I've been really interested in the topic of mobile deployment as well--after all, it kind of was MV's selling point (for me, at least). I really don't have anything to add that Faytless didn't already cover, but I'll share my experience with deploying a small game I made to Android in the hopes that maybe other people can chime in as well.
The first game I deployed was my first project and not optimized for mobile in the slightest. I am also working on a new project, which I have (somewhat) optimized for mobile devices by:
- Using Yanfly's FPS Synch plugin
- Using Kodera's Mobile Optimization plugin
- Making most of the maps relatively small (very few go above RPGMV's default of 17x13 squares)
- Using TinyPNG to compress ALL of my image files (resulted in a significant quality dip for some images, but not enough to matter a lot on mobile in my opinion)
- Using Audacity to reduce the size of the music files wherever possible without a loss of quality
Right now I only have 3 devices for testing:
Samsung Galaxy S3
Samsung Galaxy E Lite (a tablet)
Alcatel Pixi Theatre (slightly higher specs than the other phones, has 2 GB of RAM as opposed to 1)
Was your game stable on the mobile platforms you tried to run it on? Were there any serious bugs that only happened on mobile?
The only major "bug" I noticed was the game will flat-out not load if any required files are accidentally removed in the deploying process. One thing I tried with my newer project was using a different font (with Yanfly's Font plugin). It worked fine on PC, but it simply wouldn't work on mobile so I had to scrap it.
Did you experience lag or slowdown when trying to run your deployed game on mobile?
Both games, on all three devices, were
completely unplayable.
The first project (which had huge maps, lots of events with animations, etc) stayed below 10 FPS until getting into a small map (17x13) with few events, where the FPS jumped back up 20-30ish. In a test battle, the game dropped to less than 5 FPS.
I'll note that I tried doing a test with my first project's main hub, a town that is about 100x50 squares. In my first test, the game had all of its normal events (many doors, NPCs walking around and a few animated chimney stacks). The second test had 0 events, just the map. As far as I could tell, both rooms ran at about 10-15 FPS on my devices. It seems the map size had a far larger performance impact than the events.
The second project ran much more smoothly (20-25 FPS if I had to guess), but it was still simply too choppy to be playable.
Gotta admit, I was pretty bummed at my second project not running well (even on my newer Alcatel phone), but there was hope: a friend of mine tested my first project on his Galaxy S6 and noted that it ran perfectly fine. Likewise, another friend tested my first project on his Galaxy S5 and reported that it ran smoothly, though he complained that the game ran "slow" - I'm not sure whether he meant the game just
felt slow or if it was actually
running slow, which I think might have been a case of Yanfly's FPS plugin not being enabled.
From my limited experience with mobile deployment, I can conclude what Faytless has already said:
RPGMV games simply aren't going to run well on lower-end mobile devices. The specs of the device are very important--even brand-new devices with low specs won't work. It sounds like the specs of the Galaxy S6 (and perhaps the S5) are the baseline for what we'll need for MV games to run smoothly.
Though I could DEFINITELY be wrong--take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
Did the game run okay on multiple devices with different resolutions?
I haven't messed with resolutions yet, sorry.
Did you have any audio issues on mobile? If so, were you able to correct them?
I noticed music and sound files lagging behind what was happening on screen, but once both games started running for a minute or so and everything's loaded in I didn't notice any issues. I think cutting down the size of the music files with Audacity will help, though I can't say for sure yet.
Was the in-game hit detection (of your touchscreen controls) comparable with other programs you run on your mobile device?
The touch controls "worked" fine on all 3 devices I used. However, I don't personally care for RPGMV's mobile controls. Tapping with one finger to move/select things and tapping with two fingers to open the menu
works, but I didn't like how, on the two-finger tap, my character always moved a little before the menu opened.
I'm not sure if this is a device problem or simply how MV's mobile controls work, but I don't like it. I'll be looking into getting an on-screen buttons plugin (or using Yanfly's picture common events plugin) to get around this. The RPGVX game that was somehow ported to mobile devices,
Doom and Destiny, had a really good D-Pad system that I wish I could emulate.
Was it easy to publish your game on the Google Play Store (or any other distribution systems you attempted to publish with)
Haven't tried publishing yet, though I'll definitely be researching into how the publishing system works soon. One thing I am very curious about is if you can prevent the purchase or downloading of your game to lower-end devices--because, as I've said, MV games aren't going to run on the vast majority of devices, so anyone who downloads an MV game with one is going to be very disappointed.
EDIT: I guess I should also add that I used MV's Crosswalk deployment method for all tests. I did try once using a different, much higher version of Crosswalk (which was significantly more complicated to get working, I'll add), but didn't notice any change in performance. I'll probably try the XDK method at least once to see how it runs.
