Toby R's Forum Posts

  • Awesome, thanks AndreasR

  • GDScript is based in Python, so it's not really a new language. It's just adapted their own needs. They talk about it in the tutorial.

    That's a +1 for Godot. Or even +2

  • neverk yes it is always wise to learn new things. But it's always better to spend your time on something more valuable then less . I'm not sure if learning simple language is better at start. After all, all languages are kinda on the same level of complexity. I'm not talking about low-level programming languages like Assembler, but high-level languages are all the same. No matter if you pick JAVA, C# etc. in the end you are familiar with classes, functions, objects etc. And then there are paradigms like design patterns which you may use actually in any language, just the implementation differs a bit.

    Simple language probably won't allow you do go in very details of the app memory mechanics etc, but after all you don't have to do it with the "big" languages also (but at least you have a choice).

    Many years ago I started with Pascal language. It is quite simple. But usless after all. I have some friends who started with JAVA or ANSI C and they managed to go on as well. Simple language means nothing else then making you kinda handicapped in some cases.

    But let's not go deeper. Talking about which language is better than the other is like talking about religion or politics. It's never ending story and everyone has it's own right .

    Back to the topic, again I'm not discouraging at all! Learn to code, coding is fun. And regarding Construct's eventing. It's nothing else than a visual programming, so it is also coding, just you cannot make a typo

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  • The GDscript is very simple to understand and I believe that learning some scripting will eventually pay off.

    This is the thing which always scared me out from GameMaker. Their own script language. And now Godot has their own one as well. It would be much better if they use some popular language. There are so many languages out there why to make another one?

    When you spend your time to learn the popular language like JS, C# (w/e) then you still have some skills in hands even when you quit the engine. And now when you spend months mastering their own language, you are left with no power once you quit.

    But after all.... all script language are based on the same rules (conditions, functions, objects etc.) so if you know one already, learning second one will be much easier. But still each language has different classes, libraries etc. so there is always a lot to learn.

    Don't get me wrong. I'm not discouraging from learning to code or using Godot. I was always encouraging people to learn how to program cause it is fun and not so scarry as might seem at first sight. And Godot looks really nice as well and I might give it a try some day also. I'm just dissapointed that there is some "dead" language inside.

    It's like with the countries languages. I lived and worked in Holland for about 3 years. And at first I planned to learn Dutch (Holland's language). And my project manager (who was Dutch) said "Why would you learn Dutch?! It's only around 16mil people on the world speaking this language. And everybody here speaks english anyway."

    So you got my point .

    Here is a really

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    This is really nice

  • — - Thanks for sharing — . Now I don't have to move to Cocoon.IO anymore XD

    We will see when it comes out. They are still working on the new build system so they will do some changes still. I hope they won't affect performance in the final release comparing to the version I had my APKs compiled for tests.

  • PS: Did you mean "--ignore-gpu-blacklist" instead "--show-fps-counter" in the information below, right? (moreover, if you have disabled the counter, how to know the FPS )

    No. I meant --show-fps-counter. It does some pretty heavy measurements every tick so it gives additional load to the CPU and I wanted to highlight that CW16 manage to handle it (together with my app) about 3-4 times better than CW15.

    As I wrote before --ignore-gpu-blacklist didn't have an impact on tests in my case so I did not write the distinct test results for this option, it would be simply redundant.

    EDIT: I have my own FPS counter built in the app.

  • > but obviously still adds about 20MB to the APK

    >

    Only if they would fix that make apk smaller

    There's nothing to be fixed. The extra size is the size of the embeded Crosswalk.

  • any news about iOS performance?

    No sorry. I was testing only Crosswalk builds.

  • Guys! Some good news.

    Last days I was in contact with Paul F. (Intel) from Intel XDK's forum. I recieved the opportunity to test their new build system (CLI 5.4.1 + CW16) which will come out soon. I've made many tests and here are the results of what is comming from Intel.

    testing device: Samsung Galaxy S4 (Quad-core 1.9 GHz, 2GB RAM)

    It's not the newest and not the oldest smartphone. Good for testing.

    testing app: Zombie Annihilation

    It's my game which I plan to release soon. The game is really demanding (mean the resources) as for a mobile game. Most of the time there are hundreads of objects on the screen which are overlapping each other. There is a lot of collissions. So both CPU and GPU are taken to the limit and therefore It's pretty easy to see any performance change with this app.

    Tests

    Current IntelXDK build system setup is Cordova CLI 5.1.1 and Crosswalk 15.

    I have tested the app with various new build system setups:

    • Cordova CLI 5.1.1 and Crosswalk 15 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist enabled and --show-fps-counter enabled
    • Cordova CLI 5.1.1 and Crosswalk 15 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist enabled and --show-fps-counter disabled
    • Cordova CLI 5.1.1 and Crosswalk 15 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist disabled and --show-fps-counter disabled
    • Cordova CLI 5.4.1 and Crosswalk 15 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist enabled and --show-fps-counter enabled
    • Cordova CLI 5.4.1 and Crosswalk 15 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist enabled and --show-fps-counter disabled
    • Cordova CLI 5.4.1 and Crosswalk 15 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist disabled and --show-fps-counter disabled
    • Cordova CLI 5.4.1 and Crosswalk 16 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist enabled and --show-fps-counter enabled
    • Cordova CLI 5.4.1 and Crosswalk 16 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist enabled and --show-fps-counter disabled
    • Cordova CLI 5.4.1 and Crosswalk 16 with --ignore-gpu-blacklist disabled and --show-fps-counter disabled

    Actually --show-fps-counter option doesn't really matter at the end because it is used only for testing, but I wanted to highlight this because there was a huge surprise related to that.

    Tests results

    Option --ignore-gpu-blacklist was enabled by default in CLI 4.1.1. It is recommended to always enable it for each build with CLI 5.1.1, since CLI 5.1.1 is not setting it by default. Check HERE for more details.

    During my tests I didn't notice any difference for the same setup with this option enabled or disabeled. But I saw somewere on the forum that people were recieving a big FPS boost after settign it on. It depends on the GPU you have on board. So after all it should be enabled, but did not impact tests on SGS4.

    CLI 5.1.1, CW15

    FPS: 10-20 with --show-fps-counter enabled

    FPS: 40-55 with --show-fps-counter disabled

    CLI 5.4.1, CW15

    FPS: 10-20 with --show-fps-counter enabled

    FPS: 43-58 with --show-fps-counter disabled

    CLI 5.4.1, CW16

    FPS: 45-57 with --show-fps-counter enabled

    FPS: 51-62 with --show-fps-counter disabled (not really sure why FPS meter shows counter as over 60 sometimes, but it does)

    The FPS values I presented have quite big range, but it's because my app have more and less complex (for CPU) moments during gameplay. If 300 enemies are just moving then it's a "light" moment for CPU, but once they start to overlap a lot and machinegun bullets and rockets join the action then there is also a lot of collisions to count and CPU is taken to the limit.

    Sometimes FPS with all builds dropped even to around 30, but usually only for a second or less, so I didn't count that to the average.

    Wrap up

    New CLI (5.4.1) already give some performance boost, but new Crosswalk seems to be a kind of revolution. If I'm not mistaking this will be the first Crosswalk update which actually improves performance. Before, the performance was worse with each new CW release. Crosswalk 16 will clearly give a boost for Android development with C2 and Intel XDK. It looks like the CW16 performance is even better than Canvas+ (but obviously still adds about 20MB to the APK).

    However Intel's new build system with CLI 5.4.1 and CW16 is not officially released yet. They're still working on it. As I've mentioned at the beginning it's gonna come out soon. I'm hoping for (maximum) mid March, this is the approx. time I can hold with my game release.

    New build system will also have the minSdkVersion bug fixed.

    I will keep on testing tomorrow on higher levels of the game (even more CPU demanding). Will keep you updated if I notice something worth to be added.

  • Just checked some of your work. It's really amazing. Great job and stunning quality.

    But I didn't go in details. What do you exactly sell? Sprites or models (3d Max Studio or any other?). Cause for us (2d game developers) what you've presented is not very useful. We would rather preffer to have a top down view or view from a side - not "isometric". Cause as it is right now I see no way of using it in game other than in some trailer.

    And a tip to your marketing guy. Don't be so "Hurry, don't miss it" and "we have THE best customers ever" lols. Your work talks for itself. Just be yourself .

    Again, Great piece of artwork. Definitely worth the price.

  • Oh, it seems I mixed it up with the normal text object. Sorry for that.

    Regarding the Text object. There is a plugin where you can do some fancy stuff. I saw it once but can't really remember the name. Anyway there are several plugins to do a fancy things with text.

    You might want to check the list and search for "text":

  • The problem with using that to constantly change a spritefont is that there is no insertion point. Even now that I had made an insertion point sprite It cannot select text or be moved by mouse. I cannot find a workaround to force it to do these things with sprites, but a plugin or feature that allows you to easily edit each moving and non-moving part of a textbox like you would a sprite would be absolutely perfect. Obviously plugins and features take a while so right now I'm trying to simulate it. What do you suggest I do to add text selection and insertion point and text movement to this? Any help would be great!

    I think I don't fully understand what you want to achieve.

    TextBox is an input field. It's basically an HTML input tag.

    <input type="{whatever}" name="{whatever}" id="{whatever}" />[/code:1s3vihd5]
And from this place you can style it with CSS as on HTML page. So basically you can do a formatting with CSS to make it [b]look[/b] however you want to. So you can change a color, border, font, opacity etc. It's just about the way it is presented.

Now keep in mind that this tag have also an [b]id[/b] attribute which allows you (C2 engine) to pick it individualy to work with it. So here we have JS (Java Script). With JS you can control the behaviour of elements. So this time it's not about the [b]look[/b] but the [b]functionality[/b]. In case of using C2 you don't have to use pure JS - C2 does it for you.

I just wanted to highlight that you do have the possibility to manipulate both the look and the functionality of this element. By default you cannot use sprite fonts as an input text, but with some portion of creativity you have possibility to hack it.

So if I understand you want to use sprife fonts as an input text and be able to highlight (select) this text with mouse etc.(?). Well that would require some tests to check what works what not. 

For a first shoot I would put the input field transparent (no borders and shades). 
1. Set input text transparent (same color as background). Now you have fully functioning TextBox, just nothing is visible. 
2. Put a sprite font over text box (try to adjust sprite font size to be perfectly the same as the text in the TextBox).
3. Now set an event that whenever Input text changes it will copy the text value from the input box into the sprite font.

No idea how would it behave. Just a first thing in my mind.

  • But can we set custom formatting for just parts of the text? Like making just one word bold or draw it with different color?

    Are we still talking about TextBox object? Can't really figure out any project where you would want to have different formatting for various words in the input field . But anyway. No it is not possible to format only the part of the input text. You would have to do some hacks.

  • > Let me follow this one (There should be a "follow" button <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink">)

    >

    Did you mean this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/166 ... scribe.png ?

    Hahaha... all that time I had no idea such a button exists <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_surprised.gif" alt=":o" title="Surprised"> ! Thank you! <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing">