Disappointed over bad communications!!!

Well, I don't think Scirra can do any more than they do already, at least not until they expand somewhat - but that is their call.

The sad fact is that the current export situation (chrome\NW) are woeful and will be for some time it would seam. But that is what you have to go with at present. C2 is currently for prototyping and learning tool - and extremely good one at that.

michael i dont understand why and from where the opinion that c2 is for prototyping and learning tool has established..so with c2 we make a prototype and then what?we go in another engine and build/polish a proper game?

i think c2 is NOT only for prototyping is a game engine. we can make almost everything in 2d and sell it. it happened before it will happening in the future. is game maker a prototyping tool too? or stencyl with the epic game (is coming soon) "the ghost song" ? its in the same philosophy all these programs.

we agree that its time for scirra to expand cause c2 gets even bigger and more popular than ashley himself believes.

Well, as I have said before, until a game is released that performs well on its intended target platform, C2 will not be taken seriously.

The best dev for such a game is Scirra themselves, they are the ones who know the tool and its potential better than anyone. It is in their interest to publish a cool, well performing game, that not only showcases this awesome engine, but also proves that all the issues with performance\bugs are in fact caused by those (devs) who experience them.

It may well also expose some issues with the engine, that only surface in projects with more than a few sprites and a couple events.

The challenge of course is do Scirra have enough confidence in their own engine to take on such an exercise?

michael i dont understand why and from where the opinion that c2 is for prototyping and learning tool has established..so with c2 we make a prototype and then what? we go in another engine and build/polish a proper game?

I agree with michael here. Tools like Stencyl and C2 are aimed for ppl who don't want to get into software development but want to design a game. This is a very important target group!

This tools hide the complexity of coding, but this comes with a price: flexibility and overhead. If you are an experienced developer, you even wouldn't look into Stencyl or C2: you would fire up your Java-IDE or Xcode and develop it native, simple as that. I personally use Stencyl and C2 (hopefully) for quick prototypes or simple puzzle games. To try things out, to make things happen quickly.

Sure, you can do sophisticated things with this tools, but they are simply a whole bunch of layered frameworks to make it easy for you. And believe me, sometimes the limitation over coding is frustating, but as I said: everything has it's price.

or stencyl with the epic game (is coming soon) "the ghost song" ? its in the same philosophy all these programs.

Ghost Song is just another platformer who makes heavy use of particle / sprites and some shaders. It's a good example for an artist who dives into developing - a simple game, that looks awesome. This gets more attraction then a clever game mechanic and game play with horrid grafix.

And if you follow the thread and read the title again, you have seen that Pete almost gave up with Stencyl as the engine could not cope with his expectations: he couldn't manage a decend frame rate on 768x480. Native Windows export, btw. Compiling OpenFL into a native application is a complete different story than wrapping a HTML5 game! I think this can't get stressed enough! Btw. I was very frustrated with Stencyl's physics implementation when I did Castle Keeper: I don't need physics, but no sprite collision without physics. How stupid?

I recently moved from Stencyl to C2 (hard thing, if you are a Mac user) because Stencyl has a nice engine, the Haxe-Idea is not bad, but we suffer on Stencyl with the same problems than other tools: OpenFL in Stencyl is always three versions behind, NO support for network / multiplayer, a very slow Java based IDE, the Sketch "drawing code" looks nice, but it's not productive (NO keyboard support) and it gets very very slow if your events get bigger (more code). And if you are a paying customer and read the boards, then you see the same discussions we're facing here: no support, to buggy (the sound support is horrid!), even simple things like drawing text on the screen is a complete mess (now fixed with sprite fonts since v3.1).

To make long story short: every toolset has it's own purpose. You can stretch the limits somehow. But if you know the limits, you can create awesome results within this boundaries.

dripple i agree that c2 stencyl and game maker have their limitations and as you said something you get (less or no code at all) but something you lose (flexibility). where i disagree is that these programs are only for quick prototyping. no they are not only for this.

What is the main goal for the majority of users of visual scripting tools/game engines? to make a game/games and earn money.

Can you do it with these programs? yes you can. can you build diablo or fallout with these engines - of course not even if these games were in 2d .

it is logical? yes diablo has a whole studio behind of programmers. you cant do it with c2 "on begin of layout stop animation"..

but can you do metroid, contra, limbo, machinarium, castlevania, mario, sonic and so on? of course you can.but it will be a long and lonely road. i dont get what you mean "ghost song is just another platformer". it differens in atmosphere and artistic style music and many more. these things made it original and different which means $$$ and popularity.the main goal which i wrote before

for example if super castlevania 4 release was in this year (most for mobile and tablets) should we said that was a quick prototype? or donkey kong 1?or contra? if we can do these type of games with c2 or stencyl why we are trying to downgrade (i dont know if this is the correct word i dont know english sorry) these programs to quick prototyping game engines only?

you said about decent frame rates.it will get solved in time (hopefully) if this is a problem of the software, but if this is a misunderstanding of the developer of how the game should build? and he ads sprites of 1024kb's all over the place?

And how many games from big studios dont suffer from problems and release a bunch of patches to resolve them some with success but some others not? it always came to my mind the game "rage" 2 months after the release it still suffers from graphic problems anti-amd drivers relationship lol, which made the game almost unplayable. tripple A studios with millions of dollars budget release an unplayable game. what about alien colonial marines where a gamer in youtube upload a video on how you cant get hit for a long time in the game ? where is the AI ???

Guys i post 100+ times and the half of them im asking to resolve problems from ashley or asking for new stuff and im whining for many things but sorry the games of the 70% even if they are clever and fun their assets are awful!!! try to desing your game smarter be carefull with your assets and you will avoid many problems. be original dont use common assets that are in many other games too and watch tutorials about design and music making for the games.

the biggest mistake of ashley is that he never upload a single scirra game (not a simple game crappy bird) a more complicated one i dont know hire some studio to make one (dont be a scrooge for gods sake you run a business) throw it to our heads like a f....ng brick and tell us you s*ckers for 3 years drove me crazy with your sh*t...take now what a great game i build with c2 and shut up...

ps.. (answering to my self) but spy84 as you said 3 years have passed what is he waiting for? maybe its only for prototyping ive got to agree...

Hi everyone, the thread is so long that I can't read them all but I have 3 things to say:

1. Performance. Comparing the performance of C2 with native app doesn't make too much sense, but comparing C2 with Cocos2D, pixi, and home made HTML 5 game, this makes sense. These 3 tools are supported in IntelXDK, so you can try their performance if you have time.

2. App/game market. Even if C2 engine acts super lightening fast, and you spend all your daytime on your game, your game still just has only 10% possibility to earn money. But, if you can greatly shrink your development period, you are closer to success and that's the very unique value of C2.

3. Support. Scirra sells product directly to global customers, of course gloal dummy questions fly back to Scirra. If you let similar questions to block your man power then you have no time to solve real bug and improve product. You need some core member to filter the question. Separate questions by region/native language is feasible.

I'm located at East Asia, Taiwan. I can say more than 80% Chinese C2 problems are solved by me and my teamates. Game app dev/market here is going to have huge changes because it's ultra bloody but the amount of developer is still rising to burst out. If you are interesting in the situation in East Asia, you are welcome to have a chat with me.

hi all..

if you look at Techradar's top100 games for android for 2015, you'll discover that quite a few of them are not heavy games with a high dependency on FPS. puzzle games, even angry birds, I'm not a game designer but there are many different game categories and for many of them C2 is a perfect tool for the development of the game. for some games it is not.

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and ... 013-687718

PS: I'd also say that I am an ok coder (being hacking around for a while now) and if you are a coder and can think like a coder, then you can find ways to improve C2 performance in most cases. Physics + highly dynamic games I suspect are a different issue.

My friend is a freelancer who uses c2 + a lot of my plugins. He did not know how to write any text code, so c2 is the only choice.

spy84 Don't feel offended, that wasn't my intention. AND I never said, it's for prototyping only! I said - and I qoute myself here -

Tools like Stencyl and C2 are aimed for ppl who don't want to get into software development but want to design a game.

and I also stated that this tools are great for prototyping as well. This was also said by Mike and I agreed with him to this point. If I wasn't clear in my statement, my apologize!

You CAN do clever and sophisticated things with C2, Stencyl (Okay, a game with 115 scenes slowed the editor down like hell) or GameMaker (there's a guy who writes emulators of ZX Spectrum or C64 in GameMaker so the games from this machines can be load into the GameMaker made emulator, that's awesome).

All I want to say is: don't expect the (hardware-) support, speed and flexibility of a native development environment from such all-in-one tools who specialize into delivering HTML5, for example. That's it. They all have it's strengths and weaknesses.

The whole thread runs in circles now.

It's saturday, I have some spare time and want to start my first (bigger) production C2 now - a port of a game I did with Stencyl. Time to grab a coffee, get my notes and sketches and start something new. I'll be back with tons of questions, be warned!

btw: I like the store. I already bought some assets from here.

My friend is a freelancer who uses c2 + a lot of my plugins. He did not know how to write any text code, so c2 is the only choice.

Why not? There's nothing against it. I know a lot game devs who use Stencyl and Construct 2. I meet them almost every day. And some of them make their daily income from this games. But they also know that certain game types are not possible or to hard to implement (in terms of reliabilty and stability) and they refuse to join a certain project.

If you are interesting in the situation in East Asia, you are welcome to have a chat with me.

I would like, maybe we find some time one day for a conversation.

mike wrote actually C2 is currently for prototyping and learning tool - and extremely good one at that. i think currently means "for now". Im not feeling offended dripple its a conversation im not c2s developer. im a another buyer of it. besides as i wrote with these programs you can do a bunch of stuff but if the software dont give the opportunity (now im speaking for c2 not the other engines, i dont use them) to developer for serious and without problematic exports the conversation about prototyping or not has no sense... if i spend months of work in a project and dont run well why should i stick with c2 even for prototypes?i will unistall it and wait for c3 but this time with more caution. to tell you the truth my last hope is spark engine..lets see what will happen.

if i spend months of work in a project and dont run well why should i stick with c2 even for prototypes?i will unistall it and wait for c3 but this time with more caution. to tell you the truth my last hope is spark engine..lets see what will happen.

Well, I am one of the guys who waits for C3. I am a Mac user and Stencyl was a natural choice, but then they dropped HTML5 support during the beta (it was announced as a key technology for version 3) and got stuck with just another tool ( you can read a little bit more about this here)

When I did my first games on J2ME ("mobile Java") about 15 years ago, I was disappointed about performance and abilities (max. 32 KB for the war-file for the whole game on Nokia devices, on some devices 10 to 15 FPS have been reported as "designed"). It took me a while to get my games to speed and performance that I expected. Then i sat down and said: "Hey, that's the wrong expectation. The will never perform like xyz. Think about it, think about your game design". So I changed my games, the mechanics, adapted them to the smaller devices and was happy with the results