Construct 3 Mobile Feedback / Tests and what we need!

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bellborn

  • Hello,

    this year I created my first "bigger" game with Construct 3. I made two versions, one for Web and one for Android.

    First of all, everything worked great in the Webversion.

    But when we came to the Mobile-Version, there were lots of problems we had. I want to mention the main problems here, so maybe anyone can help with plugins or even Construct 3 gets updated to solve the issues:

    1.: The White-Screen:

    We had over 10k installs on our Mobile-Version. Around 5% of these had just a white-screen when starting the game (no info shown, just a white-screen). To solve this, they had to install / update Google Chrome on their phone. But how should they know that? They just got a white-screen... Many of them were complaining about this with 1-star reviews and there we could answer that they need to install Chrome. Mostly they've updated their review then. But I think many users don't write a review if it's not working and just uninstall the app. That costs us a lot of money (buying users which can't play the game because of C3).

    Just adding a message (instead of the white-screen) should solve the problem. Has anyone an idea how to do this? Or will there be an update of Construct 3 to fix that problem?

    2.: More Mobile-Tracking, at least plugins from the big companies:

    The next big problem we have is advertising. For example "Chartboost" one of the bigger ones. And I don't mean displaying Adds in the game (there are several plugins for this), I mean doing advertising for your game. For this you need to add tracking to your app. To do advertising with Chartboost, you need to add their tracking code. (https://answers.chartboost.com/en-us/articles/download)

    If you use Unity3d you can just download the SDK for unity and integreat that easily. But for Construct 3 / Javascript there is nothing you can do... Maybe you should more focus on such things, otherwise Construct 3 is more or less useless for creating bigger games. Also if you try to find publishers for your game, they always want you to integrate these SDKs, otherwise they can't do advertising for the app...

    3.: Layout-Performance (fixed by using preloading-Layouts)

    So these are the 2 main problems you will face when you want to create a big successful mobile-game with Construct 3. At the moment we check our options but it looks like we have to move to another engine (maybe Unity) where we won't have these big problems.

    If anyone can help with one of these problems so we can stay at Construct 3 it would be great. We would also pay for any plugins like Chartboost-Advertiser SDK and so on... Maybe — you can add these important SDKs to your Mobile-Master-Collection, I would pay a lot for these...

    Best regards.

  • For point 1, an error message should appear. Are you using the latest version of C3? We fixed a bug recently where the error message might not appear. If you published using the latest version it should show a message saying what to do to fix it. If it doesn't then it's still a bug.

    I'd also suggest adding your feedback to this issue where we asked Google to fix the problem of out-of-date WebViews, which might encourage them to act on it.

    For point 3 Construct already has features to dynamically manage memory. See the system actions about loading and unloading images. There's also a guide in the manual about memory usage.

  • Hey,

    thanks for the reply.

    For point 1: Can you please tell me when this update was made? My current game-version is around 4 weeks old and there I used the newest C3 stable.

    For point 3:

    I know the manual and I also tried everything to preload objects / images but it seemed like it changed nothing to the performance.

    What I did:

    I made another Layout infront of the Game-Layout called "Loading2".

    From the "Game-Loading-Layout" you were moved to the "Loading2". There I preloaded some of the objects and after that I moved on to the "Game-Layout".

    This did nothing. The only thing it did is it messed up some sprites so I needed to remove this layout again. But for the performance there was no difference.

    What is about point 2? Are there any plans to focus more on these important features which "real devs" need?

    Best regards.

  • I don't think it matters whether you preload images or not. If your layout/level uses something like 500 mb to 1GB of RAM it will crash on a bunch of phones because they suck ( phones ).

    Your only option is to split this into 2 layouts so each uses 1/2 of that ( if game allows for something like that ).

  • BadMario:

    The whole game is around 30mb size.

    And the weird thing is that we tested it with 2 high end phones (Google Pixel 3 and 4, everything up to date), where we had crashes and some "bad" phones where we didn't have any crashes. But what I can say for sure, the crash appears only when moving to the game-layout (like 100% cpu-usage).

  • Yeah, but how much RAM does it use? My game that has had problems was only 15MB in download size, but uses anywhere between 450 mb and 1 GB of Ram depending on which Construct 2/3 export is used. basically that game had to be exported with Construct 2, otherwise crashed too many phones, even iPhones

  • For point 1: Can you please tell me when this update was made?

    I think it was fixed in r158, which made a stable release in r164.

  • BadMario:

    Is there any way to easily display the RAM usage? Couldn't find anything.

  • Point 3 should be fine.

    I've tested it by creating a new huge project and added a "preload-layout" and it reduced the cpu-usage from 25% to 15%.

  • If you use the debugger in Construct 3 it will tell you how much RAM it is using on each layout.

    Also, most phones will have some kind of optimizing app under settings, and you can see there how much RAM is free before you launch your game, and how much is left after the game starts.

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  • Hello everyone,

    at the moment I'm testing a new game made with the current version of C3.

    Everything is working so far, but at some phones (especially the Google Pixel phones) have problems starting the game.

    The game uses around 60 MB RAM.

    When I try to preload images (also if it's only around 20MB RAM) the game crashes immediately when it comes to the preload function (but only on these Google Pixel phones...). If I don't preload the images, the game crashes as soon as it gets to the main-layout with all these images...

    I've tested it on some other phones (by far worse than the Google Pixel) and there everything worked fine.

    Does anyone have the same issue or any tips, how to get better performance or why the preload-images causes crashes on the Google Pixel?

    And another question:

    You can't preload text-objects. Is there any way to get the best performance out of text-objects? For example I have around 30 text-objects in 1 Layout which causes around 15-20% CPU-usage on start of Layout (on mobile even more).

    Best regards.

  • Not sure if this helps you, but you do mention text objects.

    I have had about 5,6 games where it was definitely text objects causing crashes, from game not loading ( black screen ) or going into a couple layouts only to crash or just remain black when reaching the main game layout.

    In almost all instances removing text objects that were on screen resolved the issue. I just had a game do this today. Worked fine, then I added a text object for some debugging, black screen, remove it and again all was well.

    I only use sprite fonts now.

    I have to add that all of these games are done in Construct 2 and only exported via Construct 3 using runtime v.3. Construct 2 exports work fine.

  • Hey,

    thanks for the info.

    Do you know which one performs better: sprite-fonts or text-objects?

    The thing is this only happens on the Google Pixels...

    I found something interesting in the unity-forum, maybe it's the same problem:

    answers.unity.com/questions/1250316/android-app-crashes-on-launch.html

    or this:

    forum.unity.com/threads/crash-on-launch-google-pixel.443016

    But in Construct 3 we don't have such a function (or I don't know where it is).

    So maybe anyone has an idea how to fix that.

    Best regards.

    Edit:

    I've tested it with a layout without any text-objects and it still crashes when it preloads sprites...

  • Do you know which one performs better: sprite-fonts or text-objects?

    Never tested it, but for me text objects are a no go at this moment. I don't really need to display a lot of text in my games and since in my case text objects cause crashes I see no reason to use them.

  • Sprite fonts are probably faster than text objects, since text objects use antialiased vector font rendering to a canvas which is then uploaded to a WebGL texture, whereas sprite fonts are basically the equivalent of rendering a sprite per character (which is super fast). Normally it's not important unless you have an intensive case (e.g. lots of large, constantly-changing texts). As ever you can measure it yourself.

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