The "perfect" Construct 3

I wish we could export to PS4.

That would be nice too. However since it's a HTML5 engine, this is out of Scirra's hands.

Ashley:

People keep dogging the idea of 3D integration. From my point of view, it shouldn't be that much to ask, as many modern "2D" games use 3D models. For example, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is probably the most profound usage of this technique. Things don't have to be "chase cam" style games, but adding some depth to 2D couldn't be that difficult, right?

but adding some depth to 2D couldn't be that difficult, right?

Ha, ha, ha, ha hahahaha XD

Sorry, no, this radically changes everything. People who say "it's just an extra dimension right?!" have no idea what kind of tech goes in to this!

I myself would love some quality of life improvements on the UI itself, including the ability to see on the scrollbar where results of the search are located at and/or the results are highlighted.

Ability to have an option to do a global search of all event sheets to see where a variable/search result is used/located.

Other than that, I have nothing to add to the discussion.

Ashley, and also if I can add, they got no idea the work that requires to do a 3D game, specially when things begin to get a bit more complex.

Ashley many apologies. The title of the video was misleading. This is the correct Bret Victor (He worked on Swift a bit) video where you can see the programing environment and how approachable it is. Jump to 7:00m to get the first glance. I'm still up for sending some BTC

https://vimeo.com/64895205

I'm still not sure what to take away from this. This talk is mostly about animation, which seems more applicable to a tool like Spriter, right?

Stop this 2.5D/3D nonsense already, there are already perfectly good alternatives to that and Construct needs to focus on where it excels, which is fast and versatile 2D game development. (Who knows, maybe a C3 plugin to achieve this kind of effect/illusion visually kind of like Q3D will be made for it by a 3rd party eventually.)

What we do need is better and streamlined Export options (including preferably PS4, Xbox One somehow..), improved plugin system/support, easier copying of events/objects between projects, maybe improved physics engine and some new visual features such as more versatile particle options and a dynamic lighting system. Also hoping that old projects / addons will continue to work as much as possible, with minimal changes.

We will see where it goes and what can be reasonably implemented within time and resources but it's definitely exciting that a new version of this great tool is in development. Also probably wise to not expect all the new features on day 1, I'm sure it'll continue to grow and evolve over time as C2 has.

> but adding some depth to 2D couldn't be that difficult, right?

>

Ha, ha, ha, ha hahahaha XD

Sorry, no, this radically changes everything. People who say "it's just an extra dimension right?!" have no idea what kind of tech goes in to this!

Well that's fair enough. I think because no one has actually given technical details as to why. I mean, even a "3D object" would be neat to have, but even then there's no telling what the tech difficulties are without knowing how things work internally. (one of the downsides to non-open source software I'd say, not to say it should be oss lol)

As I have posted in the "The future of Construct" Blog, I think that's way better making a Tool that does well ONE thing well than trying to do an "almighty" tool that can make EVERYTHING ... so-so.

There are thousands of possibilities to make a game, an app, an anything in 2D, and it' s a much more realistic target for an indie developer to make a 2D game than a 3D one.

Imho, the only really important thing is to enhance (where and IF possible) the speed of the final product, which is the (only, as far as I' ve seen) problem of C2.

I myself would love some quality of life improvements on the UI itself, including the ability to see on the scrollbar where results of the search are located at and/or the results are highlighted.

Ability to have an option to do a global search of all event sheets to see where a variable/search result is used/located.

Other than that, I have nothing to add to the discussion.

Basically, and I want to direct this to Ashley too, we all would welcome more practical stuff, that would make work easier and faster, more intuitive if you like, but also more flexible at places. Take triggers for example: they are grate, but having no ability to set a delay, makes for less smooth gameplay - sometimes you need that extra milliseconds to tighten things up. You can make a work-around with timer, but that means there is at lease several more events there to do per object type. And Imagine making a sequential movements, like for elevators or spikes. There is no way of grouping objects on the go, other then trough building up trees of events. Or Or even such simple thing like keys bindings. Work-arounds pile up and not always work great. So I'd really like to ask you to consider having events expanded, by thinking of more possible scenarios.

As for editor, streamlined navigation will be nice, rulers would be nice, drawing masks, as well as collision masks in the editor itself would be great too. Ability to zoom preview animations is needed for low res games. Having easier way of managing object's variables is really needed thought - sometime's those variables are need to be used for long sentences of tokens. And speaking of sentences a proper text editing would be great too. There is panty of things to improve. maybe hireing a ux person with gaming background would help? Cause we need to stop with finding work-rounds; there is other software i use where there is a need to find a work arounds constantly. It takes away mountains from actual workflow.

Also, as a side note, there is a problem with large arrays: they don't seam to be able to finish loops in a single pass. Sometimes it is needed to create a set of events that will select an area of the array before moving on to next one in the next tick, and this way it works faster! So I thought I'll mention that.

One thing I learned while using C2 was that what I thought was workaround were often the fact I wasn't using it properly.

I found ways to properly optimize by observing how real code is written and asking programmers what are the best practices.

When I did spikes as an example, was actually quite easy.

Organization has never been a problem, I keep everything separate into either different sheets or into dictionary.

For animations thought, I don't know how useful would be to be able to import json files which can be exported from asesprite which is an incredible

software for pixel art and animation.

Personally, my biggest issue would be the ability to export to PS4 but that's something Scirra cant really help us with.

Another issue would be how difficult is to set up a proper input system the way I would do it in Game Maker, but then again maybe theres one and I havent learned it.

Ashley mostly UI/UX and the "gist" of it. Very very approachable user interface that you can program relatively complex stuff in a very intuitive way. The screen is very uncluttered and lets you focus on what you are doing, rather than programing numbers. Even veteran programmers can prototype and developer their ideas faster using similar approaches.

Another issue would be how difficult is to set up a proper input system the way I would do it in Game Maker, but then again maybe theres one and I havent learned it.

If you are talking about user inputs for the game, use global variables with default keycode value. Players can change the keyboard binding (value in the variable) themselves later on if they so wished so. You can see an example by downloading my game demo from my signature.

Sethmaster, very informative thanks!

And your project looks great!

Cheers

> I wish we could export to PS4.

>

That would be nice too. However since it's a HTML5 engine, this is out of Scirra's hands.

PS4 supports both HTML5 & WebGL. It's not out of their hands, though much more is involved in a PS4 exporter.

A few more suggestions that are less about significant new features (Unity already exists for 3D) and more about usability/expanded functionality:

• Support/Wrapper for ORTC in IE/Edge, which I saw mentioned by

  Ashley as being looked into over a year ago, but there seems to be no movement on it, eliminating the ability to use C2's native multiplayer functionality in IE, Edge, as a Windows App on Windows 8, a Universal App on Windows 10 or XB1 (source: )

Real, actual documentation for C2's GLSL shaders. Saying "look at these third-party examples" is a bit ironic when no effort is made to look at any bugs that occur in projects with third-party behaviors/plugins

GLSL shaders that actually WORK properly. The whole screen space/layout space issues has been in C2 for far too long, and it's holding back the ability of anyone to push shader-related visuals in C2

XBL Achievements/Friends List support

Steam integration (this is moving far too slow, and I'll probably have to implement as a 3rd-party plugin in the end)

Access LOCAL variables from the debugger

Export to NW.js WITH the debugger enabled

A more modern particle system, what's available may be optimized but it's hilariously limited

More functional breakpoints, without the current limitations on looped events

Easier way to move blocks of events from one project to another (for example: right now any globals need to be added first, then the events)

Event-level access to collision polygons, which has always seems like a bit of an oversight

Spawn objects by name, which also seems like an oversight (and not everyone is worried about obfuscating code 99% of people can't read anyway and is so C2-specific)

A straightforward way to exclude specific layers from shaders applied to a layout (for example: a post-process bloom that applies to everything except the GUI layer)

Custom keyboard shortcuts