Difference between 'Android' & 'Android with Crosswalk'?

I wanted to know if there is a difference between Android & Android with crosswalk on the build options on Intel SDK. I've built with Crosswalk but the problem is that the file size becomes huge compared to others. I've read that the file size is smaller if you build with Android without crosswalk but have yet to try it.

What is the difference between the two? Crosswalk is fine but the file size really puts me off as it turns a 9mb apk into a 20+mb file, and this increases to around 60mb when installed. For this reason I'm looking at alternatives.

I haven't come across anyone that has used 'Android' to build rather than Android with crosswalk so I'm curious as to what the difference is.

Without Crosswalk you'll just get the standard Android system webview, which is generally slow and missing lots of features prior to Android L.

Is the file size such a big deal? Lots of people have broadband and large storage these days.

Ashley Thanks for the reply. The file size is kind of a big deal as my game is for Android phones, and the fact that it takes up around 60mb after being installed, that is a quite a bit of space to take up on a number of phones.

Downloading it isn't the issue, as it's around 22mb (even though its still an increase from 9mb in Construct 2), its just the fact it takes up more than twice the space on the phone after installing.

After installing the game on different phones, 60mb seems quite extreme compared to most apps. There's not many apps that take up as much space as this.

It's just a but frustrating have worked on the game on Construct 2 to make sure the download size is as small as possble, only to have it shoot up when building it.

Is there anything i can do in Intel XDK settings to keep the file size down when building with Crosswalk? If not, any recommended alternatives?

I think you're pre-optimizing. 60MB installed space is pretty insignificant on most devices. An android phone that doesn't have 60MB to spare is either going to be filled to the brim with the user's junk, or is so old it wouldn't support webgl anyway.

Just IMO.

A Moto E goes for $119 and has 4GB of storage. 60mb represents about 1.4% of its storage space. Are you sure that's a problem? BTW as of Android L you'll be able to publish with PhoneGap, which should work just as well as Crosswalk and without any extra filesize overhead.

I wouldn't have minded my game being 60mb if i felt my game should be taking up that much (due to high graphics etc). But my game is an Autorunner game with added graphics that total to 9mb on Construct. I've downloaded quite a few games around similar size to 20mb and even then, when they're installed they take up around 35mb.

Compared to other games, my game taking up 60mb does seem high, for example i have Zombie Dash on my phone, which is pretty similar to my game in terms of gameplay and graphics, and its only a 20mb download but when installed it takes up 1.36mb. So there are games that can take up even less space when installed.

The fact that with my game, it takes up more than twice the download size is the issue i have.

Also i built the game with CocoonJS at first and with that same game totaled to 9mb download size, compared to the 20mb with Crosswalk. I don't want to use CocoonJS as i believe Crosswalk is better to use for Android games, so i'm a little bit frustrated with the file size on Crosswalk as a result.

This is a reality of software development, and it's "kinda sorta" the same reason different C++ compilers can create different sized executables. Crosswalk needs to package whatever runtime code and libraries it needs with your program. I'm still a bit new to it, and I don't know what the internals look like at all, but crosswalk offers all types of apis to access things not normally available in a webpage and tries to do it in a way that it's cross device, and I'd imagine the price we pay for that is a higher download.

When Java got popular did a "Gasp". Why would people want to use a language slower than C++ that takes up more memory and file size? Over the years it became obvious the answer is, "because they can". Games used to weigh in at just a meg or 3 in the SNES days. Now your average AAA title is gigs large, sometimes even the more simple games are hundreds of megs. This is the natural evolution of software and file sizes. Software will always be written to take advantage of modern resources. That's how things move forward.

Speech off.

Judging by that reply i guess there isn't really a way to reduce the file size and i'll just have to deal with it in the long run.

Thanks for the replies anyway.

A Moto E goes for $119 and has 4GB of storage. 60mb represents about 1.4% of its storage space. Are you sure that's a problem? BTW as of Android L you'll be able to publish with PhoneGap, which should work just as well as Crosswalk and without any extra filesize overhead.

Exactly - my current phone has 16gb of storage and so a 30mb game wont make me lose sleep. Back in the day my Windows Phone had 64mb and no expansion slot. Those days, space WAS an issue. Nowadays I don't think people care about a loss of 15mb or so.

If it's a simple free game there's always publishing it to the web, where it's the download size only. iOS 8+ has no file size overhead with PhoneGap and from Android L you can get Crosswalk-like performance and features with PhoneGap and no extra filesize overhead, so it's basically a temporary solution to support older Android 4.0-4.4 devices and will be unnecessary eventually. Until then I think it's worth the extra file size overhead, which is to bundle the Chromium browser engine with the game for maximum performance and best feature support on devices which have otherwise poor built-in browser support.

Thanks, i'll keep an eye out on that. I guess its just me being really pedantic over this is suppose.