel Graphics Cards don't work at their optimum level after the Windows Update without updating the drivers manually.

It seems like Windows 10 see them as incompatible.

The update reduced the delay from (30 seconds to crashing) to (5 to 20 seconds) increasing the performance of the (Hardware - OS) to compensate for the original problem.

Compared to my Windows 8.1 PC, it is in margin of error, equal in performance now.

With that said, that was only a possible fix for Windows 10 problems not matching performance with other OS.

The original problem is still there. C2 just can't handle that many objects optimally.

5 seconds is still too much. From what I have gathered, the first time you open a dialog after certain actions it can go slow (upwards 5 seconds depending on the machine and project). After that, it seems to be cached and is instant (until you add another object or switch to a layout view). On my win 10 machine, every single dialog goes slow, there is no apparent caching. On my Windows 7 machine, the caching works. I am only guessing on the caching because I am not sure how it works deep down.

I am running latest NVIDIA drivers, and even tried using my onboard graphics. Same result.

There are some users with Win 10 reporting they don't have this issue. I can't seem to find a difference (culprit).