Any really profitable games made with construct 2?

Just my 2 cents, C2 is an engine, chosing an engine/language/platform/etc is part of thz job I think, however, popularity of said engine should not come into play, except for support(a large community wih helpful member will help more easily than a little community in general), what the engine does, how it does it, all comes into play, in general it is not a matter of "did C2 did somehing great", but more "does C2suits me and my plans?".

C2 is an html5 engine (html5 being multiplatform and more and more performant as time passes, that also has the advantage of not being an executable file), however it is not as powerful as native (when performances is a real concern, that comes into play), wrappers are not to enter into consideration as a part of C2, they are more a part of html5 (and they become more and more useless technically speaking as time passes, being more a psychological executable file, since html5 is not yet a good market except for publishing, and even then, it is more driven by profit and insane requirement more than something viable long term wise).

Um yeah, I call bs on the Unity thing. Tools have little to do with accomplishing your goals. The only things that are absolutely necessary are skill, and drive.

Take Spelunky for example, Gamemaker sucked, especially back then, and yet Derek Yu was able to knock one out of the park.

Tools actually have a lot with accomplishing your goals. For example, trying to make a 3D game in C2 is probably possible, but you're much better off just using a 3D engine. The same applies for publishing - why would you use Stencyl if you're trying to publish on XBox One? You'd be hard-pressed to export to your desired platform because you chose an engine that isn't targeted toward that platform.

As for skill and drive, sure, you can cut down a tree with a knife - that would be hard working and require a lot of skill and drive. But you could also choose to be smart about it and get a chainsaw. As my first employer told me, tools are tools - don't get married to them and pick the right one for the job. C2 is great for some things but not great for everything.

If you think that a tool is the key to a career then good luck.

Might want to start cozying up to the game journalists, apparently thats a industry standard as well.

newt

but Excal is 100% right. If someone wants stable job with good salary and many job offers - then he should learn Unity. If someone wants just to try make game and check if he is lucky (i.e. to get enough profits from ads in mobile apps) - then Construct 2 is enough. But if his game fail, then sorry, but almost no one would like to hire C2 dev.

Excal I would move to Unity, but I'm too lazy for programming. I guess everyone would move to Unity if there would be something similar (easy) to event system, behaviors, touch plugin etc. etc. etc.

newt, I actually am cozying up to game journalists and press for my game. Why? Because I want people to hear about my game. I don't see what your problem is.

szymek, Even though I've moved on to Unity, C2 is still very fast for me to prototype with. I still use it to test out some 2D ideas. If you're looking to 'ease into' programming, check out the Playmaker asset on the Unity Asset Store. I don't use it since I've been trying to focus on coding, but there's no shame in using a 'visual scripting interface' with Unity - the team behind Hearthstone (yes, HS was made with Unity), Republique, and many other 'big' games have all used Playmaker. After all, why hard-code everything when you can string events together and focus on coding the more interesting parts of your game? That's what Playmaker is about.

If you're new to state machines, it may take a few minutes to wrap your head around it. But once you understand states, you'll learn a powerful gameplay programming tool. I actually learned the importance of states when I was working with C2. I was trying to figure out how to handle the AI for my open-sourced space shooter when I realized an enemy ship would be in one of three states every second of the game:

• Close to either asteroids or player (distance to either is less than X), but closer to asteroids than the player. -> Shoot asteroids about to crash into the AI ship, even if player is nearby, and try to move away from closest asteroid.
• Close to either asteroids or player (distance to either is less than X), but closer to player than the asteroids. -> Shoot player until this is no longer true, if accelerating toward player, move in opposite direction (prevents my AI ships from looking like they're constantly trying to crash into the player).
• Greater than X distance from both asteroids and player. -> Fly towards player.

States are pretty useful ^_^

I'm certainly not profitable--a game like Courier takes some time. However, I simply would not be able to create it in any other engine. I really don't have the time to improve my C# skills to a high enough level to do what I can do so rapidly in C2. It would also take longer for me to type it all out. Then, I build my levels out of multiple objects in the C2 IDE (the game is NOT tile-based). This would be a nightmare in Unity and would likely end up with me having to do a lot more 3D stuff than I'm interested in doing. C2's time-saving nature is essential to Courier ever happening. I can't predict the future, so it would be irresponsible of me to hire a team (even a second person would essentially double the profit margin needed to net any gain). And, other than Game Maker, which I've played with and really don't enjoy using, there is nothing else like C2 that both allows me to do some higher-level stuff AND allows such rapid development.

So I really do think Courier will be profitable when it is completed (next year), but it simply wouldn't happen with any other tool.

Sure, but you're also already in production. I say this because you've already invested so much time into Courier. If you were still in pre-production, you would have more freedom to choose an engine. I could say the same thing - recreating my card game in C2 would take much more time and likely even be impossible since it's a 3D game.

If you're in preproduction and scoping out engines, a basic search of "I don't know how to program but want to make a 3D game in Unity" would bring up Playmaker and tons of Playmaker help resources, including articles written by non-programmers who are currently selling 3D games in the app store. The same applies for 2D, and this even applies if you're wanting to try out Unreal Engine 4. Yes, you can make a decent game in UE4 with no programming at all.

There are also other variables here. For example, you're more of a lone wolf/hobby dev. There was a recent Reddit thread calling for a distinction between hobby and indie developers. I'm an indie developer, but all that means is my company, Impulse Limited, isn't working with a publisher. We still have a full-time 8-man team working on our game, so we're closer to a game studio than what many people think of when they hear 'indie dev'.

but Excal is 100% right. If someone wants stable job with good salary and many job offers - then he should learn Unity. If someone wants just to try make game and check if he is lucky (i.e. to get enough profits from ads in mobile apps) - then Construct 2 is enough. But if his game fail, then sorry, but almost no one would like to hire C2 dev.

Excal I would move to Unity, but I'm too lazy for programming. I guess everyone would move to Unity if there would be something similar (easy) to event system, behaviors, touch plugin etc. etc. etc.

He is indeed 100% right in the aspect that learning to use an industry standard game engine well is more beneficial for the long term, even if your own game don't make it, you have the talent that game studios need.

Also he is spot on, you need press coverage, its a major element of success. There's millions of games already on the App Stores, how do you get gamers to know about your game without press coverage? One must be realistic.

Also, Unity has a lot of plugins and some allow you to program visually rather than raw code, so its definitely a LOT more accessible. I've talked to other indie devs on Reddit and many of them don't know Objective C/C+ or raw java coding, but they go with Unity 2D or Game Maker etc. UE4 also exports to mobiles with a recent update.

There's tons of options out there. C2 is good for cross-platform support (but again, all these other engines deploy on all the platforms that matter) but its selling point is web-based games, which is still niche.

However, all said and done, it still comes down to the main factor that determines your success: YOU, the right tool (which C2 is, for many 2D games) and a lot of luck.

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Facebook page, Twitter account, some landing page is a must for every serious game. In other situation you rely only on "random" users and keywords used in game title.

there is also some page - I don't remember it's URL <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad"> - where you can make campaign to get followers in social media. So it's like KickStarter but for getting "fame" for your game/project/idea.

btw. can you check http://superubielanddemo.clay.io/ ? on my average notebook (AMD CPU+GPU, 8 GB Ram) it's not really smoth, even if I override GPU blacklist on chrome

there is also some page - I don't remember it's URL - where you can make campaign to get followers in social media. So it's like KickStarter but for getting "fame" for your game/project/idea.

I think you're talking about this.

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> Analogy: Heck, I dont think a success factor of a novel is determined by the tools used by the writer, it can be notepad, ms word, or just pencil and paper, but CREATIVITY IS.

>

This. As someone who has written several manuscripts, and published one, I can tell you that it all boils down to creativity (and good grammar, of course:P). As long as the tool is capable, and the person using it knows what he/she is doing, there shouldn't be a problem. I think people tend to get a case of grassisgreeneritis, and want to hop platforms just because "someone did something cool over there, I can too" and then jumps ship every time something new comes out. Those are the people that never finish anything. Just my opinion, of course.

You're right, but for my company (and me in personal), the first thing to check is stability, performance and capabilities. Ludei's cocoonjs looked like a viable way of getting good performance and great API, but they're lacking support, to say the least. We've been working on our first game using pixijs and Ludei's cocoonjs, and now we've found ourselves chasing after them, and have yet to get any response...

Stability, Performance and Capabilities are the main things I have to check before recommending anything to my company, and while Scirra capabilities are great, its integration with some good 3rd party plugins/adaptors is still lacking (not because of Scirra fault)

You're right, but for my company (and me in personal), the first thing to check is stability, performance and capabilities. Ludei's cocoonjs looked like a viable way of getting good performance and great API, but they're lacking support, to say the least. We've been working on our first game using pixijs and Ludei's cocoonjs, and now we've found ourselves chasing after them, and have yet to get any response...

Stability, Performance and Capabilities are the main things I have to check before recommending anything to my company, and while Scirra capabilities are great, its integration with some good 3rd party plugins/adaptors is still lacking (not because of Scirra fault)

I think that sums up not only why cocoonJS has been (and should have been for a long time) deprecated, but also the fact relying on third party is good as long as the corresponding party are doing their job and listening, but not perfect.

As fir unity industry standard, it is an argument that is sort of offtopic in a way, sure industry standard can help assure comfort in the long term, but this is true as long as the said standard is supported, while unity should not be abandoned soon, I will recommand still having other knowledge if you want to stay in that professionnal universe (I do not for that matter, I plan more on something based on boolean logic and tool selecting, and for that C2 was the perfect choice for me #coolstorybro).

Aphrodite, I was having a hard time trying to understand why it seems you dislike CocoonJS so much, since their API is pretty awesome, and aside from their support, their API is VERY unified between platforms, until I saw your signature

I'm still with mix feelings about cocoonjs, really, but now, after ios8 and webgl support, I think it'll much easier to look elsewhere.

One way you could fix this for construct 2 to not need so many cases and statements is a ' if distance to point ' event like the function distance_to_point which is found in game maker studio. Now let us never speak of that program again... Agreed?