Jase00's Forum Posts

  • simstratic , Ooh interesting!

    I tried what you suggested in C2 - Checking the GPU% usage in Windows 10 Task Manager, I see no difference in percentage (though I'm not using a low-end device and don't have one available), however, with having 20 sprites and 20 9-patches on different layouts all with sine, I got these results from looking at "Draw Calls" in the preview debugger (after waiting about a minute for it to settle down and give a consistent percentage):

    Draw Calls

    9-patch no effects : 0.9%

    9-patch WITH effects : 2.4%

    Sprite no effects : 0.6%

    Sprite WITH effects : 0.8%

    Considering these results are not from a low-end device, I'm not sure if they mean too much, but interesting nonetheless.

    Yeah true with RAM, I hope that doesn't come back to bite me, though I quickly measured this in my C2 project at the moment, it's appears to be an extremely small cost in my case assuming the "Est Image Memory" is a fair thing to observe:

    I see Est Image Memory goes up by 0.1MB or 0.2MB for each 149x149 "Paster" created and pasted onto, 149x149 in resolution.

    So this means you could give the player more than 10 uniquely-chosen effect parameters for 9-patch/sprites (assuming they're just a square icon in a HUD, not necessarily for backgrounds for HUDS that have higher resolutions that cover the screen), for 1MB of RAM and no extra GPU usage to render the effect (presuming it's a static effect like AdjustHSL/Black&White/Tint). That's pretty alright, assuming I've measured this correctly!

    I will take your advice on building more often, I've always only previewed in Chrome on a phone! But I recently saw on that other thread that there's unexpected differences between Chrome and a built APK.

  • simstratic

    I meant specifically hiding 9-patch from the "Paste with Effect" option where the bug is present, although thinking more about it, locking down options would be a worse idea as it wouldn't allow any workaround to exist all, so I take that back!

    Yes in my case, my project is GUI heavy and player-customisation heavy, I made the strong assumption that pasting onto a canvas would be much better for CPU/GPU rather than having many concurrent effects. I did not want to choose the baked-in approach, as this limits customisation, and limits colour choice to whatever I picked.

    I am unsure how to measure this (Is it better to have a low-end device to test on?), I tried measuring on my PC but I get no difference at all in draw calls and such with the two approaches. I may be wrong about the performance gain, but as of now, I don't know, I still feel more inclined to move the load onto RAM in my mind, there's plenty more RAM compared to GPU power, especially on lower-end mobile devices.

    Regardless, the bug exists and is reproducable, and it's unknown whether it will be fixed due to the complexity of the effects compositor.

  • I decided not to bother trying to workaround the bug - I mean it works in C2 with paster and I have a licence already, rather than paying monthly/yearly for C3 to have to make my own workaround when it should just work as advertised (why not hide 9-patch objects from the "Paste Object" list? This will surely come up again with other people).

    I purely wanted to subscribe to C3 for ease-of-use and not messing about with bugs or issues as often, and right away I've encountered a bug and I wasn't told whether it will be fixed or not, all I know is that "it's complicated"... yet it works in C2 perfectly.

    My use-case for this was purely for performance gains - Being able to set an effect, paste it, then disable the effect, would give a performance boost in exchange for RAM usage (which is very minimal), especially when multiple 9-patches/sprites with different effect values are needed.

    I hope Scirra reconsiders fixing the bug, or even making an internal "workaround" for bugged "Paste Object" instances, instead of leaving it up to the subscribers to fix.

  • Ah yes that's almost a better alternative, but I do need to retain the alpha channel on the 9patch, which I think the snapshot doesn't do. Thanks for the idea!

    It's cool, I'll try my workarounds out later, if any work then I'll probably subscribe again to make this project. Its mostly menus and 9patches in my project so I would have hoped it worked like paster did in c2.

    I was mostly worried about logging in one day to see the compositor was fixed but breaks my entire project that relies on whatever workaround I used.

  • Ah I see, thanks for the info about the bug!

    I have a few ideas for workarounds to test, maybe even using 2 drawing canvases to get what I need (keep one at 0,0 like you said, then use a second drawing canvas to position and paste on the first drawing canvas), but I was mostly worried about a sudden fix in future messing up whatever workaround I produced.

  • Ayy, currently not subbed to C3, I was subbed before, but stopped due to some concerns, but I wanted to sub again knowing C2 will not be supported and knowing bugs will be fixed and such in C3.

    So I saw "Drawing Canvas" finally can rotate in a recent update, which made me think Drawing Canvas is now better than Paster from C2 since it has everything needed!

    However, I quickly tested pasting a 9-patch object with an effect, and it is glitched. I made a bug report but it was closed and has been reported similarly before. No sign of the bug ever being fixed.

    Bug report here: github.com/Scirra/Construct-3-bugs/issues/4202

    So, Paster in C2 works perfectly and doesn't have this bug with pasting 9-patch objects, yet this bug with drawing canvas sounds like it may not be fixed due to the "complexity of the effects compositor".

    I respect that it's a complicated engine, but Scirra are the programmers, Scirra created the "effects compositor" for their product, and therefore only Scirra can fix this bug... This confuses me, so what do I do now? Wait and hope? It is a very clear reproducible bug but I wasn't told "it will be considered in future" or "this will never be fixed"...

    I reported the bug because its exactly what I needed for my project, I need 9patch objects to have effects and be pasted, and C3 is not able to do this and C2 CAN do this and I can't port my project over a bit more easily due to this (or even starting from scratch isn't easy).

    So, my main question, if I start making a project that has a workaround with this bug, is that safe/recommended to do? The bug makes the "paste" result offset a bit weird so I could use adapt to this and get the desired effect I need, but I'm concerned that in the future, the drawing canvas will suddenly get updated, or effects compositor will be suddenly fixed and then my workarounds might become glitched and broken.

  • > question out of curiosity - are there cases where driver bugs affect cordova app performance but not chrome performance?

    Yep.

    Also the Chrome browser and the WebView (used in Cordova apps) have different GPU driver blacklists, which means you can get fast GPU acceleration in the Chrome browser but slow software rendering in the APK.

    Oh. I would always test my project by using Chrome on Android, as I assumed that this was a good way to see the performance of my project on mobile.

    I always thought to worry about building APK's nearer the end of a project, as long as my project worked well in Chrome. If anything, I thought there'd be a performance boost when doing a final APK build, since it's a stripped down Chrome, but I see.

    Is there a workaround available for people that have this? Can we change the GPU blacklists if they're different per app? Or force to ignore the blacklist on all devices?

  • Well, yeah, you're right, Doom 5 or any triple A game would need to optimise their code extremely high.

    You may be doing something that's considered expensive even in 2D or 3D, such as doing too many collision checks per tick (let's say its in the hundreds thousands, your poor little phone CPU will choke on that).

    Or maybe your picking logic is too heavy (phones are not databases and you need to minimise reoccurring picking. Even with 80 sprites, if you had several "for each" loops then you quickly multiply the engine needing to re-pick everything all over again).

    Or maybe your use of effects (maybe not as you mentioned gpu usage is down).

    I'm making random guesses as we have no clue what your game is designed like. How about check the event CPU profiler, see which group of events (if you have used groups) that is the heaviest on the CPU, and then post a screenshot of the events within that group so we can check it out?

    Even a typical phone's UI that you use everyday is not updating at 60fps, or even 30fps - it updates the areas of the screen as it is needed, so sometimes it's sitting at 0fps - optimisation is needed, even in games that seem simple!

  • Ayy, you should post the project file, or a more simple version. Makes it easier to rule out event performance issues.

  • Thanks for that, Ashley, I appreciate the response and respect the reasoning; I agree, it can even be frustrating for the OP if their own topic gets derailed with other people's separate issues. I'm glad you see the benefit of allowing people to continue discussion of the forum too (unless of course it got chaotic and out of hand).

  • Hey, I'm currently using C2, I was subbed to C3 but I was disappointed by the way things were handled at points, but I'm trying to convince myself to move back to C3 but after lurking the forum I keep seeing things that just scream unprofessional.

    Why was the below thread locked?

    construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/general-discussion-7/ios-export-stuck-loading-154229

    It is really annoying that we are forced to register to github to begin with (I reluctantly did this to post bugs when I was subbed to C3 and then my bugs were not bugs in the end, so should I have posted in the forum? Should I have not?), but now I see a thread where people are discussing a possible bug, sharing solutions and people thanking each other, then it gets locked? What if there's a further solution to share, would someone making a new topic get banned for dodging a locked thread? L

    This sort of thing pushes me away from wanting to spend monthly money on C3 because of unexpected outcomes when trying to communicate on the forums or towards Scirra.

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    I was wondering about this too. I know a number of people that were eager to buy C2, some that I was hoping to work with as I still use C2, but now it does seem like the only path to go down is piracy which I do not condone, but it is literally the only way, even if people WANT to pay for it, they cannot.

    It's weird, the price went up for c2 (it's considered old software, I thought it'd go down in price), then it becomes unavailable to buy. If c2 is old and becoming obsolete, why not lower the price to get people learning about event sheets and such, and then as they learn more, they'll see the benefits of all the features in C3 (timeline, new runtime) and may subscribe in future years to use these features, whilst having gained a lot of game dev experience and knowledge.

    I never thought I'd end up subscribing to any software, I think subscriptions are a massive financial decision that a lot of people (especially hobbyists) may not be able to afford easily, but I did sub to C3 thanks to CC and C2 over the years- I only unsubbed due to a few criticisms with C3 that are not present in C2, so again, it's just very weird, it's not a flat "yes, C3 is better", there's genuine pros and cons to weigh up comparing C2 with C3.

    C2 is still very capable, I'm getting a smooth 60fps on my project on mobile, can still export and build and everything, it does seem to be confusing to these people that were interested in buying C2, some think it's to try and entice people to subscribe to c3 (but then, people who are against subs wouldn't suddenly sub now, they are against subs usually because they do not have a stable income each month, such as hobbyists or younger teenagers looking to learn about game dev).

    It's also really weird that you can legally use Construct Classic right now and export and sell stuff if you like, but you couldn't legally aquire Construct 2 and use it and sell stuff, even though it has a HUGE ecosystem of plugins, capx's, guides.

    EDIT: To be fair, I mostly just pointed out things I've observed rather than be constructive, but I really don't see the point in putting thought in to asking for a suggestion such as "oh could we maybe have a 'C2 lite' where you can use the editor, but cannot export whatsoever?" or something, because, to put it bluntly from what I've gathered over the months and what people have said to me, Scirra are more interested in aiding the education sector and want to get away from c2 ASAP, I don't really think they care about the folks who wanna stick with c2 that cannot afford a monthly/yearly sub and they want to deter people away from c2, not because C2 old and obsolete (they could just offer C2 for free if it's old obsolete software, but instead they up the price of c2 and now taken it away, because C2 is still totally capable to use right now, there's legit competition between c2 and c3).

    I can reproduce the crash following PabloDev's instructions.

    I appreciate everyone trying to figure this out, I read these posts recently and I currently have a habit to save/close C2 after I have opened the animation editor, just in case it sets off a later crash.

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  • Ayy I'm glad this feature will be added and will benefit many people, but I do find it suprising that this thread was the way to informally announce the feature.

    To me, it seems that if nobody had randomly decided to post asking about Scene Graphs, then this whole "Provide Scirra with early details so we can tailor it to our customers better" approach may not have been started.

    OP did indeed post this after 3 years of creating the suggestion, but if OP never decided to post this thread, then would Scirra have made their own interpretation of Scene Graphs and then release a beta and people may have had completely different ideas?

    The other notable thing is, this is not like, blog news? It's cool to hear about the future of Construct 3! A roadmap is always welcomed.

    However, I'm a bit unsure about what Ashley has said, with the whole "people should put more detailed description in their suggestion." It is known that the suggestions website is a lot of administrative work for Scirra to go through, on top of everything else that they do. I'd imagine that if Scirra does not have an interest in their first impressions of a detailed suggestion, then all of rest of that suggestion you spend much time thinking and writing out, may be wasted. To even have your suggestion be acknowledged typically relies on the popularity of your suggestion.

    I did post some suggestions back when I was subbed to C3, they're likely buried amongst all the other suggestions, but this thread made me wonder what would have happened if I posted on the forum about one of my own suggestions, would it gather more attention? If so, why aren't more people doing this?