part12studios's Forum Posts

  • yea i see now that i just had to work with positive numbers for the speed. worked it out. I was canceling out things by using negative values incorrectly.

    Thanks!

    Caleb

  • Hi everyone, so I'm making a simple homage to Kung Fu Master and while it's not done of course, I'm working on a system that allows enemies to randomly come from the left and right. I have a few variables I was using to help manage the game's controllers and applied this same approach fairly successfully with the enemies as well, but they show a strange behavior and I'm not sure why:

    http://part12studios.com/temp/Games/KFM/KFM_05/

    swipe left and right to move.. swipe up to jump and tap to stop.

    this is where i'm determining the bullet speed of the enemies.. i have a left enemy and a right enemy just to help keep things easy to manage.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/gagajzmmbbdl7pd/kfm1.png

    so the idea is that if the player is in a moving right state, the left enemy bullet speed gets reduced and the right side goes faster.. and overall this works fine moving left and right, but when idle.. where i have both off thus making the speeds normal (400 and -400 respectively) things get weird.

    I don't get why. there are no other places in the game where bullet speed is changed. regardless if i set the bullet speed to all enemies to 0 or 400 / -400 (respectively again) the right guy continues to be in that stuck state..

    I wonder if it's something about using the (-) symbol in the formula, but all of my testing has been unable to find some common thread. Maybe it's something about using - and another - or something? like dividing by 0

    Thanks,

    Caleb

  • ok i ran a couple of those games and they played great but that's also Cocoon IO which uses their own special webview IIRC which has pros and cons of it's own. I'm looking at Scirra's use of actual Cordova which isn't using the same thing as Chrome and Browser.

    Thanks,

    Caleb

  • NN81 it's an arm based device. yea i'd love to see how crosswalk works on my device for comparison.

    How are you building crosswalk stuff? the only way i knew how too was with XDK which as far as I can tell has been closed by Intel with no client downloadable (and i assume their build servers are offline too)

    Also I'm not saying I didn't contribute to this, but this thread isn't about Unity vs Construct.. but really this is about Construct 3's build in Cordova comping process and it's poor performance on some android devices and if there could be a solution Scirra could apply to it.

    I'm not really really even looking for an alternative. part of the pricetag / feature that sold me on C3.. was it's move to remove the reliance on 3rd party plugins (at least for core features) and 3rd party compiling requirements.

    I want to see this be addressed and my original purpose of this thread was to see if there might be some other games out there made with Cordova on the app store I could install on my device to see if they too suffer from the same performance problem that I have with my C3 projects on my LG G Stylo device running Android 6.0

    Thanks,

    Caleb

  • yea i met a guy one time who was a legit C programmer (not sure he used unity) but he still used C2 for prototyping so it's not like you have to choose, but i also know another indie dev i've known for awhile who finished a game with C2 but at least year later is still dabbling with unity..

    i think the key with construct / publishing is mostly just not to rely on a lot of third party plugins (btw this is not a breeze in unity and others, i know as we've developed apps for other people using unity) so yea it's not like unity devs never have trouble with 3rd party services..

    i agree not all android devices have to work, i'm just not convinced that my device can't run the game well is all.. part of it of course is that i bought it as a test device, not a phone.. and basically learned it's useless.. $100 out the door.. but it's like really, if this device which plays any other game i've put on it fine.. how many other devices will have problems?

  • interesting about fusion. yea something didn't hook me.. and yea i am actually pretty happy with the iOS performance.. it's not rock solid, but it's fast.. it's acceptable for sure.. very comparable to the chrome browser performance seen in the video.. so i'm going to roll with that for now.. the xcode simulator plays well and appears to reflect a good comparison of speed compared to my physical iphone 5s.

    i have not tested the plugins yet though.. ads / iap.. that will come later, but at this point. monetizing is almost pointless to spend time on unless you have a heavily marked (funded with thousands of dollars) to get some notice in the mobile space.. banking on your game being the next flappy bird going viral is up there with winning the lottery.

    So i can attest that iOS works well enough to publish.. and i guess some phones for android are ok.. but i still would like to to understand how browser plays fine but cordova sucks.. given the open source nature of these products.. i dont' see why construct's cordova exporter couldn't point to the same drivers that chrome and the browser app use when they play the same games..

  • yea but you might as well talk about unreal at that point too.. unity inevitably requires serious dedication to programming and learning the tool.. the point of Construct in my opinion is allowing not developers to make games. an experienced programmer would be stepping back to use Construct.

    Basically "real developers" use engines like unity and unreal.. many of us are not serious developers and for me I do not enjoy programming.. i find Construct lets me express ideas quickly that i want to try out.. I've seen it with unity in my attempts at the past that it would take a long time for me to get to a point just to start really experimenting with game ideas (which is difficult to do if you are not already a seasoned coder)

    so yea we're talking apples and oranges.. to compare pricing and power of unity to construct is like comparing a small passenger plane to a 747... both fly but one is way more powerful and difficult to fl, but if you can fly it you can travel much further..

    I like flying a small plane as it gets me where I want to go without having to spend a lot of time not making games learning to fly something I don't enjoy flying.

    if you want to work with something like Construct your options are things like game salad, media fusion pro, stencil and a few others out there that are honestly 'code free'

    I've seen unity, i've worked in it with other people and yea just not fun.. Construct is honestly fun to work with.. even when i'm stuck i'm working through solutions.. every time i wanted to something new in unity it was like.. "ok time to stop my idea and figure out a new programming methodology.. etc" and then maybe if i make sense of that, apply it towards an actual game.. no thanks, not my thing.

    however some people love coding and i respect folks who do enjoy unity.. i wish i could be one of those people but i've tried numerous times.. just like learning flash (as3) and even blueprints which is visual scripting for unreal, but the reality is they are just way too deep and not fun to work in for me.. i've enjoyed Construct and for the time being believe they will get there.

    We just have to use our voices and what influence we can to make it the product we want it to be.

  • try multi media fusion if you want something similar to Construct. i kicked the tires before and it's similar and perhaps it's publishing pipeline is more refined? at the time though i didn't get pulled over for some reason i can't recall.. it might have just been the fairly high price tag i recall (like $200?) or something. Still i think they have a demo version you can play with.

  • troxx i'm with you on that.. that's how i feel too.. i started with game salad which was great as a first code-free engine and i made a lot of games with it.. but eventually it's sandbox walls were finally too small and i made to move on..

    That's why I feel so strongly about the fixes that are needed for this product to be the absolutely best it can be and should be..

    but yes my advise is save your money until they can deliver.. guys like myself who opted to take a chance on C3 will be able to tell you if you really NEED C3.. and i will tell you, it's better in a lot of ways.. the android compiling is really nice to be built in.. It has always been a weakness with C2 regarding publishing.. problematic, inconsistent and pretty much unsupported by Scirra itself.. "it should work, but don't come to us if it doesn't work"... not cool

    so that alone is worth the price of admission.. i'm going to hold them to doing a similar process for iOS.. as it is you still have to use cordova external solution for iOS or xcode.. i went the xcode route and I will say that it went pretty smooth considering..

    even with the browser based thing which i wasn't in love with isn't really a big deal and it really was a pretty smooth transition.

  • I will say that I can report that my test builds on an iPhone 5s so far are performing better which is encouraging. I still think this question with Android needs addressing though, especially since soooo many construct developer are more android focused than iOS..

    I'm ok with good iOS performance because I still frankly find iOS a better market.. i've never had more success with an android version of a game than iOS..

    Testing with android would be a few steps easier (no xcode needed) but i can manage with that..

    So yea be sure you're contacting support.. people make some noise. I know they read forum stuff, but it's easy to block this stuff out and overlook / ignore. but direct support requests will make sure they know.. if i'm the only one asking from the entire community of course it's going to get put aside for bigger issues they see from their view.

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  • and look i don't really think there was anything crooked in mind here. I'm sure they will be fair to us but i also feel that it's important that we talk about this now rather than when it's time for renewal.. we should vote with our dollars..

    I'll just go back to C2 and i would encourages others to do the same if they are experiencing trouble publishing. twelve months should be plenty of time to work out the kinks about publishing.

  • In this case, I don't see a big reason to support 4.x based on this charge.. 5-7 make up the lion's share of devices and while 4.2 does have a nice chunk, i don't think it's enough to hold up the advantages of embracing 5 and higher. https://developer.android.com/about/das ... index.html

    That said yes I agree they are working hard on things, but not giving this the attention it deserves. What's unfortunate is that it's probably not even that big of a fix to get this working right.

    the question is if native browser can play game fine and the Cordova version not.. i find it hard to believe it's the drivers fault.

  • i agree with that.. its like it's rendering every frame (like not turning off Vertical Sync)

  • Exactly.. and some warning should be out there. "this is beta.. don't expect to publish professional games for mobile yet before you pay to subscribe"

    of course the catch 22 was you need to be a paid subscriber to test publishing (why i paid)

    There is no refund policy (I learned recently) I'm just hoping they will offer at least an extension of the 1 year subscription seeing that we're paying for software that wasn't really ready to roll out for professional usage. I don't think most of use are paying for C3 with the expectation of not trying to make money off of our games..

  • I just resent the idea that i need to buy a "good android device" when i have one that's running everything fine except my android builds

    Also note that thanks to our friend in this thread he build another version not using C3's own build so it's not that i'm blaming C3 exporting exclusively but there is clearly a problem here with Cordova and it's not our games fault.

    As a paying user I'm disappointed that i've wasted many months of time potentially publishing games. I'm still using it for a game i'm working on slowly but I have other projects that could be whipped up quickly and i don't think I'm asking too much for C3 to insure export

    I'll have to go back and try (again) with xcode to see if things are still slow there. I'll see if i can set some time aside and see if fps still sucks like it did months back.