Been away for 3+ years, looking for advice!

As the title says, haven't touched my project since 2017, after putting almost 1,000 hours into it. I'm ready to jump back in but have a few questions I was hoping people could advise me on! My game is a 2D platformer RPG, for PC and probably consoles (if it can export for such). Definitely don't plan on releasing on on mobile phones.

Thought about upgrading to C3, but obviously hesitant switching platforms after building so much out in C2. My game uses plugins, and some aspects it relies pretty heavily on them.

-What is the general consensus of people upgrading to C3 mid game development?

-C2 seems pretty well supported still, is that right?

-Any big things I should be aware about that has massively changed in the past 3 years in C2? I know this wasn't a good one, but OCD makes me ask qustions in 3s lol. Just asking for anything else I could be missing.

Thanks!

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Our policy for some time now has been that Construct 2 is no longer going to get any new features and is only receiving occasional bug fixes. It was first released in 2011 and won't last forever - at some point it will be retired. So I would suggest starting to move over Construct 3 now so you have time to figure out details like any changes that need to be made in the switch (see our guides on Importing C2 projects and The C3 runtime). If you delay, the risk is you will end up being forced to do this work anyway but on a tight deadline. There's loads of new features in C3 over C2 too.

As someone who recently migrated a big project over to C3, it all depends on addons you used. In my case it took several days. Some popular addons have been ported for C3 (LiteTween, MoveTo, Pin+ etc.) For others you may need to find an alternative, for example Canvas/Paster can be replaced with the official DrawingCanvas, but of course you'll need to rewrite some events.

As someone who recently migrated a big project over to C3, it all depends on addons you used. In my case it took several days. Some popular addons have been ported for C3 (LiteTween, MoveTo, Pin+ etc.) For others you may need to find an alternative, for example Canvas/Paster can be replaced with the official DrawingCanvas, but of course you'll need to rewrite some events.

Rewriting events is what I'm afraid of. I have 2750 events so far in my project, it could be a nightmare to debug any errors. I guess, if I always have access to a working C2, I'll have the ability to use everything currently in it, which is all I need. I'd probably get C3 for newer projects.

Just loading a capx into C3 would tell you how much work you have for a conversion.

I would not use the current beta. I doesn't seem to work well with C2 files.

One file wouldn't even try to load, while one did, and crashed with warnings from render cells.

Rewriting events is what I'm afraid of.

For official plugins and correctly ported addons you will likely not need to rewrite anything.

Just loading a capx into C3 would tell you how much work you have for a conversion.

I would not use the current beta. I doesn't seem to work well with C2 files.

One file wouldn't even try to load, while one did, and crashed with warnings from render cells.

am I able to do this without purchasing it?

Our policy for some time now has been that Construct 2 is no longer going to get any new features and is only receiving occasional bug fixes. It was first released in 2011 and won't last forever - at some point it will be retired. So I would suggest starting to move over Construct 3 now so you have time to figure out details like any changes that need to be made in the switch (see our guides on Importing C2 projects and The C3 runtime). If you delay, the risk is you will end up being forced to do this work anyway but on a tight deadline. There's loads of new features in C3 over C2 too.

What exactly is meant by retired? Does this mean absolutely no more updates, or we'll be unable to use the software that we paid for? On a similar note, are there any plans to eventually change the payment structure of Construct 3; currently, the only thing stopping me from switching to C3 is the fact that it's annual payment as opposed to C2's one-time payment?

well I found and installed the 3 plugins I needed (Rex_MoveTo, Rex_ZigZag and lunarray_LiteTween) and after trying to open my file in C3, it still says I need to install these plugins? I guess I have to stick with C2

Are you sure you installed them correctly? Start a blank project, add a sprite and try adding these behaviors.

Maybe you have c2-runtime versions of these plugins installed. You need c3-runtime. I know that at least MoveTo and LiteTween have c3-truntime versions, not sure about the ZigZag.

Are you sure you installed them correctly? Start a blank project, add a sprite and try adding these behaviors.

Maybe you have c2-runtime versions of these plugins installed. You need c3-runtime. I know that at least MoveTo and LiteTween have c3-truntime versions, not sure about the ZigZag.

I found the C2/C3 versions, and installed them using the addon menu in C3. Is that the correct way?

This is the correct way. Are you able to use these addons in a blank project?

I must have not restarted properly last time. I reinstalled them, and did a restart, and was able to open my project.

This is the correct way. Are you able to use these addons in a blank project?

my last question to you (thank you for all your help) is have you seen much benefit/difference from using C3? My big project is PC and maybe Console which is what I mostly care about. Although it would be nice to release some of my older mobile game projects.

With runtime 3 you should get better performance, but also be aware that memory usage may be higher.