New... feeling 'cheated'....and confused!

[Del. Wrong info.]

Hi Construct team, Thank you for taking the time to get back to me via email....

I am sorry for the confusion and misunderstanding my end and am greatful for your help.

Situation resolved and once again, Thank you...

Warmest regards, OrionUk

Tom

Ashley

Tom and Ashley, I would request you to create a separate thread for "issues with mobile export(for both c2 and c3)" and delete all the other threads that people create every second day on the same topic. It's not useful at all and it makes Construct look bad. If I would checkout the forums as a newbie, the overly negative threads(on the same issue) would send a wrong signal to me.

Please cleanup the forums, I seriously think these threads are either created by people who jump to the conclusion too early or the ones who are just here to put the product down (Some dedicated users are offering constructive criticism and that's great IMO, that should be encouraged). I don't mean to disrespect anyone's opinion, but Construct delivers way more than a regular game engine for non-programmers and future users should be able to note the 9 great things that the engine offers rather than the 1 area where it lacks. The forums are seriously misleading at the moment, we don't need 500 threads criticising one single thing.

C2 has the largest community of all the 2D game engines. Despite non developing natively for mobile, if you're a beginner and you're stuck in a critical point, you have more chances to find help here than with MMF or Stencyl. At least that's my impression.

Tom

Ashley

Tom and Ashley, I would request you to create a separate thread for "issues with mobile export(for both c2 and c3)" and delete all the other threads that people create every second day on the same topic. It's not useful at all and it makes Construct look bad. If I would checkout the forums as a newbie, the overly negative threads(on the same issue) would send a wrong signal to me.

Please cleanup the forums, I seriously think these threads are either created by people who jump to the conclusion too early or the ones who are just here to put the product down (Some dedicated users are offering constructive criticism and that's great IMO, that should be encouraged). I don't mean to disrespect anyone's opinion, but Construct delivers way more than a regular game engine for non-programmers and future users should be able to note the 9 great things that the engine offers rather than the 1 area where it lacks. The forums are seriously misleading at the moment, we don't need 500 threads criticising one single thing.

Making a game that can't be published is indeed the biggest bait and switch in the gaming industry. It is not a small thing, indeed, it is everything. All the great features in the world do not make up for this one lacking area. Unless you have no intention of publishing a game, or making a dime ever in the future, this one glaring flaw destroys the whole platform for me and my friends who want to use it.

Calling it false advertising is just ridiculous. You can export to Android with both C2 and C3. We have lots of happy customers who do.

The old "relying on third parties" trope is also ridiculous. You cannot build modern software without relying on dozens of third parties. It is the nature of the industry now. Do you want us to add support for publishing to Android without even Google's involvement? Also, Android itself is a third-party platform, should we rewrite the entire platform ourselves and release our own mobile OS so we can "officially support" it without it relying on third-party support? I think some people might actually expect that...

Making a game that can't be published is indeed the biggest bait and switch in the gaming industry. It is not a small thing, indeed, it is everything. All the great features in the world do not make up for this one lacking area. Unless you have no intention of publishing a game, or making a dime ever in the future, this one glaring flaw destroys the whole platform for me and my friends who want to use it.

"Can't be published" is a huge statement and that is not the case at all.

I do respect your opinion, but I think it's way better to do some research and see what you are getting into rather than expecting things to be super easy. Construct delivers when it comes to making gamemaking easy for artists/hobbyists/non-programmers, and that is the most important thing that the consumers expect from the product. When it comes to publishing a game, it is compatible with some platforms and you have to work your way around to export games on the other platforms. There are so many developers who have published their Construct games on various platforms(and even made money with their games).

C2 has the largest community of all the 2D game engines. Despite non developing natively for mobile, if you're a beginner and you're stuck in a critical point, you have more chances to find help here than with MMF or Stencyl. At least that's my impression.

Agreed, and that's the reason why people need to create useful threads and ask for help whenever required. Repetitive negative threads bashing one single thing will not help.

all involved in this thread...

How about we all draw a line under this & move on from it now?...

As far as i see it, I felt I was given the impression (pre purchase by looking through the Construct 2 advertising page) that it was targeted at BEGINNERS... With that came the expectation (right or wrong of me!) that Android building would be a simple/straight forward process...for me it was not. I expected to see 'export apk' but saw Amazon Appstore as an option instead, which kinda threw me....as a newbie who had just spent his last £80 on something to help him bond with his children, i panicked that i had wasted money and was more upset i was not going to be able to do what i had planned for my children more than anything else. Had I have read before purchase that I would need to use Cordova CLI (beyond my abilities) I may not have continued with purchase at the time....remember, these people publishing have some level of experience where as I have none! I found myself with a method of making games but no method of publishing them as forum posts were conflicting/negative and above my grade or i misunderstood that some of these subscription services had free options too! Mainly fear it was beyond my scope in regards to Cordova CLI...so I panicked! ....The way i see it there are two issues here, the export process is NOT clear prior to purchase...AND I myself should have done further reading before buying! I only hit the brick wall when I found out about the fall of XDK and what i thought was the closing of the only door to offline exporting of an APK...in my eyes making my purchase useless.... The expectation that exporting to android meant making an APK directly within Construct 2 at the click of a button or two....not expecting it to be appstore instead. Cutting it short, I feel it was easy and understandable to feel mislead about APK exportation BUT also feel i should have done more research too!... SO....how about we all just forgive/forget and MOVE ON??? A lesson for us all?

As stated in my last post, the Construct team HAVE resolved the issue for me (been very accommodating) and I have said sorry for my confusion too! How about we lock this thread?...oh and one last thing..........HUG anyone?

The other thing to note is that you don't need to make APKs to play the games on your devices, you can use the Chrome browser on Android to add the games as shortcuts to the home screen to "look like apps", while really still running in a web browser. Then for hosting them for free there's the Scirra Arcade right on this site, or you can try sites like Bit Balloon as well if you want to host the game folders directly online.

From what I can tell, performance might actually be better running them this way anyway too.

Hope that helps!

Hi Jayjay, Many thanks for the reply

I will look in to the Scirra Arcade you mentioned (thank you) but my children are at an age where i only let them use their tablets with out an internet connection to protect them from porn/negative internet aspects! This is why i wanted to make apks and put them directly on to their tablets, so the can play in 'offline mode', But i will certainly look deeper in to the advice/info given here....thanks again

The export options all have full, public documentation, e.g. How to publish mobile apps.

I think even in the browser you can still load up the games once to download them, then disconnect WiFi and play them in offline mode any time after, as they should be cached on the device itself? It's sort of like how Construct 3 has an offline mode in the browser too I believe.

Edit: Yeah looks like this is it https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/70/offline-games-in-construct-2

Great news indeed... Thank you very much Ashley and Jayjay, very helpful & I am most grateful