Consider Cocoon if XDK is not working (updated)

part12studios Thanks for the input. I am about to start the process of getting the game onto appstore so I can have people test via TestFlight. I have had this this working for awhile and have tried to keep current. I currently use version r233 of Construct 2. I am using version 2893 of XDK. I am building 5.1.1.

I purchased the Cranberry plugins on 12/29/2015 and I have not updated since. (Have there been updates?) Looking at the directory...

Vibration 1.0.7

Facebook 2.0.28

UnityAds 1.0.4

Admob 1.0.99

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you...busy week.

cool good luck! I wish more people could say they have had the same experience.

part12studios I should mention it was not easy getting to where I am. You may recall me posting that I actually downloaded Unity at one point because of the frustration I was feeling trying to build within XDK. I think the biggest thing for me was the inconsistency when dealing with plugins. For instance, I mentioned that I use AdMob, UnityAds, Facebook, and Vibration plugins from cranberry. The only one of those I added to my project with the Plugin Management within XDK was the UnityAds. The other 3 are incorporated within intelxdk.config.additions.xml and they were not added correctly by default. Once I had them set correctly, I saved this xml file off so now my process is: Export from C2 -> Copy and Paste the saved off additions file on the Develop tab within XDK -> Build. (I wish there was a way I could lock down the additions file so I could just export and build.)

Question: I have never even dipped my toe in Android waters, but I plan to. If I have this working fine for iOS, would you anticipate that I should be OK when I move to building for Android as well? Thanks.

its likely something will not work with android. you might get lucky. it sounds like you have a good solid method for doing things. I definitely have seen things work for one and fail on the other (ios vs android) so anything is possible and you won't know till you try.

Might be good for you to make a tutorial that just outlines what you said but more explicit if/when you have time. I know I'd be willing to give XDK another look with some new insight on the subject. I've just banged my head against the XKD wall long enough to not be eager to come running back.

Though I'm still pretty darn happy with Cocoon IO overall. MUCH smaller APK's alone are worth the price of admission. 2mb+game vs crosswalks 19mb+game

its likely something will not work with android. you might get lucky. it sounds like you have a good solid method for doing things. I definitely have seen things work for one and fail on the other (ios vs android) so anything is possible and you won't know till you try.

Might be good for you to make a tutorial that just outlines what you said but more explicit if/when you have time. I know I'd be willing to give XDK another look with some new insight on the subject. I've just banged my head against the XKD wall long enough to not be eager to come running back.

Though I'm still pretty darn happy with Cocoon IO overall. MUCH smaller APK's alone are worth the price of admission. 2mb+game vs crosswalks 19mb+game

Really? You can get them down that small with cocoon?

Google Play accepts now up to 100MB of single APK file. I don't really understand why 19MB more or less is the problem. These days Internet is very fast actually everywhere so the download time is not an issue. Also 19MB of HDD is again not a problem for modern devices.

oh yea it's incredible! now if your game itself is big.. cocoon can't help that.. but if you make a tiny game.. cocoon doesn't add a lot of baggage.. I used to use crosswalk with a project.. the game used to be over 30mb. when i moved over to cocoon io it dropped down to like 13mb with no changes. My game is now around 17mb but its because i added more music and stuff to it.

— the reason it's a problem is for tiny games.. they shouldn't be that big! flappy bird is 1.7mb.. or so.. IIRC.. this means for hyper casual games you want someone to download as fast as possible and get them playing as quickly as possible. if I make a fun little pixel art game I want it to be as lean as possible..

the bigger your game is the more time there is for something to go wrong.

they shouldn't be that big!

From the developer perspective. I agree. Also they ideally should not be made with HTML5 but with Java.

But from the customer's perspective... If someone finds a nice looking small casual game with nice video etc. Will the size of the game discourage him from downloading the game in your opinion? In my opinion - not at all. Requesting Calls data or Location permission (as it is with Cocoon.IO) will discourage some of them for sure (but that's another topic), but not the size of the APK.

I would say even opposite. People who are not developers and they have totally no idea of the technical things, usually think "wow! this is serious! somethig nice is inside!" when they see game has pretty big size. Because they simply think "the bigger - the better".

Just to be clear. I'm not agains CocoonIO. I've tried it and I like it. Ludei does the great job. Permissions are serious problem but except that, all the rest is ok.

So again as a developer I agree. It is wierd that the wrapper takes usually more than the game itself. But from the other hand it gives you stability cause you are sure that all your customers run the game in the same browser.

But developer's point of view is not really important here. Customer's point of view is the most important.

a consumer doesn't care how big it is just how long it takes to download.. you're probably on a high speed connection most of the time.. so to you it doesn't seem like an issue..

I just developed a game for Iranian youth and they have very slow connections so big games are a problem.. many parts of the world have slow / poor access to data, especially over cellular networks.. some sites won't host games that are too big.. especially if they are not "beefy" games so less bloat was important there, but yes in many cases the extra size is fine..

Haven't gotten an answer on the cocoon boards so lemme ask it here too:

Heyo, so I'm trying to figure out where I need to optimize my game, and have run into a bottleneck when it comes to CPU usage, which I find a little odd.

I'When running the game through my iphone 6's safari browser, it averages out at about 40-50% cpu usage, and normal battery usage. When running the game through canvas+, the cpu usage is constantly 95% and higher, and battery usage is crazy high. On top of that it makes the device uncomfortably hot, but I suppose that is from the cpu, which explains the battery drain.

Of interesting note when I export the game using normal uiwebview, while the CPU usage is still high (80-90%), the battery usage is normal, and the heat minimal.

So I guess what I'm asking is that are there any reasons I should be on the lookout for when it comes to such high cpu usage, especially when Safari runs it so well?

Thanks for the help!

blekdar I think your question is not really related to this topic, so maybe it's a good idea to make a new one. If your game take around 80-90% no matter how you wrap it then I think it's no a matter of wrapper but your game optimization. There are always many ways to to the same functionality. One might be very CPU consuming while other be very light for CPU. Check profiler and try to optimize the most heavy parts.

— So given that, cocoon.io isn't any more efficient than normal uiwebview? When I use the profiler through mobile safari, it's roughly at 40% usage, with nothing sticking out particularly high ratio wise to the PC version.

I'll happily take this to another thread, but I just am curious as to if cocoon doesn't handle certain things as well as uiwebview / safari, as they have both been running better than cocoon's canvas+

blekdar yea it's hard to say what could be going on with your game.. if you made it for PC and then want to take it to mobile.. it's bound to have problems because you were building the game with pc cpu / memory / gpu..

it's hard to say what might be going on. something in your game loop maybe? try stripping out features and see if you see a significant drop in cpu usage.

part12studios Well it's been made with mobile in mind for a while, the PC version was just an alternate path, and just so happened to come out first.

Since I was testing it in the browser more often than not towards the end I figured it would be ok, and I accept that this is mostly my fault for not testing native apps as opposed to the phone's browser.

And yeah my plan is to start stripping features until I get the cpu lowered, it's just a pain to strip things, compile, upload to a wrapper, load onto device, etc so I was seeing if there were any known plugins or behaviours that would run great in my iphone's browser but shoot up to super high cpu usage when wrapped.

Just to clarify and compared CPU usage:

PC usage: 10-15%

Mobile Safari on iPhone 6 : 40%

Wrapped through intel xdk: 80%-90%

Wrapped through cocoon.io: 95%+

So naturally I find it odd that my phone's browser handles it so much better, and cocoon handles it so poorly. It does play great and runs at 55fps+, but the battery use and heat is pretty brutal. I'll do some experimentation and see what I can find out. Thanks guys!