Simulate slow download for preloader developing

[tackle]

Do you know any good ways to simulate/emulate slow downloads for your games so you can work out the Preloader thoroughly?

[owendeery]

It depends how you have your preloader setup, and it seems obvious, but I usually just decouple the preloader from any content loading and just update it manually.

 

So for instance if your preloader updates based on a loader event, I would remove the event and update the preloader at a timed interval with a set progress amount. It won't simulate the 'chunkiness' of downloading but it works for getting the logic and design worked out.

[Ezelia]

create a server side page witch sleep() some time before responding, you can easily do that with php or nodejs.

[plicatibu]

Take a look into this article: www.whoopis.com/howtos/web-bandwidth-limit.html

And this apache module probably will solve your problem: dembol.org/blog/mod_cband/

[rich]

Host the game on a local machine on wifi. Now carry an ipad into your garden, or anywhere the wifi gets bad, and load it

 

(heh, there are lots better suggestions above of course)

[Cameron Foale]

To avoid without mucking about with servers, try add something like this code at the top of your JS:

 

Phaser.Loader.prototype.originalNextFile = Phaser.Loader.prototype.nextFile;Phaser.Loader.prototype.nextFile = function(previousIndex, success) {    var self = this;      window.setTimeout(function() {        Phaser.Loader.prototype.originalNextFile.call(self, previousIndex, success);    }, 100 /* milliseconds */);}; 

(note: totally untested)

[jerome]

It's somethinf different to have some latency in the server response (server waiting before responding, but then responding as fast as usual) and to have a poor bandwith (low speed). Maybe this difference doesn't make sense in the player experience, I don't know.

 

If you are running an Apache 2.5 web server (even locally), you can set up the bandwith with the ratelimit module : https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/mod/mod_ratelimit.html

[Tas]

I used Charles for Mac, where you can throttle the connection speed easily.

 

http://www.charlesproxy.com/

[tackle]

I can fill in that besides Apache you can also limit very easily with nginx.

 

I'm trying local development with WPN-XM and I prefer nginx over Apache. I remember trying limiting locally with Apache before but I never got it working - hopefully it should work now.

 

With nginx it's as easy as setting a "limit_rate" directive. Very useful.

[VladiT]

I used a local server http://www.denwer.ru for host

 

and slow proxy http://www.dallaway.com/sloppy for preload tested.