Level design tools and more

although.... there is one think i really would like c2 to have... native resolution...so i can give the player the option to choose the resolution they want... instead of just scaling no matter what...

and i agree that plugins so useful like, FSM, magicam and canvas should be officially included and supported...

Lunatrap , I am glad you are confident in your skills and I do hope that your game will reach its full potential and your expectations!

I am with you in most of what you said. I argue about some things that Construct doesn't do, or if it does, it's because there are workarounds but they are either too difficult or not practical for a streamlined creation process.

There are many topics about those things, some of them are arguably very important, like modularity, other are more biased subjects, like native exporters. In any case, I started this topic not to blame C2, but because some of the things that other tools do are very inspiring and I wish there were somehow included into C2 as standard features.

Hey some great opinions.

— I'm in your camp. I don't believe there is any blocker to make a full fledged game. I do believe however sometimes I'm just going to have to roll up my sleeves and do it the hard way. I actively do use Unity at the company I work, but even with enough Unity skill set for 2D games. I would still work with C2 for any 2D.

Some plugins I agree I don't know if should be officially supported, but seems like should have a presense. Canvas especially. Rex FSM, I use groups for finite statemachines. magic cam is good. but that's also the point. If the engine is robust enough to let 3rd party developers to create quality tools, does that need official support?

I lean no.

—

I agree. I wanted to create a node based traveling system similar to Knights of Pen and Paper and such AdventurePath kinda of thing. But rather than linear paths use some pathfinding. it works find. But I wanted to see if I can make a tool in the SDK to assit in creating the graphics. You can find the thread in SDK as Edittime Widgets.

Overall I would rather Ashley work on producing a more robust IDE where tools, templates can thrive and flourish into quality standards. Rather than Ashley work on new end user features. I would like to modularity so that I know templates can be imported into project easility more so; so that if there is an update to template developers don't have hard time.

I would like to see all plugins have an Editor.js file which is only edit time. But let's us have widget and high amounts of control. Widgets to be dragged to create bezier splines in a scene, new windows to create tool interfaces.

Is any of this needed to make a great game. No, but it sure would help.

I've had my peace. I'll now continue make C2 stuff

Its kind of a "Field of Dreams" kind of thing where they have to ask if it's really worth it financially. While it would probably lend itself to other types of games, for now at least it would be very niche, although I would say a very healthy portion of 2d games are platformers.

A third party editor for making maps is doable, it just doesn't lend itself to the workflow, and I don't see someone putting the time needed into one unless they went commercial. Then that person would also have to ask "If I build it will they come?". Then there would be a ton of debate on what features it should have.

Of course another option might be a community based editor where it could be forked for specialty enhancements.

Also I don't remember a 3d demo, I bet that was Yann.

Agreed with everything you said.

I know quite a bit with regards to JS and the SDK, but there are many problems.

Many plugins can't be made in a user-friendly way because the IDE isn't extensible enough, and even if the IDE could be extended, third-party addon's poor image makes me uncertain whether it would be a good idea to actually make them (would I ever see my money back?). Nowadays I'm not doing much with C2, since I've started making more money with database work than with gamedev work, so I no longer have any incentive to create addons that boost my own productivity - I was hoping the store would fix that, but now that it's not accepting plugins/behaviors I'm a bit bummed out.

Here's a list of a few plugins that would greatly enhance level design, but can't be made due to IDE restrictions:

• Path movement (displaying the path in the editor)
• Better tilemap editor (with ability to set obstacle map, animated tiles, setting properties for each tile)
• Isometric map editor
• Interface creation tools/modular components
• Boss/enemy patterns (finite state machine or similar)

None of those can be made without including external tools that, like you said, don't fit well within the workflow.

Ashley already stated he will look into updating the editor for construct 3. We'll see if that allows for better third party complements.

Another thing is that far as third party editors goes we really need to know what is planned from Scirra, as it would really suck to get half way through implementing one, and then have them add one. Why pay for one when one is free, and in the editor?

Then if they were to make it where you could add support for the editor it would change things obviously.

Not sure if, or how that would affect what Scirra would add as features. I wouldn't think that that was direct competition since they don't charge for "official" plugs.

It might make it easier for them feature wise, but they wouldn't want to worry about a bunch of unsupported plugs either.

And thus we're back to the whole asset store plug argument.