Native Desktop Exporter for Construct 3

megatronx

Strange isn't it? I used to have all my audio functioning normally in preview, sound effects and music files.

Now that's gotten completely broken, half the time it doesn't work and when it does it doesn't load all the files which breaks my game since some events need a sound file to finish to return the time scale to 1.

Now, the only way I can preview my game is to export it. I only ever use Preview for simple stuff like animations, anything more gets exported.

EDITED

I'm not gonna lie; I do often speak out about what I'd like to see in construct fro the point of few of developer and x-webDev, which is streamlining things for the sake of efficiency, and there is a lot of things to streamline in construct. But I wasn't really vocal about having native exporters, since i still do believe things will get better. And I'm waiting for over 3 years now. I've made loads of prototypes, some of which are very advanced logically like internal modularity, my own scripting language, level editor with texturing etc. But never finished anything, because if feeling insecure that when I finish there still will be problems.

Nesteris I wish C3 could be the real deal as much as you (maybe even more). But we have to remember this: when Yoyo bought the old, cheap Gamemaker and began to add the new exporters to GMS, it took a very long time and an insane amount of people to make them actually work. And prices were also raised in a brutal way. They lost most of their core audience at first ("bring back the real gamemaker, you're only looking for profit!"), then catched a new one which wasn't using GM before this change. And which was ready to pay hundreds of dollars for each exporter because it's still a cheap and good engine compared to other ones for pros.

Without inverstors with big money and a huge network for deals with manufacturers (have a look at the Yoyo funders background), taking this kind of risks is madness.

I'd be ok to pay $1000 for C3 with native exporters cause I ('m trying to ) make games for a living. But how many are we to be ready for this here? 10, maybe 20 ?

I'd love to be able to blame Scirra for the lack of native exporters, but If I picture myself in their shoes, I just can't : )

This software is made for people to craft their first games. This is not sold as a pro framework for studios. The tone of the last promotion video is very clear on this.

Hilariously though, the tag line on the front page is:

[quote:3vxdhqit]You've finally found it. The powerful, full featured and professional game development software you've always been looking for.

So far I count 1.5 out of 3 (1 = powerful, 0.5 for Pro).

I wish C3 could be the real deal as much as you (maybe even more). But we have to remember this: when Yoyo bought the old, cheap Gamemaker and began to add the new exporters to GMS, it took a very long time and an insane amount of people to make them actually work. And prices were also raised in a brutal way. They lost most of their core audience at first ("bring back the real gamemaker, you're only looking for profit!"), then catch a new one who wasn't using GM before that change. And which was ready to pay hundreds of dollars for each exporter because it's still a cheap and good engine compared to other ones for pros.

Without inverstors with big money and a huge network for deals with manufacturers (have a look at the Yoyo funders background), taking this kind of risks is madness.

I'll be ok to pay 1000$ for C3 with native exporters cause I ('m trying to ) make games for a living. But how many are we to be ready for this here? 10, maybe 20 ?

I'd love to be able to blame Scirra for the lack of native exporters, but If I picture myself in their shoes, I just can't : )

That's true, but then you have softare like Stencyl, which although it has a absolutely horrible UI, it's free to use and can natively export to PC. But it does require a subscription of 99$ per year for every year you export. I actually used Stencyl before C2, it's horrible, horrible to use but it's got that native export over C2. Look up Ghost Song, it's made in Stencyl.

To be honest, I too wouldn't mind paying couple hundred dollars for a native PC exporter, since if I'm going to publish to GOG.com I can ask for an advancement on royalties to help fund development.

I just hate that Construct 2 can be rendered worthless for desktop platform (and potentially others) because Google (or other third party) is too lazy to make a working product (because it's too busy terrorizing Youtube and forcing Google+ everyone. )

I'd understand several exporters being made third-party from the game engine, but all of them? That's just asking for trouble. We should have at least one strong, pure native exporter that we can use if all else fails.

There's probably I more I can write about but nothing comes to mind at the moment.

Btw, Aurel, this is probably a silly question but; interested in teaming up with someone for future game development?

Nesteris

I was talking about target of specific software. We both know that company with big money would NOT RISK using software which creators does not take any responsability for good working of final product created with this software. It would be too risky for them. In case of Aurel - he made great game with C2 and now he suffers it's limitations.

In my case: I made quite popular game for mobile, but it's jittering on Crosswalk and giving me much less money (than possible) due to using CocoonJS, that has only AdMob via MoPub (=terrible fillrate, low eCPM). Of course ludei is working on native ads, but it may takes 2-3 months.

As much as I love Construct 2, I still disagree with 0% responsability policy + "please wait for" (in the past: CocoonJS, then Crosswalk, now Cordova).

megatronx

[quote:26bmkprm]But I wasn't really vocal about having native exporters, since i still do believe things will get better. And I'm waiting for over 3 years now

+1

Let's get one thing straight: C3 isn't going to be a 'native' engine (whatever the hell that even means anymore).

Why? Because there's a reason that an annual subscription to Unity+Exporters costs nearly as much as leasing a new car: it take a mega-ton of work on the part of dozens of developers to maintain compatibility across all those platforms. Everyone here calling for native exporters: do you want to pay an annual subscription fee of ~$100-200 to maintain them? I'm sure some of you would be willing...and most wouldn't.

The idea that javascript has 'stalled out' is also a misnomer. Right now there are efforts to both increase parallelism in javascript (the ability to take better advantage of multithreaded processors, particularly useful on mobile) and take advantage of vector operations like SIMD. These are capabilities that will be both explicit (you can directly code with such operations) and, eventually, available to JIT and AOT engines (meaning that EXISTING CODE can be optimized as well).

Yes, there is a risk involved in depending on chromium (Google, our future overlords) for many of our export options. However, people seem to forget that Google (and Apple, Intel, Mozilla, Microsoft, etc...) are all looking towards javascript/html5 as the language of universal applications, which is likely to be the way most programs are built in the next 5 to 10 years. It is in their self interest to keep advancing and improving their browser engines.

Let's get to mobile, chief bugaboo on these 'ol forums.

Mobile is supposed to be a nightmare...but is it? Or are you thinking of Android?

We all know Android export is a bit of a mess. Guess what? Android is a mess period.

It's a massively fragmented market with half a dozen different OS variations, a million different hardware variants (many of which are complete trash), slow adoption of updates, rampant piracy, and a metric sh!tload of shovelware dominating the charts. Oh, and with wireless data limits being what they are, everyone with > 3 brain cells runs adblock.

The success curve on android is weighted crazy high, with behemoths like Supercell sucking up most of the money that does flow into the platform. So...why is it even worth bothering, except to maybe license something or to add to your portfolio...or just publish for fun? And if it's the later, more power to you, but why not just develop for PC where you can make what you want and not have to worry about performance (unless you are making some terrible coding choices)?

I'm not completely defending Scirra here. Going back to the jank issue: The choice to update to a defective version of node-webkit -- and stick with it even though regressing to 10.5 was clearly the best choice in the short term -- was a massive mistake that shook the faith of less technical users by breaking games that weren't really broken. There is really no reason that should ever need to happen again.

Let's do with NW.JS what we do with C2 itself: have a stable/beta cycle, where beta is the newest version of NW.JS available, and stable is the newest version that works without issue. Let NW.JS break for months...as long as our stable branch sticks with a functional version, who cares?

Consoles are where things get tricky. It's a damn shame, but having console exporters just doesn't look likely, unless Sony/Microsoft decide to get behind them. XBOne and PS4 both have sufficient grunt to run C2 games, but there simply isn't a HTML5/WebGL engine of sufficient sophistication for either platform. XBOne there might be a chance (Microsoft is very gung-ho on 'run everywhere' all of a sudden), but PS4 is still top dog for now, and Sony has always been an odd and stubborn company that's more than willing to cut off their head to spite their left nostril (so to speak). If they don't want to do HTML5 they won't. Period.

Overall, I think Ashley is dead-on with C3: keep improving the engine we have now, make an editor that can be customized and continue to evolve with the engine, and make it easier to build games in a more modular way so we don't have to re-invent the wheel such much. Consoles are the one missing link that's a damn shame, but I don't think there's much we (or Scirra) can do about that.

Overall, I think Ashley is dead-on with C3: keep improving the engine we have now, make an editor that can be customized and continue to evolve with the engine, and make it easier to build games in a more modular way so we don't have to re-invent the wheel such much.

If that's going to be the case, improving the engine we have now. I'd prefer it just be a major update rather than having to shell out another $130 US. I don't like that a few big updates automatically necessitate it to be next gen Construct 3 instead of just Construct 2...

The only reason i came to construct 2 was the fear of a object overload and room overload and variable, which would make my game(feed the alien pizza) either corrupt or crashing 65% of the time, that and it requires 250 obstacles and 500 levels 50 in each 10 worlds.

I now have come to realise the dragging and dropping behaviours are working in construct 2(not game maker) but the level select and world select and stars are harder in both programs.

However in the game maker room editor it does clone resources on the resource tree every time a new object of the exact same one is added to the room, while construct 2 does, my only other regret is construct 2 loops the loading dialogue box for testing a scene.

While both game maker and gamesalad do not, then there inlies the fact about multiple objects and scenes with gamesalad does not have those problems and game maker and gamesalad do not hesitate to resort to looping the loading dialogue box, instead they immediatley buffer it, and load allow you test it, and to go back to the editor game maker requires gml for advanced features both construct 2 and gamesalad do not.

... Construct 3?

Yep, welcome to the party.

C3 will export exclusively to Amazon Echo.

http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo/ref_=ods_dp_ae

Yep, welcome to the party.

C3 will export exclusively to Amazon Echo.

http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo/ref_=ods_dp_ae

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Yep, welcome to the party.

C3 will export exclusively to Amazon Echo.

http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo/ref_=ods_dp_ae

Well, we won't have to worry about webGL effects. Or jank. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink">

One thing we all need to try to keep in mind is costs. C3 needs to happen for many reasons as outlined by Ashley and the community. Most importantly is this:

• C2 is not a subscription model, it is a one time payment model for a full featured product that also receives tons of updates.
• C2 does not have licensing on games made with it. If you make a successful title and earn 100k, you are not strangled with license costs to Scirra.
• C2 gets new features and exporters all the time -- these are not added costs for us like GM.

In order for Construct to continue to be great it needs to grow. A new C3 that can increase further in functionality and add more of the requests that we all beg for is a win.

This should not be FREE. Scirra's income, especially after the wonderful way they treat their customers (see above) deserves reward. Show me another game creation software like construct or GM where the customers are respected and treated so well by the developers. And when I say respected, I mean financially as well as communicated with.

Ashley has already stated that those of us who have purchased already and supported Scirra will be further rewarded with a great upgrade offer to C3.

The cost for exporters for GMS is 100-300 EACH. So for us to buy a new version of this software every so often -- while getting guaranteed support, updates, and features seems more than fair. In fact it almost feels criminal to me how much we get for so little.

I have had ups and downs with C2, but I have always been a huge supporter of Scirra, and will continue to do so if I find value in the product that they develop.

Well I don't care about mobile at all, and would feel cheated if Scirra decided to produce, say, a native iOS exporter. I'd rather have a more extensible editor. I also don't mind paying whatever they want to charge for it, since I (and I think most here would feel the same way regarding this specific issue) feel like I got more than my money's worth for C2 already.

I also don't care for C# - people clamoring for it seem a bit hypocritical, since it's even more third party reliance than HTML5, which at the very least is an open standard (meaning no one owns it). Remember how Microsoft canned XNA? That could happen again, whereas if chrome dies, we'd switch to firefox in a heartbeat.

Also, a vote of confidence please? Come on, if Ashley says performance differences between c2 and cc is negligible, and even provides benchmarks to back it up, you could at least consider that that might be the case after all, and that a native engine wouldn't provide as much benefit as you're thinking - you can't simply say "no ur wrong!!1!11" out of a hunch or some outdated notion (whose origins can be traced to a time when js didn't have JIT), without at least a modicum of technical effort defending your position.

The new editor will be great for development speed - no language-switching mental delay for Ashley, no reliance on a byzantine, barebones and inflexible UI library, no discrepancies between edittime and runtime, a brand new SDK for us to play with, localization, and who knows what else? Besides, while this is all going on, the third party platforms will keep getting better and better - there was a time when node-webkit wasn't even officially supported, with a few brave users trying desperately to make their games run on it - look how far we've come! Look how far javascript and HTML5 have come! A few years ago, before WebRTC, I was trying to get multiplayer gaming up and was facing 500ms delays on localhost! Even before that, webGL wasn't even around and we had to contend with a software runtime and 500 objects MAXIMUM!

By the time C3 comes out, most issues with mobile will have solved themselves, and people will instead be like "woe is me javascript is so slow" and "scirra needs to make a native exporter for xiaozeng's potato-quality line of smartnecklaces". Or maybe they'll be clamoring for a C4 with 3D support or whatever.

Seriously guys, there's nothing wrong with construct's HTML5 runtime. It's being reused for C3 not due to laziness, but because it's good enough for all intents and purposes, and most changes will be additions instead of refactorings, as some of you seem to think it needs. Related article

Don't use construct if you want native performance. If you want perfect performance write your game in assembly for every cpu architecture + gpu specific optimization. /s

Using a tool like construct you have to give up a lot of optimizations. The tool is there to make you work faster and have the end result be way less efficient than if you had written it other ways. You can write code in WebGL that will far outperform CC, but it's all a matter of scale and scope. Construct 2 is a tool thats good at what it does. It never aimed to be a native engine. C2 has a lot of issues which could be fixed by a more diverse set of plugins, but performance is something you just have to accept. The general statement i can make is : write your own engine if the one your using can't keep up with what you're doing, and nothing else out there works for you.

A native exporter isn't going to happen, and it's only foreseeable if scirra takes on a lot more employees, and fractures construct 3 into a html5 version and a native version. I don't see interoperability being something that will happen.

A native exporter would mean construct 3 was another start from 0, and the engine would be bare bones for years.

Also, a vote of confidence please? Come on, if Ashley says performance differences between c2 and cc is negligible, and even provides benchmarks to back it up, you could at least consider that that might be the case after all, and that a native engine wouldn't provide as much benefit as you're thinking - you can't simply say "no ur wrong!!1!11" out of a hunch or some outdated notion (whose origins can be traced to a time when js didn't have JIT), without at least a modicum of technical effort defending your position.

Check my post here: and another post someone else made earlier. These aren't unfounded claims of slow-down compared to CC, I've made projects in CC and re-wrote them almost exactly the same in C2 (some features in CC don't exist in C2 and opposite is true too) and they run at a poorer performance than what I got in CC.

The problem is that odds are it's a % difference that stretches to extremes across a wide range of hardware. If people only wanted to make games that run well on their own machines then they'd certainly code in assembly like QuaziGNRLnose was suggesting (also Quazi, I have a feeling that your Q3D/ThreeJS would render the same test better/pretty decently, as the 3D performance is excellent!)

I get that a total re-write is out of the question, but at least finding some programmers to work on improving Node for C2's purposes and uses would be nice, or to maintain a branch of an open-source similar project tailored specifically for C2/C3. Maybe even making C3 have the ability to export from events into code that works with other engines would fix the native + console problem while C3 can shift focus onto mobile and web then.

Perhaps C2/C3 should just be aimed at mobile and web platforms in general, and have desktop as an extra/with less prominence on the homepage/features page. I never expect amazing things from a Flash game wrapped in an EXE, but when I used Construct Classic I knew I had tonnes of power in my hands and that expectation carried onto Construct 2. For any mobile or casual game Construct 2 is perfect, but you can really feel the limits when you make something larger for desktops only.