Jase00's Forum Posts

  • Ohh, how "low-end" are we talking here? Do you have the device specs or model?

  • Random guess, but could it be sprite.count-1 to fix this?

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  • Oh I see!

    I'll give that a shot and save my project in that way. Thank you!

  • Ayy,

    In C2, my project could play sounds by using the audio plugin "play by name" and putting a folder path (for example if we had a jump sound called "jump.ogg", you could use "play by name" and type: "C:/Game/jump" and it would successfully play).

    In C3, understandably it is different as remote preview works differently to the local preview in C2, but how would be best to play audio without having to import all sounds into C3?

    There's hundreds of sounds and music, which is why I want to do it this way rather than importing it all into my project and dramatically slowing down save and load times on the project.

    I wouldn't mind using a Web server even for now, but I tried this along with an "audio url" addon, but I wasn't able to figure this out, nor do I want to use addons really.

    Any guidance? Much appreciated!

  • I do agree with this, even if we get locked-out from previewing until all references of the old plugin are removed.

    I tried porting a project over from C2 the other day, and I just sifted through the project deleting the plugins and behaviours and it just broke everything when running it in c3.

    If we had maybe red striked-out text or something over the events, then at least we could go and replace with an equivalent (e.g. If we used the plugin "Paster", we could go to each Paster event and manually update this to use a drawing canvas.

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  • Ayy, you could try using replace() to get rid of all whitespace in the text.

  • newt ahh shoot I was going to try a mouse. Cheers for the info.

    I do really hope that it's possible to implement some way to do this, even if it's an "Experimental Feature" that's quickly thrown in that reuses C3 code that already exists.

    Having a section on the side of the screen that scrolls (just like how it scrolls now), but then the rest of the screen is drag/drop (with small deadzone when touching so you can still long-press on events) would be extremely useful imo.

    Or, a button at the top that's only visible on Mobile, that toggles between "Scroll" and "Drag and Drop" mode. Anything is better than cut & pasting over and over (If you had an event with 5 actions and wanted to add a new action at the top, then you would need to cut and paste all of the actions to get your new action to the top of the list).

    Personally I spend 99% of my time in the event sheet view, - I was amazed when messing around with C3 on my Note 9, it is designed very well for mobile with it's side-panes and such, it was literally just the one missing feature - to be able to drag events and actions around.

    I do understand that mobile support is advertised for reviewing and tweaking, a keyboard and mouse is certainly way more efficient and effective and a mobile screen is very small and trickier to work with, but currently for mobile, it really does seem like "drag and drop" is the only missing feature for the event sheet view when comparing desktop to mobile (Things like multi-select get a lot more complicated and I'm not worried about that at all!).

    In my case as a hobbyist, I would use this during my lunch break at work, or before bed, or when travelling, or when I go to a place where I can't bring a laptop or something and just hop on my phone and do some bits. This would also make me feel like I'm getting more out of subscribing as I would be able to invest more time into C3 throughout the day.

    Sorry to post about this here, I understand there's a suggestions page, but I don't really know how to gain attraction to something like this, I am kind of hoping it isn't an overly complicated thing to implement, even experimentally.

  • Oh yeah I see the issue with designing that.

    How about maybe having about an 8th of the screen on the left be for scrolling, and then any touches on the rest of the screen could be treated as a mouse with drag and drop? It's like so well designed and usable, it seems only just this bit is missing from being usable on mobile! So cool though.

  • Ayy, I was playing about with C3 on mobile, it's quite amazing how well it works!

    One thing I couldn't figure out was how to drag events and stuff around the event sheet view. I can cut and paste but this wipes my clipboard and is quite a slow process with the long presses and such.

    I tried googling and checking documentation but no mention of this?

    Imo if it was customisable, I'd have it so a two-finger touch would scroll, and 1 finger touch would act like a regular mouse and drag stuff.

  • typingmaster

    Hmm... It is a worry, but I'd like to think Scirra would resolve a bug like this - There must be C2 apps on the appstores that have been left on there for a few years, but then randomly in the future they might need a mandatory update (e.g. many years ago all Audio broke on HTML5 projects and all HTML5 projects needed updating, or there might be another law about GDPR or cookies that must be added to all appstore apps or something).

    It raises the question - if someone needed to update their app after C2 is gone completely, and they were unable to port it to C3 due to 3rd party plugins and such, could they still use C2 to do this, or must they recreate their project in C3 just to add a small mandatory update. The former could be done as long as the bug you are mentioning is fixed, but if the latter is expected, then... well that's going to be bad for people in that situation...

    Ashley

    That is fair that the "Save to folder" is an experimental feature - I came to C3 hoping to recreate a similar environment to C2, so saving locally is far preferred, but I shouldn't be ticking the box if I didn't want to have unexpected results. I do wish I was informed though, like maybe utilising the C3 "Start Page" to list upcoming changes/warnings, rather than users stopping in their tracks and having to search the forums to see if it's being talked about, even if it is for an experimental feature.

    Reporting bugs to companies - Personally I have not had to do this with C2 as you guys were always able to resolve whatever issues I had, but this was an observation of other people on the forum over the years.

    My take is: It was understandable to spend time dealing with a bug in C2, but with C3 and paying money over and over for a subscription, time has way more value as we want to be making games and not dealing with reporting bugs to multiple places.

    In my opinion, if there was an option to pay a bit extra per month/year for support where Scirra can investigate and contact who they feel is appropriate, I'd be happy to pay that knowing I have a direct path to solving a bug. Then I could focus on making games, rather than learning the intricacies of a bug that will be forgotten about once it is fixed, whilst money comes out of my bank paying for the subscription.

    You guys do output an amazing amount of work and effort on C3, there is legitimate and clear talent and knowledge from yourself and your staff. Personally I REALLY want to return to C3 even after feeling a burnt out from previous experiences and even though peers around me think it's a bad choice to go with, but going by personal experience from jumping from C2 to C3, it's been very unpredictable. Hopefully if I try jumping over again, it will be a smooth experience.

  • Personally I'd suggest subscribing for 1 month and trying all you can to see what Construct 3's experience is like - try and port a project or two over and see how complex it is for you, and then you can decide whether to continue subscribing beyond this. You may be pleasantly suprised, but you may encounter things that ruin the experience. Porting your C2 game will be hopefully easy as long as you don't use most of the hundreds of amazing 3rd party plugins in C2.

    I'd also say, if your financial situation is great, then Construct 3 could be worth subscribing to, but if you have limited time to develop your games (e.g. you work your day job and only have few hours each evening to develop games) and/or your finances are a bit limited but affordable, then no I could not recommend Construct 3.

    I still use Construct 2 too, I subscribed to Construct 3 around April 2020 for a month or two but I cancelled and returned to Construct 2, as it wasn't a smooth experience compared to Construct 2.

    One example: on a fresh install of Windows on a fresh Google Chrome install, no addons or anything, I subscribed to Construct 3, tried the "Dark" theme which I really want to use, and it was just laggy as heck for some reason, and I was thinking "I had to pay money to find this out?" since themes are not available in the free version. It was laggy in Firefox too, and then I tried Chrome Canary and it worked correctly... It's just not something I expected after Construct 3 has been out for a few years.

    Perhaps the above issue was a Google Chrome issue, but then that's even worse since Google Chrome updates all the time and unexpected things will happen every now and then beyond Scirra's control. There were some bug reports about the "dark theme lag" issue but I never saw the outcome, but in my experience, Construct 2 never had this sort of long-winded issue (other than that "jitter" issue over the years).

    Another example is that the "Save to folder" option disappeared one day randomly, and there was 1 mention of this on a random page on a stickied post on the forum, that threw my workflow off since I had to start saving in a different method, not a critical issue but cmon you're paying a subscription, you expect better than this, at least clear communication.

    Recently I was trying to get back into Construct 3 by using the free version to test some things, I found a bug when using the drawing canvas - The bug was reproducable but I was not given a workaround or a sign that this bug would be fixed as it was "too complicated to fix" (until I posted about it on the forum and another user was kind enough to advise me with a workaround!). This bug does not happen in Construct 2 when using the 3rd party Paster plugin, so yet again Construct 2 comes off as superior.

    These things may never occur to you or others, but it tainted my experience as Construct 2 simply just works imo, even after many windows updates and such (whilst Google Chrome updates and might suddenly randomly break something.)

    Another observation I've seen from other users: Even though you're paying a subscription, you will find you will be asked to "report your bug to X company" and such, so you may need to spend time signing up to here there, emailing random companies, etc., which personally I just don't want to spend my time doing considering I'm paying a subscription (I would be more open to learning weird quirks and workarounds within Construct 3 if I was NOT paying a subscription).

    It's not like Construct 3 is broken, it's extremely capable as much as Construct 2 is, it all comes down to the cost and what you get out of the money you pay, including support from Scirra. I recently saw one person leave due to Scirra's lack of empathy and overall poor handling dealing with a bug ( construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/general-discussion-7/rare-editor-bug-155235/page-2 ). I also had a negative experience when asking about having a guaranteed method to open and play old C3 files in the future, as much as noone on the thread shared the same sentiment with historic preservation as me (and perhaps using the word "legal" got peoples backs up against the wall), it was handled very unprofessionally imo. ( construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/general-discussion-7/terms-c3-reaches-end-life-152595 )

  • Any acknowledgement to the screenshots or what simstratic suggested would be great. Even if the comment was "those screenshots look like normal behaviour unfortunately".

  • 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.