Rable's Forum Posts

  • Hi everyone,

    I need someone for a very specific task.

    If I'm correct, Construct 2 loads the whole code of the project BEFORE the default loading screen (HTML5 default bar) that is quickly shown BEFORE the customized loading screen shows up.

    To show that, I did a simple CAPX ( drive.google.com/file/d/1tdF6ZSUOWY-8JPNaZyrvb7bgqYdYFLnT/view ) of a simple project with no images and just a lot of events which are never played. It takes a while to show up the loading screen when exported as an APK ( drive.google.com/file/d/1HgzW6djmUUiCZwzBLHJB21MNLis6UQog/view ).

    During that first initial load time, when exported to a mobile device, the screen stays black. While for small project that time is very short, for big projects it could be really long. My game, Healer's Quest, is actually 45K events, and the black screen time is actually of 15 seconds on a quite good smartphone... While Apple and Google guidelines says this time could be of maximum 2 seconds.

    When I asked Ashley about it, he suggested the following: "I think your best bet is to write a snippet of JavaScript that can float a loading image over the canvas until the game reaches 'On start of layout'."

    Reference thread: construct.net/en/forum/construct-2/how-do-i-18/how-to-reduce-the-black-screen-138455

    So basically I want to show an image I'll make specifically for that loading time instead of the black screen.

    If there could be a small rotating image to show activity is going on, it would be even better, but I can live without it.

    Can anyone write this snippet of Javascript and help me implement it into the code of my game?

    Please tell me how much you would charge for it. If you prefer to discuss it by email, my address is rablogameszys@gmail.com

    Thanks!

  • I'm personally using C3's exporter to make APK out of C2 games, and it works great. Only did debug APK so far but it's working like a charm... And 100x easier to use than Intel XDK.

  • Thanks for the further advices. I'll keep it in mind for the next time, because I passed most of my graphical assets through tinypng, and successfully managed to reduce the APK size to 95 Mb. ;)

    So as far as my current project is concerned, it's all good. Thanks for your help!

  • Thanks for the info, so now I know what to excepct from a APK expansion files and it helps me take decisions. The C2 exporter allows to select only Android Audio, so the project only contains .ogg already, but I didn't take the Tinypng route yet for this project. That will help a lot!

  • Thanks A LOT for the clarification, Nepeo !

    It's great to know you're working on expansion APKs! Can I ask if you have any approximative timeline for the release of this feature?

    To be more precise, my app should release in something like 1 month, maybe 2 maximum. Would you suggest that I wait for the feature to be live or do I have to do the long process of reducing my (already optimized) game's size by half, which will be a very hard work? (which will in any case result in a great loss of graphical quality)

    Also, my game is exported with Cordova in C2, then I use C3's APK exporter. Is it planned to work in this case?

    Thanks again!

  • I personally had my game rejected by Hatch because their streaming engine couldn't use Cordova, but I don't think there's much to do about it. (?) Also that's not a publisher but a platform owner.

  • Hi everyone,

    I've read this on the site linked to a Google Play email received this morning:

    Improved support for large apps: you can now upload large app bundles with installed APK sizes of up to 500MB without needing to use expansion files. This feature is in early access and we will roll it out to all developers in the future.

    Source: android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/10/playtime-2018.html

    Does that mean we are not restricted to 100 Mb anymore for Google play!? That would be huge as I was just about to start reducing my 165 Mb APK to less than 100, which would have been a long and painful process.

    Anyone has more info about this ? Any idea how to use it right now (as they are speaking about an early access). Sounds like an excellent news for all Construct users as, as far as I know, there was no way to use APK expansion files with Construct.

  • Thanks a lot for your reply. It's an excellent news that this is possible to do!

    But I never wrote a single Javascript line in my life... ^^' Can someone help me to make that? If it implies some work on your side, send me a PM or an email to rablogamesrqj@gmail.com with your price.

    Thanks!

  • After testing the same code (above) exported with C2 and then with C3 on the same mobile device, I've got the following results:

    C2: 20 seconds black screen before the default loading screen appears

    C3: less than 1 second...

    Well, first of all congrats to the Scirra team for solving the problem in C3!

    In the meantime, I'm kind of stuck with C2 on this project and that's a real problem. Is there any way to replace the black screen at least with a cool still image form the game?

    Is it possible to do this outside of Construct 2, by manipulating the exported code?

  • Thanks — !

    Very useful!

  • Very interesting, thanks for the idea. This will definitely ask for some custom code as I always use the same array in all levels, but it's already better than copy pasting into a word file.

    What would have been still beter is a word count for the event sheet in the editor, but I believe I'm hoping for too much here. ^^'

  • Hi everyone,

    Everything is in the title. I'd like to count the number of words in my project (for translation), but I'm using arrays to enter every line of text.

    The obvious way is to copy-paste every line in MS Word, but as there are around 30-50K words in my game, it will be a very long process...

    So can this be done automatically in Construct 2 or Construct 3?

    Thanks!

  • Ok, thanks for the info.

    Does anyone knows if that black screen could at least be replaced by a given image or something? I guess that has to be done outside of Construct.

  • Thanks for your help Ashley , I think I figured it out.

    Here's the APK of a project which only has one small sprite, no sounds, but about 7500 big events, which are on an event sheet which is actually never played.

    APK: drive.google.com/open

    I first filled the projects with lots of big images and lenghty sounds, but the loading time was perfectly ok. But as soon as I added lots of events, the black screen appeared for quite a few seconds. Removing the images and sounds didn't reduce the black screen time.

    And here's the capx. You can probably accentuate the problem by adding even more events.

    CAPX: drive.google.com/open

    Is this the normal behavior?

    Is there a way I can reduce the black screen time on Healer's Quest, which is about 40K events?

    I mean... Any other way than removing events... ^^'

    Thanks!

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  • The link I submitted is just to show the loading screen, it's an old HTML5 version. I'm using C2 v.262 for the mobile version I'm talking about.

    As suggested above, I tried to make my first layout blank and see how it goes from there, to be sure the black screen is not due to the loader layout. The bad news is that the black screen time is still 15 seconds.

    Ashley , I've sent to supportoyo@scirra.com a link to download the APK with the first blank layout if you want to test it for yourself. Tell me if you would like the capx of the project.

    Thanks a lot!