Going from Construct 2 to Unity for better 2D performance?

I got very good with Construct 2 since it was so easy, and have been following Brackey's 2D platformer basics to start:

I'm really trying to gain performance boost as my past few 2D games had bad performance GamesHere. I also want to learn the actual scripting side of game development and prepare myself for 3d development so I figured Unity was the best fit for me!

I figured I'd start with 2D tutorials since I've been using a 2D engine previously. My questions are, should I go to a 2D or 3D tutorial first when learning Unity? Am I going to get significant mobile performance boosts overall? any other good places to start?

Thanks!

 

documentation
tutorials
live training
manual
wiki

 

Thanks!

My main question still stands though. I'm wondering if people going from Construct 2 have been getting better performance on their mobile projects

 

Hey @bscarl88 are you talking about game performance or game development performance?

Game performance is only measurable if the exact same project with the exact same game play elements and functionality is created in both applications.

I personally choose to abandon Construct after comparing the deployment limitations of Construct with Unity and Unity also released information about the new upcoming 2D tools at that time.

Speaking of game development performance and my own ability - I used to believe I could create stuff at a higher rate in construct - but only because I'm an artist not a coder, so visual scripting comes a lot more natural to me compared to - well not being able to create a game because code WAS required.
But that didn't last very long - because I found playmaker.

 

I'm mostly speaking on mobile game performance, not development speed. I figured unity was going to take longer to create the same game even if I do become an advanced unity developer. I just don't want to suffer the mobile game performance problems I have in C2 because Id release a game that runs smooth most of the time, but has these terrible spikes and random points of low FPS that were unsolvable. So from what I've heard, the same project (coded to the same logic) should run much faster in Unity than C2, but I was just hoping to confirm that from someone.

Our "GodSmash: Argmageddon" game was supposed to have very low graphical requirements, but I still ended up having to reduce all images. And the RAM usage was up to 250mb for such a small game. It ran ok overall, but would have terrible lag spikes on even my Samsung Galaxy S4 at certain moments that were undetectable using the PC debugger, or it would be for things like creating a sprite that's within the 512x512 or 256x256 range.

 

Love the style of your game - it has a slight Ren & Stimpy vibe.

The Unity community is also a plus up - in my opinion. There is always someone here who knows how to fix a problem you are having - regardless of the specific issue you are facing.

 

Thanks! haha

yea seems much better than the construct boards, I've asked sooooo many questions on those forums and NEVER got an answer.

 

mmm I would think thats pretty much the same... but for 2d, Unity sucks performance wise, just comparing to game maker (same game) Unity version was taking 9 times more memory!! and around 3x more processing! So if you are doing 2d and care about performance, just dont go with unity 2d

 

Construct2 is a very different beast to Unity.

The main difference is that Unity doesn't do any of the programming for you. You'll need to type all that C# yourself.

There are several plugins but you'll not be "in control" as it were, if you decide to explore outside their limitations.

Dedicated 2D engines like Construct2, Haxe and GameMaker are always going to be easier to work with than Unity, which is not a dedicated 2D engine. They have smaller build sizes, visual programming tools and nimble overhead.

Unity is a great tool which has 2D capabilities, but it's a steep learning curve. If that doesn't bother you, jump right in, the water is fine!

 

I think, better dont go with unity 2d, is very limiting since its a 3d dedicated engine... while there you have nice options as game maker s, godot, stencyl, cocos... But i Dont like Construct... wayy too limiting

 

Dude, Unity 2D is the best, period, anywhere.

If you don't mind a tiny bit of bloat, the amount of power available is insane.

 

Spoken like a true fanboi! I happen to agree though

It's the most convenient way to cover the largest number of platforms (with an increasing number having natively compiled code through IL2CPP), and one of them being WebGL is a nice bonus. I don't think 2D performance is an issue (filled the screen with stuff without a hitch), and download size bears no relation to memory usage. Cutting down on that just needs profiling and a little graphics optimisation knowhow. I've made sprawling mess platformer levels that barely used 80MB RAM on a desktop.

That seems a bit much. I haven't been able to use anywhere near 200MB even accidentally on a mobile device yet, doing more complicated things.

Is C2 a very handholdy engine then? There's usually that tradeoff - with control comes complexity, but it's worth it when you're trying to eke out some performance on as many mobile devices as possible. With very managed engines you have little control beyond the source art sizes, and no idea when the garbage collector wants to mess up your performance. It's possible C2 just isn't using the best JS engine if it's got weird spikes. Unity on mobile compiles native code now, so it can generally be expected to be faster. Still some issue exist, but it's pretty good.

I'd use Unity even if I only aimed to support iOS and OS X (Xcode and Apple platforms have some very tempting sprite, tile map and physics tools), because even that small amount of porting is too annoying when I just want to make ideas work.

 

Well have done 3 2D titles in Unity.... and worked with 2D for 30 odd years so I figure I like doing it in Unity best due to how brain dead easy/fun/powerful/shader-y it is!

You make excellent points: Unity's 2D is only powerful if you're actually competent and understand the monstrous GC and so forth.

 

Normally I'm an Unreal Engine fanboy, but when it comes to 2D, I think Unity has the edge over everyone else.

 

Yeah I'm not being a fanboy here. I've written a couple of 2D C++ engines from scratch, and simply just working in Unity makes all the pain go away, specially with new dopesheet in Animation panel, there's a lot of neat shortcuts like just dragging frames in.

My 2D engine used to atlas at load time - a fairly instant thing using blackpawns packing, and SOIL for loading quickly. Was pretty great. Recently, Unity has even added support for runtime packing AFAIK.

It's actually dare I say, fun. Also, not everything needs to be 2D, perhaps I want depth, perhaps I want post FX...

 

yeah... Unity 2d is sooo great that there´s no even 1 critically acclaimed game made with it. Btw, Ori was made with Unity 3d.

pls, just the fact that you have to use a vector 3 for 2d games, says a lot...

 

You're mistaking them for two things when they are one thing.