byondisoft's Forum Posts

  • Hello, everyone.

    I'm not sure this is the right place to post and I'll gladly move this to the proper place if the moderators tell me so.

    I just wanted to announce that PART 1 and 2 of the Build with Cordova tutorial series are done. More on its way. Since there are many discussions about alternatives to Intel XDK, I thought I'd create these tutorials to help people build their apps on their own.

    Of course, some basic understanding on using command-line tools is needed as well as knowing how to install Java and some required dependencies. But I tried to make things beginners friendly. Let me know if I can improve anything:

    Building with Cordova - PART 01 - Setting Up

    https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/4844/building-with-cordova-part-01-setting-up

    Building with Cordova - PART 02 - Build an Android App

    https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/4846/building-with-cordova-part-02-build-an-android-app

    Building with Cordova - PART 03 - Build a Windows App

    <Not yet available>

    Comments, constructive criticism and suggestions are welcome as always!

    Best regards,

    Andre

  • Simply loved the controls mechanic.

    The game plays great and has beautiful graphics.

    Just voted. Congrats, man.

  • lennaert: Thank your for your words. I'm currently working on the Android build. It features setting up the config file, installing dependencies, signing the APK and a little more stuff. All the steps may seem overwhelming at first but I'll try to make things easy to understand.

  • —: Hello. Thank you for the words about the tutorial.

    But actually I may have a divergent opinion.

    Most of the setup stuff you need to do with Cordova is a one time action.

    And people can always create a batch file.

    Intel XDK works great as well.

    I see no issues in users learning more advanced topics, making a little extra effort.

    Some people just want to become game developers overnight without

    taking their time to learn some intermediary stuff. They expect the tools

    they use to do everything for them.

  • MikeMS: That's great to hear!

    About the Touch object, if you use a USB mouse in Android, it will not detect the mouse.

    This happens on Android TVs, at least from my experience.

  • norab: You can use Cordova directly through command-line.

    http://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/5.0.0 ... 0Interface

    Of course, at first, it's a little overwhelming because you need to install every dependencies like

    Android SDK to compile for Android, .NET Framework to compile for Windows, etc.

    But I found that once that's done, it's easy to create a batch file that will compile the project easily.

    The cordova command-line interface is very easy to understand (check the link above).

    I never had to use Intel XDK again. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";-)" title="Wink">

  • lunarray: Can't thank you enough for this behavior.

    Tweening functionality is being adopted by many major game engines.

    And your code performs very well on Windows, Chrome and Android.

    The most useful behavior I've tried so far.

  • MikeMS: Have you considered making a Windows desktop version? I don't think you'll need to change a lot, maybe only adding Mouse support as well. That way you could have the game on Steam, BigFishGames, Scirra Arcade, etc.

  • Loved it very much.

    Pros:

    + It plays and scrolls smoothly

    + Game has very dark and stylish graphics

    + The way the dialogues are presented and the font used

    + Humor and wit

    + Level design is wonderful for a demo

    Cons:

    • Music is great but a little repetitive. More suitable for a menu screen maybe?

    Amazing work! Congrats!

  • Brilliant. Beautiful graphics, very smooth gameplay.

    You are very talented.

  • Wow, congrats, man!

    That's an impressive mark and success to you and your team.

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  • Refeuh: One of the most coherent opinions I've seen here.

    On the other hand, people who buy the engine don't really care if it's made one person or 100's.

    But you're definitely right.

    Scirra may be a very small team but I've seen many more software updates here than the competition

    even with dozens of developers. Like I said before and I stand by my argument, there are different tools

    for different purposes. Use Construct 2, Unity, Unreal Engine, RPG Maker MV (it's coming! Check it out!),

    libGDX, SDL or just plain C++.

    Just let us choose a toolset that we feel comfortable with and use each one depending on the purpose, deadline,

    scope, etc.

  • my current PC is pretty strong

    (i4860, 980M, 8gb ram, 120gb ssd + 1tb hdd).

    i've also tried it on my older PC which is waaay weaker (and worth maybe 500€ which everyone can buy these days (laptop)), it's specs are - dualcore 2.0ghz Core2Duo, 4gb 800mhz ram, 1GB ati radeon 4650, 500GB drive 5400)

    here's a link to my alpha version of the game:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13675221/index.html

    try it and see your performance in it. i will post full game once i'm done with it. but i've noticed quite a good improvement in performance while redoing my whole game, because my initial design (this link) was horrible.

    p.s. loading will take some time.

    Well done! I loved the animations. Great work!

    It doesn't take too long to load here and the game doesn't lag... it's just a little slow in pace.

    I don't see jerky frame rate but slow speed in execution. Don't know if it's by design.

    Have you tried disabling the water effect?

    In my current project I was using the nice Starfield behavior but it got too slow in the letterbox scale that I had to stop using it.

    Also do you use functions? I can't recommend them enough.

    If it helps, divide most of your game logic in functions that you can call when certain events trigger not every time (every loop of the event editor). It helped speed things a lot for me.

    To get back on topic, I'd really love a C3 with more export options even if not official.

    There are many things in C2 that puts a smile on my face like its incredible undo feature (that can really undo everything you do in your game), the way you can work with individual layers without affecting everything else and that ELSE in the event editor that really makes events work the way a developer expects. Try to make a toggle button work in Clickteam Fusion 2.5 (although a great software as well) there without a lot of events and you'll see what I mean.

  • Even in simple games performance drops at random intervals.

    Interesting conversation, guys. I really like the way it's being conducted.

    But I would like to see just one simple game that doesn't perform well which:

    -> is coded really well,

    -> doesn't put every event on the "every tick" condition,

    -> doesn't add large images which are not power of two sized

    -> doesn't overuse effects and particles

    -> many other stuff I forgot.

    Many AAA games developers needed and still need some sort of workaround and time consuming

    optimization (maybe less today) with the amount of polygons being shown, line of sight simplification

    for distant objects, the way to deal with off-screen assets, hardware limitations when porting to other platforms,

    some even have to deal with graphic drivers and boards issues.

    If a very simple game has bad performance maybe an example CAPX file will be worth a thousand words

    so we can see if it's well coded, well designed from the ground up and suited for the platform it's built.

    Then I can blame the engine. I've seen so many horrible demos giving its engine a bad name that I

    became suspicious to say the least.

  • I didn't have any problems with Intel XDK except that it takes too long to upload the project.

    But it works.

    Currently I'm doing the things my own way so I installed Cordova with the Crosswalk Webview plugin and the Android SDK.

    Cordova works very well from the command line and I don't need to wait for the Intel XDK loading times.

    The only problem of doing it my own way is that I need to sign the APK before even loading to my device.

    It's a bit of a hassle initially but it can be done faster after taking brain notes of all the procedures.