XBOX ONE UWP performance?

> Just LAUNCHING Sombrero takes about 300MB, and that's with loading most of the assets manually after start and nothing on the layout - just playing a video takes 300MB.

>

I could have sworn you had a video of Sombrero running on Xbox One and it was actually running quite smoothly....or was i mistaken and it was actually running on the PC?

Not really, no. I use XB1 or XB360 usually when showing the game at places like PAX or GDC, but running on actual XB1 hardware is a different story. You really, really don't want to know what the performance is like right now.

Edge is a great browser engine and is really high performance now. It's comparable to Chrome in the latest releases.

If XB1 is slow because of deliberate limitations by Microsoft - e.g. capping CPU usage - then there's nothing much we can do about that. It's not Construct's fault, and no other framework can get around that either, it's the XB1 OS that is capping apps that run on it. In that sense UWP apps will run exactly as well as Microsoft let them. This isn't anything to do with the performance of C2 or HTML5. It's the same thing if an app can only use 128mb RAM (which IIRC I've not seen any official reference for, would appreciate a link on that) - no other framework or technology is going to let you get around that, it's an XB1 issue, not a Construct issue. So the best people to go to about this would be Microsoft. FWIW you should already be able to detect backgrounded games (Browser plugin 'On suspended', 'On resumed', same as all other platforms), and you can try using the savegame system to do full state saves and restores to work around that too.

System resource details direct from Microsoft below. This info has been around for quite some time, though I believe the increase in overall memory usage when not running in the background happened around the end of last year if I remember correctly (from 500MB to 1GB):

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... allocation

As for knowing when the game is running in the BG: Yeah, the browser plugin works on XB1, but we still have no way to release the memory and reload needed assets when the game returns to the FG.

Hey

I got the same problems, the game works nicely on nw.js (for Steam) or on the Chrome and FF browsers, but it's very slow on Xbox one. Life is a pain

We have successfully released a Construct 2 game on Xbox One under the Xbox Live Creators Program, so it's quite feasible.

I posted about it here, please feel free to ask questions:

It seems the key to making a game that actually runs "OK" is just don't make a 2D platformer with more than one platform behaviour running at once

Introduction:

Hey there, my name is as it says on the left and I've decided to do some research regarding UWP's.

A group of people have run several tests on "background memory use" and we've got some interesting results out of it.

The Problem:

As people that read through this topic might already know, UWP's come with a set of restrictions.

The most concerning restriction was clearly the following: The maximum memory available to an app running in the background is 128 MB. A lot of people (including myself) immediately came to the assumption based conclusion, that this restriction would make it impossible for C2/C3 to run and result in some sort of "crash".

The Results:

As mentioned before, a group of people inside the Construct Community Discord server, came together and found out something interesting. UWP's seem to have some kind of "technique", which greatly reduces the amount of memory when you suspend the game (e.g. open the main menu).

TL;DR: In conclusion, memory use in the background is not an issue based on our test.

The

Actual Test:

The test is fairly simple. UWP's, are as the name already implies "universal" and run pretty much exactly the same on all platforms (currently Win10 + XBone).

So instead of doing assumption based complaints/accusations, we decided to do tests using an actual UWP game.

(More details about the game can be found HERE.)

Step 1:

Install "Crystal Brawl" on a Windows 10 machine using the Windows Marketplace for UWP's.

Step 2:

Run the game and measure memory use, while the game is active and suspended.

Memory Use (active): ~130mb | Memory Use (suspended): ~116kb

Visual Proof (*):

Our Conclusion:

While limited use of CPU and memory in the foreground are still fairly impactful issues, memory use in the background doesn't seem to be a problem.

Construct 2/3 games might not run with 60fps and require a lot of optimizations, it's not the fault of the engine though and rather the fault of Microsoft's deliberate hardware limitations for UWP's.

It's recommended to submit further complaints about UWP's directly to Microsoft.

We additionally recommend everyone do the test by themselves and give Crystal Brawl a play on Xbone or Windows 10!

If there are any questions regarding this left, feel free to leave reply to this post or send us a PM in Discord.

Cheers!

*provided by

skymen | ko = kilobyte

Small correction I'd need to make in order to make things more clear.

"tabbing out" doesn't actually do anything. Windows still runs it as if it was in the foreground. To be considered "background" it needs to be minimised. That doesn't make anything else false nor any less precise. It's just that if you want to try this, keep that in mind.

To know the app went in background mode, you can turn your speakers on. When the music stops, then the app went background.

Anyway,

My intervention is almost useless.

Btw, i'm very interested in talking with devs who got their games on XBox, in order to discuss performance etc. If any of you is willing to talk about that, just come in the Construct community Discord server, and I'll be happy to have a little chat with you.

TheRealDannyyy

skymen

Thanks for using our game for this benchmark! Yes on an Xbox One, putting Crystal Brawl in the background and then running other apps still lets me resume the game from where it was. Maybe it compresses the game's memory and writes it to storage, etc. I don't think this is a "revolutionary technique", doesn't iOS and Android also suspend many apps into the background in a similar way? Anyway it's cool to see the numbers for memory usage!

TheRealDannyyy

skymen

Thanks for using our game for this benchmark! Yes on an Xbox One, putting Crystal Brawl in the background and then running other apps still lets me resume the game from where it was. Maybe it compresses the game's memory and writes it to storage, etc. I don't think this is a "revolutionary technique", doesn't iOS and Android also suspend many apps into the background in a similar way? Anyway it's cool to see the numbers for memory usage!

Interesting and yeah, it's not really that new. "Revolutionary" might have been a little too much.

I still find it fascinating that you can suspend and bring down memory use to this extend though.

Indeed. I gotta say we were going to look for a way to manually compress everything the game had, because at best it would reduce the memory usage by not that much when going to the background.

I was really not prepared to see the app just jump from 120+MB of usage to a mere 100Kb in less than a second x).

Great thread. Also waiting for a way to publish on xbox one. My game has been approved as an IDzpi@Xbox title for a long time now and I still haven't been able to publish due to the missing xbox live plugin features. However my game actually runs pretty well on xbox one and I get almost solid 60fps, but it is a pixel game so that might explain it.

Your other post about Xbox live went away ???

How to -

" Display the user’s Xbox gamertag as the primary display and profile name "

• I can get the game to login OK, but, how are folks getting that 'little gray bar/button' in the upper right to display gamertag etc ???

Sample Code or Construct file ???? etc ???

The game doesn't actually use XBOX Live, but, MS ' Requires ' it to get into Creators Program.

????

archor

I assume you're talking to me? Yes I had a thread about our game released on Xbox One. A few days ago I tried to edit the original post, and the thread just disappeared.. I certainly did not click a delete button or anything, I guess it's some bug with the forum

I see you started a thread for your question, so I'll reply there.

Ashley just tweeted this, this should help us all.

https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/ ... ne-update/

I don't know if html5 can make full use of 6 cores, but the cores are going from shared to being dedicated to the game, so hopefully our games will run faster. And WebGL and many/large textures should benefit from the full GPU access and RAM increase to 5GB.

Is the Fall Creators Update for Xbox One supposed to come out mid-October like for PC?

Ashley just tweeted this, this should help us all.

https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/ ... ne-update/

I don't know if html5 can make full use of 6 cores, but the cores are going from shared to being dedicated to the game, so hopefully our games will run faster. And WebGL and many/large textures should benefit from the full GPU access and RAM increase to 5GB.

Is the Fall Creators Update for Xbox One supposed to come out mid-October like for PC?

that is sweet news indeed,

the lambo is back on the table......