Regarding Node Webkit

I noticed that on some low-end laptops, the user experiences a hefty framerate drop, but is raised when the window is shrunk, which led me to experiement with resoultion and come to the idea that, if there were to be a "Change resolution" mode (So that when the game runs, if the users monitor resoultion is 1366x768, it would drop to a lower one like 800x600) this would help people with lowend computers play games a lot smoother. Anybody agree?

Also, I noticed the "seam" glitch that used to occur in games now no longer appears (Not sure when this happened but it's great :D) However, when using Node-Webkit, the seams come back when the window is scaled. I don't think this is a bug, but more so to do with the Node-Webkit side of things, but how would one go abouts fixing this? <img src="smileys/smiley12.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I would definitely like an option to set the screen's resolution, and I would also like an option to go into true full-screen mode. Currently node WebKit uses a borderless window that's set to the size of the screen. True full-screen mode generally has better performance.

Part of the problem with low-end laptops, as far as I understand it, is the lack of proper OpenGL support. If the computer doesn't properly support OpenGL, then it uses something that I think is called ANGLE that translates the OpenGL calls to directx, but incurs a performance hit. If it can't do that either, then it falls back to software rendering, which obviously incurs a performance hit as well.

The real problem is probably out of date graphics card drivers, so it ends up using software rendering. Updating the drivers usually fixes that. Check what the 'renderer' system expression says - if it's not "webgl", you probably have bad drivers.

Yeah, it's just frustrating having no other options available. I have access to a low-end laptop that simply doesn't have any better drivers available, so the performance is subpar, not to mention getting a lot of users to update their graphics card drivers is a difficult task, they often simply won't bother, or aren't computer literate enough to feel comfortable doing so. If I could set it full-screen mode and lower the resolution, then at least I could try to work around it somehow. :/

Yeah, more resolution and scaling control would be great. I'm seeing performance issues caused by this too, even on middle-end computers with high desktop resolutions.

With my recent tests with two laptops it seems that simply updating directX fixes everything with my game. Framerate went from 15 to constant 60.

Ashley Arima sometimes I experience poor performance without software rendering - generally when using a lot of layer effects in full-screen. As such, I would definitely appreciate an option to set resolution as this has a direct correlation with layer effects performance. Also, I'm interested in Arima's statement about proper fullscreen being more efficient - care to elaborate?

I'm not sure if node-webkit supports resolution changing, so that could be difficult. We could possibly do a low-res render and stretch to fullscreen, but I'm not sure a software renderer is going to be much good with that still.

On the lowend laptop, It does use WebGL just fine, it just doesn't want to have to draw to such a high resolution. Stupid laptops these days with their ultra-weak intergrated graphics card, yet they boast about how they are in 720 HD. -.- Regardless, I'll just be patient and see if anything can be done about this <img src="smileys/smiley20.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

With the seam glitch that I mentioned, I don't get the seams when "previewing" my game, but once I export it as node webkit and open it up on my good computer, it has seams in tiles whenever the window is changed size, or if I use a "zoom" action inside the game, or anything at all. I wonder if anyone else is having this issue too or if I'm just missing something hah. I'm 100% sure that my graphics card drivers are up to date <img src="smileys/smiley16.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Jase00 - posting a .capx would help, as well as telling us which renderer is in use when you see seams and when you don't. Typically, setting pixel rounding on, point sampling, and letterbox integer scale fullscreen is a pretty robust way to avoid seams.

We could possibly do a low-res render and stretch to fullscreen, but I'm not sure a software renderer is going to be much good with that still.

Even so, sounds like something that could help alot with shader effect performance for those high desktop resolutions. I'm all for it :) If you were to implement it, maybe also include an "internal" scaling option for effects that rely on at least a 2X scale?

Node-webkit does support changing window width/height:

window width/height // get/set

I implemented it in my unofficial node-webkit plugin.

You can even change the position of the window on the screen, etc... It's documented pretty well. Check out node-webkit github page.

Even though i'm not sure will the changing the size of the window help performance issues.

Cheers!

Changing the size of the window helps a lot when layer effects are involved. I'm all for this being implemented!

I agree, but i don't see how to do it, except for scirra team to implement an official node-webkit plugin.

Currently, all node-webkit functionalities are dispersed on all others plugins, where they can fit (some in browser plugin, some in others).

I would like to see an official node-webkit plugin in the "platform specific" section of the plugins, with additional stuff that node-webkit provides, but i don't see it as something that is crucial.

I would prefer that scirra team works on more important stuff, get/set window functionality is easy to implement in a third party plugin, if somebody needs it!

Cheers!

JohnnySheffield I'd be happy to see that - would it work in preview, though? I guess that's not much of a concern.