Ashley's Forum Posts

  • I've established the range of broken versions:

    Construct 2 r66, released November 7th 2011 (introduced the Web Audio API)

    Construct 2 r121, released March 5th 2013 (updated to new method names)

    So anything exported using r66-r121 is now broken, notably anything exported during 2012. I've updated the OP.

  • Displaying text is not slow - it is only that changing large text objects in WebGL mode is slow. If you never change the text, or it's a very small object, it will likely be perfectly fast. Also, Sprite Font should be perfectly fast too even if large and regularly changed, since it renders differently. I wouldn't recommend turning off WebGL because of this since that will reduce performance in other ways; if you must have large, constantly-changing text objects then switch to a sprite font.

    As far as I can see the links you provided discuss canvas2d which is not applicable to WebGL mode, or cover techniques we already implement such as caching (which is why non-changing text is still fast).

    Since WebGL cannot directly draw text, in this mode text is rendered to an off-screen canvas2d then uploaded to a WebGL texture. This texture upload is slow on some browsers/systems. It happens in the native side of the browser or the hardware (since the texture upload bandwidth is sometimes pretty low), so there isn't much we can do in Construct 2 to fix it.

  • Edit: updated to include the broken release numbers & date range

    The Web Audio API was introduced by Chrome in 2011. At the time it was a sorely needed improvement to audio playback in HTML5 games, so we started supporting it in Construct 2.

    The specification subsequently was changed and some method names changed. We later updated Construct 2 to match the latest specification.

    The latest Chrome 36 update has now removed the old method names. Any content published between the introduction of the Web Audio API and the time we updated the Construct 2 engine to the latest spec is now broken. It will crash with a Javascript error the first time a sound plays and the game will freeze. Most likely this means the game is totally unplayable.

    We are trying to make Google aware of this and have notified them in Chromium bug 396075. Please star the issue and add a comment if it affects you to raise awareness. I am hopeful Google can add back the old names for backwards compatibility.

    In case they don't you will need to re-publish all old content using the latest version of Construct 2. This includes games on the Scirra Arcade. The latest stable release is r173. Note that you will also benefit from all the performance and compatibility improvements we've made since then, but there may be breaking changes as well. You can find a summary of all breaking changes by reviewing the release notes for every stable release going back to the time you exported.

    The affected versions are between:

    Construct 2 r66, released November 7th 2011 (introduced the Web Audio API)

    Construct 2 r121, released March 5th 2013 (updated to new method names)

    So if you exported your project using any version between r66 and r121, it is probably now broken and needs re-publishing. Note this includes all versions through 2012. If you exported your project using r121 or newer - basically any time in the past year - you will not be affected.

    If in doubt re-publish anyway to ensure your games keep working and keep an eye on bug 396075 for updates from Google.

  • It is about a million times easier to make adjustments from the .capx, not the exported project. Although your example is not minified, exported projects are not designed to be modifiable, or even to make any sense.

  • SgtConti - it is unrelated, this is mostly specific to the version of the Box2D engine we are using.

  • Just broadcast a message from the host whenever it changes to something different. The important thing for efficiency is not to send any messages when nothing is changing, and not to change the variable constantly, or if you have to, to rate-limit the messages that are sent out (e.g. 10x a second instead of every tick).

  • You do not have permission to view this post

  • This is currently by design (although it appears to be missing from the manual so I'll update that).

    Streaming text values is an easy way to design inefficient games that waste tonnes of bandwidth. 'Sync instance variable' only supports numbers. To synchronise text variables, use the message sending system.

  • — - please do not reply to closed bug reports. If you still have an issue please file a new bug report providing all the information requested; this issue was closed due to incomplete information.

  • Closing, please only report issues with the latest version of Construct 2. If you are really using r158.2, then its version of node-webkit is going to be significantly older and with several known bugs that have already since been fixed.

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads

  • Last I looked in to this you were not legally allowed to distribute d3dcompiler_43.dll and D3DX9_43.dll: you must instead provide the Microsoft-approved dxwebsetup.exe installer which shows a EULA agreement for those components that the user must agree to. The installer then installs those files.

    Construct 2 already shipped dxwebsetup.exe with every node-webkit export and running that on any system which has poor performance/no webgl support should have already fixed the problem. You may want to add this to an installer for your game. Of course, web-based HTML5 games have no such issues, the browsers already include these components.

  • There is no way to do this automatically from the web page, at all. So it is not something we can add.

  • Closing, this is exactly what happens when your graphics driver is buggy and crashes. Check for updates. You might need to upgrade to Windows 7+ to get the latest driver support.

  • iOS doesn't currently support fullscreen or orientation lock in Safari. The best you can do is 'add to home screen' which makes it fullscreen when run from the home screen, but still not orientation locked.

  • As far as I'm aware it cannot be done programmatically (which makes sense since there would be obvious security/usability issues if every page could add its own home screen icon). The link you provided refers to the menu option that the user can choose.