Last November, we outlined our short-term plans in our Winter roadmap. Now the Spring is coming up, here's a quick retrospective, and new summary of our next steps... we think there's some pretty exciting stuff coming up :)
Winter progress
In our last roadmap we outlined plans for the manual, which is now complete, providing a comprehensive reference for both new and experienced users. We also were thinking about support for mobile via PhoneGap, but we have tweaked our plans there - more on that in a moment. Also, as planned we introduced the Families feature, making it easy to make events that apply to multiple object types. We still have the Containers feature to go (an advanced feature for grouping instances), but we're happy that we're staying on schedule for the most part! So, what next?
Construct 2 games on mobile
We're aware of demand for monetising HTML5 games made in Construct 2, as well as some issues with mobile support in general. Developments with PhoneGap have been a little slow, though. We recently added support for exporting to AppMobi, a leader in HTML5 mobile development, who provide tools and services that help improve mobile support in HTML5 games. Over the next few releases, we'll be improving Construct 2's mobile support by tightening integration with AppMobi. This also includes AppMobi's directCanvas technology, which hardware-accelerates iOS games for native-like performance. This should be a welcome performance boost for iPhone and iPad games!
AppMobi also recently announced playMobi, a service to monetize, synchronise and socialise HTML5 games. They provide In-App Purchases (IAP) covering the different payment systems for iOS (iTunes), Android (Google Payments), Facebook (Facebook Credits) and Paypal for the open web. This is great news for monetising HTML5 games and we can't wait to add this to Construct 2 to help all of you start making money from your games!
PlayMobi also supports platform-neutral save-games, hi-scores and achievements. This is great because there are many good places to publish a HTML5 game: on mobile, on the Chrome Web Store, Facebook, your own website, and so on. With playMobi, if you get a hi-score on level 5 on the Facebook version, your hi-score will also show up in the Chrome Web Store and mobile version - and you'll still be able to carry on from where you left off! It also includes an achievements system and stat tracking to help you track player progress. How cool is that?
We are just about to start our mobile-focused development, so if all goes to plan, these features should start appearing over the next few releases. Like AppMobi we believe 100% in HTML5's future as a gaming platform, and we think playMobi integration with Construct 2 will be very exciting!
Finishing touches
Don't forget our Rotary competition is still running and ends in about 2 weeks - make sure you get your entry in on time! There are some cool prizes to win!
We also still have a huge list of smaller - but still important - features and user suggestions we want to implement. As always these will continue to turn up in our regular releases, but it's a long list (expertly captured in @septeven's uncannily accurate birthday illustration!) The bigger features left include tools for the image editor, and we're also contemplating WebGL shaders to bring beautiful hardware-accelerated visual effects to Construct 2 games. However, we think playMobi looks awesome so we're going to be on that first. Coming soon to Construct 2: cross-platform IAP and leaderboards!