Will Scirra C3 exporter have improved performance over XDK?

Ashley Tom preferably the reliability of XDK/PhoneGap with the performance of Canvas+ by Cocoon.io. Can you tell us if it will be as good if not better than this, or will it be the same as XDK, just more convenient?

Good question

A performance comparison is in order - sooner or later.

XDK/nodejs VS construct3 exporter

Im confused.

Are you expecting that they wrote a new wrapper?

I think the performance will be the same.

Im confused.

Are you expecting that they wrote a new wrapper?

Not a difficult question. Yes, the question is: did they write a new wrapper that has improved performance?

Short Answer : No.

Short Answer : No.

So, benefits? Besides less effort?

> Short Answer : No.

>

So, benefits? Besides less effort?

The Export would become more reliable than before since it will directly be connected to IntelXDK.

But that still depends on what kind of exporter it is. Whether it is single click build inside C3 or a separate program from C3.

Another benefit is that we can file bug reports directly to Scirra if their Export isn't working. So lesser excuses from Scirra.

And since we are in a cloud subscription, the exporter is supposed to be well maintained so there would be lesser bugs and no more workarounds for supporting third party plugins and building. It should be as easy as pie to export if Scirra wasn't false advertising. That's the greatest benefit.

But regarding the performance... It stays the same.

>

> > Short Answer : No.

> >

> So, benefits? Besides less effort?

>

The Export would become more reliable than before since it will directly be connected to IntelXDK.

But that still depends on what kind of exporter it is. Whether it is single click build inside C3 or a separate program from C3.

Another benefit is that we can file bug reports directly to Scirra if their Export isn't working. So lesser excuses from Scirra.

And since we are in a cloud subscription, the exporter is supposed to be well maintained so there would be lesser bugs and no more workarounds for supporting third party plugins and building. It should be as easy as pie to export if Scirra wasn't false advertising. That's the greatest benefit.

But regarding the performance... It stays the same.

Any issues you run into with XDK will likely exist with any other web-based exporter, because you don't have control over it, and if you're doing anything it's not expecting the build will fail. The idea that Scirra will be able to provide better maintenance than Intel? What makes you even think that's possible, given the resources of each company?

If you want the option to optimize your builds as much as possible, you're better off installing node.js, cordova, java & GIT on your local machine and compiling locally, which takes much less time and doesn't require uploading your assets to a 3rd-party server (that may potentially be unreliable), which is going to be configured to support a more generalized build as opposed to something specifically for your game projects. Reliability aside, if you're working on a bigger project, uploading over even a fast connection adds a lot to the build time - whether you're using Cocoon, XDK or Phonegap.

Once set up locally, Cordova isn't difficult to use, and just requires a few command-line options or your setting up a batch (.bat) file when you want to compile. If you're interested in doing this, install in this order: java, GIT, node.js, then Cordova. Installing Cordova last allows it to set up the connections to the other components automatically and no manual configuration will be necessary. Plugins can be installed from the command line/powershell, and I'm sure there's a GUI-based installer for them as well if you're more comfortable with that after setup.

>

> > Short Answer : No.

> >

> So, benefits? Besides less effort?

>

> The Export would become more reliable than before since it will directly be connected to IntelXDK.

> But that still depends on what kind of exporter it is. Whether it is single click build inside C3 or a separate program from C3.

> Another benefit is that we can file bug reports directly to Scirra if their Export isn't working. So lesser excuses from Scirra.

> And since we are in a cloud subscription, the exporter is supposed to be well maintained so there would be lesser bugs and no more workarounds for supporting third party plugins and building. It should be as easy as pie to export if Scirra wasn't false advertising. That's the greatest benefit.

> But regarding the performance... It stays the same.

>

Any issues you run into with XDK will likely exist with any other web-based exporter, because you don't have control over it, and if you're doing anything it's not expecting the build will fail. The idea that Scirra will be able to provide better maintenance than Intel? What makes you even think that's possible, given the resources of each company?

If you want the option to optimize your builds as much as possible, you're better off installing node.js, cordova, java & GIT on your local machine and compiling locally, which takes much less time and doesn't require uploading your assets to a 3rd-party server (that may potentially be unreliable), which is going to be configured to support a more generalized build as opposed to something specifically for your game projects. Reliability aside, if you're working on a bigger project, uploading over even a fast connection adds a lot to the build time - whether you're using Cocoon, XDK or Phonegap.

Once set up locally, Cordova isn't difficult to use, and just requires a few command-line options or your setting up a batch (.bat) file when you want to compile. If you're interested in doing this, install in this order: java, GIT, node.js, then Cordova. Installing Cordova last allows it to set up the connections to the other components automatically and no manual configuration will be necessary. Plugins can be installed from the command line/powershell, and I'm sure there's a GUI-based installer for them as well if you're more comfortable with that after setup.

I just don't believe it's possible to achieve the same performance as Canvas+ does with any exporter/wrapper, none of them seem to disassemble the inner workings and recompile as well, or whatever the hell it does. Would self compiling with a batch file improve performance? And by performance, I obviously mean fps. I don't believe optimising code could improve matters to the point where xdk or a batch file build would ever reach the smooth, fluid gameplay cocoon is providing, but it should.

Any issues you run into with XDK will likely exist with any other web-based exporter, because you don't have control over it, and if you're doing anything it's not expecting the build will fail. The idea that Scirra will be able to provide better maintenance than Intel? What makes you even think that's possible, given the resources of each company?

Nope you don't understand... Scirra is not hosting a new wrapper, what in the world are you saying there will be better maintenance on Scirra compared to Intel... Try reading it before answering. I did not say that, in fact you said that!

I said :

And since we are in a cloud subscription, the exporter is supposed to be well maintained so there would be lesser bugs and no more workarounds for supporting third party plugins and building.

That means, if you have tried exporting before on C2 for Cordova and building it on IntelXDK, in your case I'm not sure anymore... You'll notice that there are bugs on the export files of Scirra that needs workaround for supporting third plugins / core plugins during building. For example: The InAppBrowser plugin, before you have to manually edit the config.xml but now that Scirra has better connection with Intel (If the blog post wasn't false advertising) and we can safely assume that any updates on Intel, the Scirra Exporter would be updated also especially that we are in a subscription method, so maintenance should be reliable.

If you want the option to optimize your builds as much as possible, you're better off installing node.js, cordova, java & GIT on your local machine and compiling locally, which takes much less time and doesn't require uploading your assets to a 3rd-party server (that may potentially be unreliable), which is going to be configured to support a more generalized build as opposed to something specifically for your game projects. Reliability aside, if you're working on a bigger project, uploading over even a fast connection adds a lot to the build time - whether you're using Cocoon, XDK or Phonegap.

Once set up locally, Cordova isn't difficult to use, and just requires a few command-line options or your setting up a batch (.bat) file when you want to compile. If you're interested in doing this, install in this order: java, GIT, node.js, then Cordova. Installing Cordova last allows it to set up the connections to the other components automatically and no manual configuration will be necessary. Plugins can be installed from the command line/powershell, and I'm sure there's a GUI-based installer for them as well if you're more comfortable with that after setup.

That is too advance for non-programmers... I know most people here using C2 aren't programmers and only want to make games.

If they were, they'd be using Unity by now.

Do you expect they will have time or at least interest in learning this? No!

In fact doing this manually might even be more time consuming and inefficient and more unreliable if you don't know what you're doing. Do you think you can outmatch Intel's build option? Then you make me laugh! You're not even neart trustworthy compared to Scirra I'd rather go with C3's Export + IntelXDK's build.

And how come you know it will be unreliable, you haven't even tried to use it... In fact, no in the community has.

— , Zebbi was asking about the benefits, not your build purportedly build option.

>

>

> Any issues you run into with XDK will likely exist with any other web-based exporter, because you don't have control over it, and if you're doing anything it's not expecting the build will fail. The idea that Scirra will be able to provide better maintenance than Intel? What makes you even think that's possible, given the resources of each company?

>

> If you want the option to optimize your builds as much as possible, you're better off installing node.js, cordova, java & GIT on your local machine and compiling locally, which takes much less time and doesn't require uploading your assets to a 3rd-party server (that may potentially be unreliable), which is going to be configured to support a more generalized build as opposed to something specifically for your game projects. Reliability aside, if you're working on a bigger project, uploading over even a fast connection adds a lot to the build time - whether you're using Cocoon, XDK or Phonegap.

>

> Once set up locally, Cordova isn't difficult to use, and just requires a few command-line options or your setting up a batch (.bat) file when you want to compile. If you're interested in doing this, install in this order: java, GIT, node.js, then Cordova. Installing Cordova last allows it to set up the connections to the other components automatically and no manual configuration will be necessary. Plugins can be installed from the command line/powershell, and I'm sure there's a GUI-based installer for them as well if you're more comfortable with that after setup.

>

I just don't believe it's possible to achieve the same performance as Canvas+ does with any exporter/wrapper, none of them seem to disassemble the inner workings and recompile as well, or whatever the hell it does. Would self compiling with a batch file improve performance? And by performance, I obviously mean fps. I don't believe optimising code could improve matters to the point where xdk or a batch file build would ever reach the smooth, fluid gameplay cocoon is providing, but it should.

No, doing the build online or offline is just the same... The performance won't change.

The performance is only influenced by your code, the engine, the device, and the wrapper.

Changing build options won't change anything but changing wrappers is another story...

Changing from IntelXDK to Cocoon.IO or vice versa would change performance.

But finding the best performance wrapper is up to you.

Any build system producing a webview app will likely perform identically. The build systems are just different ways of producing the same result. Since it's the browser engine powering the webview that determines runtime performance, and there is nothing different about that, it's likely the same. The only exceptions are if you change the webview (e.g. UIWebView/WKWebView, but all build systems now support WKWebView).

Canvas+ on the other hand is not a real browser engine, and not officially supported. We dropped support for it a long time ago because it had loads of problems. It is missing tons of features and had basic problems like being unable to manage memory so even medium-sized games crashed. For a small number of people their games could navigate these problems and more or less by luck they kept working, and they wonder why we don't support it, but it's totally a no-brainer from our point of view - it's not worth supporting at all.

Also, even if it's faster, in my opinion that doesn't matter. With Construct Classic we learned an important lesson: slower and working is better than faster and broken. We did loads of crazy optimisations for another 5% speedup and it got so complex and difficult with all these internal performance hacks that it just totally broke some games. Someone whose game runs 10% faster is a bit happier, but someone whose game does not work at all is extremely unhappy. So making something that works robustly is more important, even if it's not as fast as possible. So basically in my opinion it doesn't matter if Canvas+ is faster: it's so badly broken it doesn't matter.

> Any issues you run into with XDK will likely exist with any other web-based exporter, because you don't have control over it, and if you're doing anything it's not expecting the build will fail. The idea that Scirra will be able to provide better maintenance than Intel? What makes you even think that's possible, given the resources of each company?

>

Nope you don't understand... Scirra is not hosting a new wrapper, what in the world are you saying there will be better maintenance on Scirra compared to Intel... Try reading it before answering. I did not say that, in fact you said that!

I said :

> And since we are in a cloud subscription, the exporter is supposed to be well maintained so there would be lesser bugs and no more workarounds for supporting third party plugins and building.

>

That means, if you have tried exporting before on C2 for Cordova and building it on IntelXDK, in your case I'm not sure anymore... You'll notice that there are bugs on the export files of Scirra that needs workaround for supporting third plugins / core plugins during building. For example: The InAppBrowser plugin, before you have to manually edit the config.xml but now that Scirra has better connection with Intel (If the blog post wasn't false advertising) and we can safely assume that any updates on Intel, the Scirra Exporter would be updated also especially that we are in a subscription method, so maintenance should be reliable.

> If you want the option to optimize your builds as much as possible, you're better off installing node.js, cordova, java & GIT on your local machine and compiling locally, which takes much less time and doesn't require uploading your assets to a 3rd-party server (that may potentially be unreliable), which is going to be configured to support a more generalized build as opposed to something specifically for your game projects. Reliability aside, if you're working on a bigger project, uploading over even a fast connection adds a lot to the build time - whether you're using Cocoon, XDK or Phonegap.

>

> Once set up locally, Cordova isn't difficult to use, and just requires a few command-line options or your setting up a batch (.bat) file when you want to compile. If you're interested in doing this, install in this order: java, GIT, node.js, then Cordova. Installing Cordova last allows it to set up the connections to the other components automatically and no manual configuration will be necessary. Plugins can be installed from the command line/powershell, and I'm sure there's a GUI-based installer for them as well if you're more comfortable with that after setup.

>

That is too advance for non-programmers... I know most people here using C2 aren't programmers and only want to make games.

If they were, they'd be using Unity by now.

Do you expect they will have time or at least interest in learning this? No!

In fact doing this manually might even be more time consuming and inefficient and more unreliable if you don't know what you're doing. Do you think you can outmatch Intel's build option? Then you make me laugh! You're not even neart trustworthy compared to Scirra I'd rather go with C3's Export + IntelXDK's build.

And how come you know it will be unreliable, you haven't even tried to use it... In fact, no in the community has.

— , Zebbi was asking about the benefits, not your build purportedly build option.

If it's HTML5 and being exported/compiled for Android, it's a wrapper. That's how it works. If you're expecting that to be flawless, you're using the wrong technology (referring to HTML5 here, not C2).

The workarounds are due to the way XDK/Cocoon/etc. builds, not due to how Cordova builds. No workaround are necessary if you export to Cordova (no need to use the workarounds required for XDK) and compile locally.

It takes around 10 minutes to install the programs I listed. All of them have publicly accessible documentation. If you're too lazy to figure it out - and there's little to figure out, because the entire build process can be documented on a single page, and executed with the 2 or 3 listed commands, and you only have to dig in deeper if you want to customize builds - that's on you.

>

> >

> >

> > Any issues you run into with XDK will likely exist with any other web-based exporter, because you don't have control over it, and if you're doing anything it's not expecting the build will fail. The idea that Scirra will be able to provide better maintenance than Intel? What makes you even think that's possible, given the resources of each company?

> >

> > If you want the option to optimize your builds as much as possible, you're better off installing node.js, cordova, java & GIT on your local machine and compiling locally, which takes much less time and doesn't require uploading your assets to a 3rd-party server (that may potentially be unreliable), which is going to be configured to support a more generalized build as opposed to something specifically for your game projects. Reliability aside, if you're working on a bigger project, uploading over even a fast connection adds a lot to the build time - whether you're using Cocoon, XDK or Phonegap.

> >

> > Once set up locally, Cordova isn't difficult to use, and just requires a few command-line options or your setting up a batch (.bat) file when you want to compile. If you're interested in doing this, install in this order: java, GIT, node.js, then Cordova. Installing Cordova last allows it to set up the connections to the other components automatically and no manual configuration will be necessary. Plugins can be installed from the command line/powershell, and I'm sure there's a GUI-based installer for them as well if you're more comfortable with that after setup.

> >

>

> I just don't believe it's possible to achieve the same performance as Canvas+ does with any exporter/wrapper, none of them seem to disassemble the inner workings and recompile as well, or whatever the hell it does. Would self compiling with a batch file improve performance? And by performance, I obviously mean fps. I don't believe optimising code could improve matters to the point where xdk or a batch file build would ever reach the smooth, fluid gameplay cocoon is providing, but it should.

>

No, doing the build online or offline is just the same... The performance won't change.

The performance is only influenced by your code, the engine, the device, and the wrapper.

Changing build options won't change anything but changing wrappers is another story...

Changing from IntelXDK to Cocoon.IO or vice versa would change performance.

But finding the best performance wrapper is up to you.

No, the performance won't change if the exporters you're trying are all based on PhoneGap/Cordova, that's correct. I was referring to the speed of the build process, not the application that results from it. And as Ashley mentioned Canvas+ is a total mess, and non-standard, and performance isn't predictable across hardware because it's non-standard. There's little to "optimize" in terms of the build that's exported that's exporter-specific, other than Canvas+ they're all using pretty much the same backend to build. Canvas+ isn't really doing anything all that much different in terms of the game's overall codebase so if you're seeing drastically better performance using it over WebGL/Cordova export, you're probably doing something wrong. It's not doing what you think it does.