Disappointed over bad communications!!!

Two years ago, I used Flash to create my free game Pigazoid for iOS and Android.

It took 6 months to develop.

90% of the time was me FIGHTING with the SLOWNESS of the Flash Engine.

It was a simple game, a VERY SIMPLE game, but what the player doesn't know is it is simple because Flash FORCES me to drop many features I want to implement.

Play back rate was slow, refresh rate was slow, it is just terrible.

I ended up having to experiment with Pixel Blitting within Flash alongside many other "hacks" to get the game going.

Ever since then, I swore I will NEVER ever create a Mobile game using Flash again.

NEVER, and I don't care how powerful new processors will become to make up for Flash's incompetency.

Two years later, now, I have decided to get back on Game programming and using construct 2 is the best thing that have ever happened to me in the world of game creation.

Would it shock you to know that games made with Construct 2 RUNNING ON A BROSWER in iOS can actually be faster than Flash's native exporter to ipa ?

Speed [which is a big thing] aside, Construct 2 makes "sense" in the gaming world.

Flash is like an old relic that is trying so hard to fit in, I have to create a mini game engine from scratch in Flash and yet will never truly know the performance of it until it is time.

I have to re-write Pigazoid's game engine twice.

Had I used Construct 2, 6 months of work would have been two weeks.

TWO WEEKS !

And 90% of the time will be spend on making pretty graphics, playing with my 3D characters and animating them.

I know because I am working on another game now and I cry from how easy Construct 2 is.

Construct 2 is awesome.

Toddler it sounds like you are comparing both platforms on the aspect of time to develop as well as harnessing power, and it's true, Flash will be incredibly more difficult to make a game let alone to get full power out of. However, that's not really the point they they're making.

Everyone agrees that C2 is the best tool ever seen for 2D game development, but the runtime should match that power rather than being an HTML5 game in a third party wrapper based on another third party product, etc. If we didn't feel it was possible for C2/C3/CX to get any better then we would just move on silently or perhaps leave farewell posts instead of trying to be heard.

Jayjay

2017:

"Construct 3 is awesome game maker, but my Flappy Bird clone is stuttering on my mobile that can plays Xbox 360 quality games"

"Yeah, I love Construct 3, however my game game runs crappy on the latest Chromium; I still have to use NW 0.10.5"

"Hey guys, it seems that Scirra still sends us to 3rd party companies, so maybe we should pay some money for Chromium or CocoonJS teams?"

szymek Yes it's still a gamble if HTML5 + WebGL + all the third party stuff will ever catch up or run decently, but it seems Scirra is going to keep trying a bit longer, and if it works out then everyone will (eventually) be happy.

Otherwise, there's definitely proof of demand for this kind of tool, and seems to be some nice open source alternatives arising. (Funny, as Construct Classic started as pretty much an open source alternative to the Clickteam products )

Jayjay

sometimes I got feeling that Ashley does not care about reality because he is already earning money on C2;

if he would be dependent on money from his own games then he would change his approach as soon as possible. Because his landlord or nearest TESCO would not accept excuses that he will pay bills in the future, when HTML5 will plays better. But nevermind. We both know that nothing will change.

szymek

I wouldn't say that Ashley doesn't care, I think he is working very hard to combat the issues of HTML5/WebGL that are within his reach, but I also feel like he is treating his customers like beta testers in general. This feeling grows even stronger with the prospect of Construct 3 now, and it doesn't sit well.

It is great that we get updates and new features, but even on the latest stable there are still issues at runtime that are out of my control and, especially when these issues are third party, we are sent on a personal quest to try and find the cause or contact the third party directly.

Scirra should be my "demarcation point", where I report an issue I'm having and they follow it up with the respective devs. Unless there is a feature I'm adding to C2 myself (eg: addon plugins from community members or that I've created), the troubleshooting for things that come with Construct 2 should begin with me (eg: after customers have contacted me) and end with Scirra (eg: debugging of node webkit, mobile exporters, etc).

Still, Ashley and Tom have done something really amazing already especially given the size of their team, and I really do hope the technologies they're using to supplement the amazing editing tool will shape up in the near future.

Jayjay

Ashley is working hard on recipe builder for pizzas (Construct 2/3) but he does not care about ovens. So you can make great pizza, and then you have to put it in the fridge and freeze, because you can't bake it well.

anyway: Construct 3 will be shiny new editor, but after exporting our projects we will have the same old problems. So in fact nothing will really change.

Prototyping tool? Yes

Education tool? Yes

Professional game development software? No

That's sad.

It is reasonable, since the development team of scirra are only two people, they could not do all things.

You might suggest that Ashley bought cocoonJS-Ludei, then C2 would have it's own wrapper.

szymek What you're saying makes sense for the moment, there's still time for the third parties to catch up though and it looks like Scirra is going for the long game. Sure, that means many professional games will not be completed for now, but I'm hopeful for the future.

rexrainbow Agreed, and something like that would be nice especially if they can do it with the money from purchases of C3, or by switching the commercial licence of C3 into a monthly subscription to cover expansion of Scirra

rexrainbow

Jayjay

Microsoft should come with his Spartan and conquer everything

anyway I don't understand Google in case of Android: they have AdMob, they could earn lots of money IF provide really good HTML5 support... And they have money for long term investments... yet situation on Android is bad.

I must say, unless C3 comes at a similar price point to C2's current price, I will be moving to Unity or Unreal. Unreal already has a working android Android exporter BUILT IN, is free, and the Blueprint system they have is not that much more difficult than C2's "no coding" coding. The main difference is that Unreal does take many, many more hours to become familiar with.

Honestly I would just love to see them focus on maybe the top 4 platforms: Android, iOS, Win, and OSX. That is all they need to show me and I will be on board. If not, then Unity and Unreal will continue to pull away business. It is plain and simple economics/capitalism.

rexrainbow Agreed, and something like that would be nice especially if they can do it with the money from purchases of C3, or by switching the commercial licence of C3 into a monthly subscription to cover expansion of Scirra

Don't think that is a good idea. The way the C2 license work now is that if your applications/games make more than 5000$ you have to upgrade to a business license. Which I think is a nice way to do it. Because the better applications users make the more will upgrade. So its more like a collaboration between users and Scirra. The problem as I see it, as others have also mentioned in this post and others, is if projects never reach a point where they are sellable. Some project gets dropped because of new ideas by the creator etc. But also lots of projects gets dropped because people run into limitations with C2. Not that I know a lot about mobile apps to take an example, so this is just in general and what the OP mentioned as well, but no one will release a mobile app which delivers poor performance for the buyer, because they will get complains and not be able to fix the problem will leave them in a very poor situation, so they might shelf there application. Which is a huge frustration for the developer but also a potential loss for Scirra.

So if Scirra can't promise superb performance on certain platforms, I would be very surprised if anyone would pay a monthly fee for a business license. To me Scirra have to make sure that the tools us users request and errors that are reported gets fixed. So as few projects gets dropped.

For instant as xanxion mention in his post:

[quote:350bly24]Personally, i have trashed and dropped about 18 of my games and apps that i have developed with C2. And i have around 6 published out there

(A couple of my apps are popular, but not my games, because of performance issues)

That's potentially 18 games that could result in him/her upgrading to a business license and personally I have dropped a lot of projects my self. Due to the reasons of new ideas, but definitely not uncommon that I drop applications due to limitations in C2 and having dropped a lot so far, its at moment more common that the ideas never even gets into C2, because i can in most cases judge whether something will be possible or not, depending on what features are going to be in the game. And some of the features are just to buggy so when adding all the things together you can see that the final product is not something that you would be able to sell, because its just not smooth enough to what a buyer would expect or it is simply not going to work. Which is really sad i think.

Don't think that is a good idea. The way the C2 license work now is that if your applications/games make more than 5000$ you have to upgrade to a business license. Which I think is a nice way to do it. Because the better applications users make the more will upgrade.

I agree for personal use, but as a business license owner I am already fairly invested into C2 and would rather see it capable of making games rather than needing to move on now, and I don't feel like I'm the only one who thinks that. I am also one of those who experienced poor performance, but in the desktop as I've not tested mobile much, and in the end opted to just set the required specs for running the on Steam game higher/close to our test environment (some still manage to have issues though of course, even if they have better specs!).

I think by adopting a model where people pay to keep Scirra going monthly and acknowledging that, even right now, the Construct tools are still a form of "late stage beta", then only the fans who want to see it continue will subscribe.

Sure, if someone makes more than $5000USD they should still purchase a business licence/subscription depending on what Scirra does, but the mistake right now was assuming that "business licence" meant I could go make and sell large commercial titles, rather than just be able to make more money from smaller projects.

It will definitely be interesting to see how the migration to C3 is handled...

I agree for personal use, but as a business license owner I am already fairly invested into C2 and would rather see it capable of making games rather than needing to move on now, and I don't feel like I'm the only one who thinks that.

I completely agree with you on that, using a method where people pay a monthly fee for a business license is not a problem in it self. If that will help make C2/C3 a better program. That weren't my point. It was that regardless of whether they do it the current way or with a fee system. They rely on people upgrading to a business license and that requires that people release applications, otherwise they wont upgrade.

But if C2/C3 doesn't allow a range of games, platforms etc to work correctly then less games will be released and would prevent people from upgrading and then they are back to square one.

Like many here, I've been using C2 for quite some time, and I think it's a fantastic tool! It helped me to get started as a game developer, when I just didn't have the knowledge or experience to try more complex game engines.

Sadly I've come to the conclusion that I need to move to greener pastures for now. Unfortunately I've been hearing the same old excuses week after week... month after month, since I started using C2 some 3.5 years ago. And for a while I kept hoping the improvements we needed were just around the corner (as promised). But the same problems I experienced when I began using C2 (poor performance, lack of robust 3rd party wrappers etc.), still persist. Despite the many assurances we constantly see in the forum.

I know things have improved since the early days, and I realise it can't be easy when you have such a small team. So the developers have done a superb job under the circumstances. But unfortunately the main issues preventing us from releasing high quality games on mobile (with good, consistent performance), are still there. And sadly I don't see this changing any time soon.

I truly hope the developers can prove me wrong, and turn things around. And I'll still keep an eye on all things C2, dropping by every now and then to see what's new. But for the time being it makes more sense for me to focus on learning to use an engine that will allow me to create the games I want, rather than forcing me to curb my expectations.