Best way to optimize performance for larger Construct 3 games?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a slightly bigger project in Construct 3, and I’m starting to notice performance drops, especially on mid-range mobile devices. The game has multiple layouts, quite a few sprites with animations, and some basic AI behaviors running in the background.

I’m already using things like destroying off-screen objects and minimizing tick-heavy events, but I still feel like I’m missing something important.

For those of you who’ve shipped more complex games, what optimizations made the biggest difference for you? Do you rely more on event sheet structure, object pooling, or specific project settings?

Also, how do you usually test performance properly before release—just preview mode or external builds?

Would really appreciate some real-world advice here.

- For testing, I use several devices with different processing power. (But if you're just starting out, your personal devices will suffice.)

- To optimize events, I use groups and an auto-optimizer. It acts like a supervisor, checking which enemies are currently on the level and activating a group with their behavior; once enemies of that type are no longer present, it deactivates that group. This allows for hundreds of different enemies in the game.

- You need to understand how Construct 3 works with memory; there’s a good article on this somewhere.

- You need to understand which events consume the most resources so you can enable them only when necessary. To do this, you can even put them in a test group, and then the group’s load will be visible in the debugger.

- When developing a mobile game, it’s best to keep the debugger showing no more than 20% load; then there won’t be any issues.

BUT ALL OF THIS IS POINTLESS if there are no players, so do as you please—and if players complain, you can always fix it.

See the manual guide Performance tips for our official advice.

destroying off-screen objects

You don't have to do it if you plan to re-use these objects. Just disable their behaviors.

Check out this post:

construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/general-discussion-7/tips-working-large-projects-185300

igortyhon

Thanks, that's really helpful.

The idea of enabling and disabling groups based on what's actually present in the level is something I haven't used much yet, but it makes a lot of sense for larger projects. I also haven't spent much time profiling individual groups in the debugger, so I'll definitely start looking at that instead of guessing where the bottlenecks are.

At the moment I've only been testing on a couple of devices, so I should probably expand that as well. Appreciate you sharing your workflow and practical tips.

Thanks Ashley.

I've read parts of the performance guide before, but it's been a while, so I'll go through it again with my current project in mind. The project has grown quite a bit since I started it, so I'm sure there are optimization opportunities I've missed along the way.

Mobile performance is definitely my biggest concern right now, especially since I'm targeting devices that aren't particularly powerful. I've noticed that even well-known games can behave very differently depending on the device and how efficiently resources are managed. I was recently reading some discussions about GTA San Andreas mobile performance and customization options through communities like gtasanmod, and it reminded me how important proper optimization is when you want a game to run smoothly across a wide range of hardware.

I'll revisit the sections on event optimization, memory usage, and mobile performance first. Thanks for pointing me back to the guide.