I have a concern about GDevelop capabilities

So as some of you probably know by now that I’m working on an upcoming massive project called “Melted Fate” … it’s probably the most intensive and most detailed project the engine will ever see.

Melted Fate Announcement: Project "Melted Fate" Announcement ⭐
Melted Fate Official Devlog: 🧠 Project "Melted Fate" official devlog!

Note: Picture is just a concept and not related to final project.

Now with something as massive as this project, I’m concerned about something related to the capabilities of GDevelop…

Will GDevelop be able to handle the big amount of scenes that will be in this project?
Lets talk more about details…

My first game “Miko Adventures Puffball” had around 35 - 45 scenes and it was working perfectly.

But In “Melted Fate” we might be talking about 100 - 150 scenes (maybe even more)…
so my question is >> Will the engine be able to handle it just fine as it did with 35 - 45 scenes?

I also would like to know more specific details from the GDevelop team (or anyone who have very good experience with the engine) if possible about some answers to questions like:

1- How GDevelop handle scenes in details? like for example If I opened 10 scenes at the same time and then closed them? what exactly happens in the background? are the scenes completely get removed from the memory if I closed them or do they stay stored in memory until I close GDevelop all together?

2- How many scenes it takes the engine to crash? is there a limit for GDevelop?
Note: Each scene is unique with it’s own layers >> objects >> events >> and many many more…

3- Sometimes I feel that GDevelop gets heavier the more I spend time working with it, what could cause something like that? and how to prevent it or make it happen less often? (The fix for me was to just restart it but I’m asking what If I don’t want to restart and keep on working, how to keep it stable for the most part? while working in it for long period of times on heavy scenes >> sometimes over 18 hours)

4- Now this question is a bit weird but I thought to ask >> is it possible to divide the project into several .JSON files and then when I extract >> I copy and paste everything in a single .JSON file and export it >> is that a thing? or in general is it possible to divide the project into pieces and when exporting I combine all the pieces together?

5- At the end I’d like to hear from you best advices on how to handle many scenes (100 - 150 scenes) in GDevelop without crashing, lag or performance issues related to the engine?

In case someone is wondering about my system specs, here it is:

16 GB ram
I5 processor Gen 4 (Will upgrade it in the future)
GTX 1660
2 TB space

Sorry for the long question but I thought to ask just to be safe as the project will evolve so much over time and I need to know everything I can to prevent any future issues as early as possible.
It’s always good to know all the details as much as possible…

As always >> Thanks in advance…

1 Like

I do know that 100 scenes should be fine, I helped make and played a game with over 100 scenes(there were like 100 levels then like 3 or 5 bosses then start, death, pause menus I think) so in theory, 100-150 should be fine

3 Likes

@darkshadow That’s really good to know, thanks for sharing this info!

Just a few things to add/clear up.

  • From your wording I am assuming that we’re talking about just the editor/ide and not in game? Because I am not sure how/why you would have so many scenes active in game.
  • When you say scenes, do you actually mean scenes or everything else (layouts, external events, etc)
  • I try to keep active windows (scenes, events, layouts) to around 6-7 at a time as I feel any more then that can get pretty cluttered. As someone who works with multiple monitors I’d kill for more flexibility in the UI to allow us to drag out windows into their own docks. (Think Photoshop)
  • 110% agree with the slowdown. After a few hours it starts to become very noticeable as every basic things such as choosing a dropdown becomes delayed. This is usually an indication it’s time for a restart :frowning:
  • Can you elaborate a little on #4? Are you talking about project files or seprate json where you would store character base stats for example?
    If you’re talking about the project files, the closest thing you might get is setting “multiple files” in the project properties which has events, layouts, functions stored in separate JSON files.

@Eiklahc

Yes correct, in game there will be no issues related to performance but I’m asking about GDevelop it self handling many different heavy scenes, I’m afraid when I reach a point in development where there are many scenes the project it self won’t open or crash the whole program at start, you know stuff like that, that’s why I’m asking…

Mostly scenes yes … but I’d like to ask too … does it matter if I’m asking about Just scenes and not layouts, external events? is there another thing that we can do for external events or layouts but not for scenes for example?

Yeah me too, I wish for this to exist inGDevelop, I actually sent a ticket with that a while ago but got no response unfortunately from the team, it would be so helpful to have different separated tabs that we can move around, I’ll look into it in the future and try to send to someone.

Sadly the truth… wish there was another way though were GDevelop handle memory and cpu usage a bit better.

I’m honestly not so sure yet about this, I haven’t tried yet saving as “multiple files” … could you explain to me more about how it works in general and what is the benefit of it, what is the difference to save as a single file and saving as “multiple files” … what does these “multiple files” contain exactly? and do you control which things you save and which you don’t for example? not sure how it works…

Thank you for helping : )

Mostly scenes yes … but I’d like to ask too … does it matter if I’m asking about Just scenes and not layouts, external events? is there another thing that we can do for external events or layouts but not for scenes for example?

I would assume scenes / layouts would be more “heavy” then just event sheets due to what the editor has to render?

Yeah me too, I wish for this to exist inGDevelop, I actually sent a ticket with that a while ago but got no response unfortunately from the team, it would be so helpful to have different separated tabs that we can move around, I’ll look into it in the future and try to send to someone.

Maybe it’s time for a bump? Might even be something a bounty can be put on? Not really sure how much change would need to happen to the editor to allow this.

Sadly the truth… wish there was another way though were GDevelop handle memory and cpu usage a bit better.

When it happens next. I’ll try to pull up the console and see if there is anything that can be used to diagnose the problem. It’s one of those things were I just ignore until I get frustrated it takes 5 seconds to update a UI element :smiley:

I’m honestly not so sure yet about this, I haven’t tried yet saving as “multiple files” … could you explain to me more about how it works in general and what is the benefit of it, what is the difference to save as a single file and saving as “multiple files” … what does these “multiple files” contain exactly? and do you control which things you save and which you don’t for example? not sure how it works…

I am not really sure what/if there is a benefit when it comes to how the editor handles the files. I use it as I much rather the events, layouts be stored in sperate files then all just in the game.json.
Early on I ran into an issue where I accidently left the game.json open in notepad++ and when prompted I saved the file a few hours later. This wiped pretty much everything I did in that period. Luckly I had separate files enabled so anything I had changed in external layouts, event sheets ect were still there. It’s not so much an issue now as I use github and make a commit every few hours.