The sad truth of Construct 2

jojoe

I know exactly what you mean, and I have seen it happen so many times. The bottom line is - your first game will not be a hit that will bring you tons of money. But this is not what this topic is about.

From my point of view, C2 is a great tool, just, at this time, limited by it's dedication to html5. Which, by the time I decide to release my first proper game, might be an amazing gaming engine - who knows?

I am full of awe for Tom and Ashley for bringing us updates so often, and expanding C2 in new and creative ways. I just wish that C2 would expand in the way of native exporters, even if they would cost extra or even would be made by a third party.

Saying that, it made me think that perhaps Scirra could team-up with some 3rd party developers to bring us more functionality. People in Haxe, could backward-engineer their language to export from HTML5 to Haxe - I would pay extra for that.

It is similar with Spriter. Once it will get to 1.0 I will buy it and I would be fine with paying another X dollars to get an amazingly working plugin to work with construct.

In the day of crawdfunding this is all possible. Having a community driven support would be amazing - and I can see myself paying for skilled programmers to expand Construct's functionality. Be it kickstarter, or some bounty system, I would put my wallet where my mouth is.

Community support might be the key to expanding construct. We can let Tom and Ashley to create new game-engine features, while others create native support for devices, plugins that extend the usability in new and exciting ways and making construct compatible with other tools.

I am curious what others think of business model like that?

I am curious what others think of business model like that?

I have "crowed funded" projects like blender for quite a few years. I would definitely be into paying a bit for some great plugins.

Maybe they can work out something with the Steam Workshop, so that people can sell their stuff on steam as DLC for Construct 2.

BTW my other message was to the OP, he seems like he got burned out after some design did not work out for him. Sorry to ramble on about newbie maxims. Too much coffee on my part I think :) sorry about that.

I will remain optimistic about HTML 5 gaming.

Without optimism, creativity, experimentation and patience, there would be no games industry to begin with! Creatively getting around platform limitations has lead to many of the things that are considered best practices or great features today...

I hate to sound like a broken record, but there are so many posts in this thread that also sound like broken records...

Complaining that a tools is the BEST TOOL TO DO X ever, then bashing it because it is designed for platform Y is similar to making this argument:

My coffee maker is the best coffee maker I've ever seen! It's so easy to use and it makes the best coffee I've ever tasted. I just wish it would make carbonated beverages. I love my caffeine to be in soda format, but all my coffee maker will make is coffee which I don't like the taste of...why can't Gevalia change my coffee maker to make soda instead? It would taste better and everyone would buy it!

The bottom line is, C2 is a HTML5 based engine. That's all Scirra is responsible for.

Here's an idea: You want native code, write a native exporter. C2 can be written to do this. You want Scirra to do that for you, but it doesn't fall into their plan. I want an awesome survival game like Unreal World, only with a lot of added features to it...but those features don't fall in line with Sami's vision for his game...however he has added in mod support. I can either praise him for his great game, then bash him for not doing things the way I want, or I could write mods that add in what I want in the game.

Actually, I decided on option 3: Write my own game, but then again I'm crazy like that.

The point I'm trying to make, again, is that C2 is and IDE for HTML5. If you don't like the HTML5 platform, you're on the wrong IDE even if you think it's the best IDE out there. If you don't like what it exports, write an exporter or if you don't know how to do that and have a bunch of money find someone who does and throw cash at them to do it.

ut you can export Construct 2 games to native apps right? No, not really. It's just the same slow HTML5, only now it's wrapped up to look like an executable, or an iOS app, or an Android app. There is really not much performance gain to be had, since it's still just pushing everything through a browser window. The problem with mobile devices is that they just can't handle running the OS plus running a browser, PLUS running a large game inside that browser.

I have first hand experience that disagrees with this. All my games run buttery smoothly on iOS with CocoonJS. It's hardware acceleration is anything but unnoticeable.

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WebGL doesn't necessarily require device support.

I was similarly frustrated until I found out that someone already wrote a wrapper (translates WebGL to OpenGL ES, basically) for my mobile OS of choice (WebOS).

Not sure how this would work with Android or iOS though, since neither builds on HTML5, but Blackberry 10 should be a breeze.

My platform of choice is windows 8 and windows phone 8. So optimization is currently my first and only goal. No support for web gl, directcanvas or any of the other accelerators... Not that it is a complaint, I chose the platform knowing the limitations. That is where the creativity and optimism come in handy!

Maybe everyone that wants a native exporter should start up a kickstarter to raise the funds to throw at someone to make it. I'd chip in :).

However, I with the others. C2 is a HTML5 game making tool, and I am having a blast with it. Do I wish it exported natively to iOS? Damn right, hell I would would pay for that exporter right now. It is what it is though.

However, you guys need a mac to export ios, while C2 for mac doesnt exist.

ut you can export Construct 2 games to native apps right? No, not really. It's just the same slow HTML5, only now it's wrapped up to look like an executable, or an iOS app, or an Android app. There is really not much performance gain to be had, since it's still just pushing everything through a browser window. The problem with mobile devices is that they just can't handle running the OS plus running a browser, PLUS running a large game inside that browser.

I have first hand experience that disagrees with this. All my games run buttery smoothly on iOS with CocoonJS. It's hardware acceleration is anything but unnoticeable.

It's unfortunate, but I will have to lean towards this. I found IOS does way better on inferior hardware than on Android.

My Android has a dual core chip with more ram, cpu power than my iPod touch 4g. however my iPod get's 120% better performance than any of the android devices.(http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-apple-a4-and-vs-nvidia-tegra-2/)

What's worse is that this doesn't make the situation better. In fact the single core better performance makes it all the worse. If I create a game using IOS as the hardware standard then I've just shot myself in the foot to produce it for Android. This makes development worse and unreliable. unless of course I sacrifice the cross platform. Which then devalues C2 use as a cross platform game maker.

I back up the idea of a kickstarter to fund either an official exporter or a thirdparty. I'm also willing to accept some one who can make an open community bridge wrapper to full OpenGL by way of WebGL calls and being able to program our own extensions rather than waiting for only inhouse development of Ludie. With the condition of an easy use.

There are a lot of calls for a native exporter in this thread, but it's still a very unlikely project IMO:

• renderer bottlenecked games will not improve performance with a native exporter. I keep saying this, but unless you can prove your game is logic-bottlenecked, it won't be faster with a native engine. It's not the holy grail of fast performance; mobile devices are still weak compared to desktops.
• we would have to effectively stop our weekly updates for 6-12 months while developing this
• HTML5/webview performance could improve so much in that time that it makes the whole project pointless (as

  prinsukun said, the improvement from dec 2011 to dec 2012 is enormous, and maybe some newcomers don't realise the extent of that)

it will cause ongoing painful compatibility problems with third-party plugins and behaviors, which most likely won't work without rewriting per platform

it will cause a new class of bugs where one engine might work slightly differently to the other, breaking games in subtle ways

In short, it would take a long time, it probably won't be as good as you think it is, and could be pointless.

Ashley, I see your point over here. To be honest, you are doing a stunning job with the updates.

We have tossed few ideas for crowdsourcing some features - or even create a bounty system. Would you and Tom consider something like that? I guess people would chip in even few bucks to see some features that you guys don't have time to implement?

My coffee maker is the best coffee maker I've ever seen! It's so easy to use and it makes the best coffee I've ever tasted. I just wish it would make carbonated beverages. I love my caffeine to be in soda format, but all my coffee maker will make is coffee which I don't like the taste of...why can't Gevalia change my coffee maker to make soda instead? It would taste better and everyone would buy it!

Well, if the coffee maker advertises soda making capabilities, why shouldn't I comment?

Again, I don't think anyone (I am sure I am not) is bashing C2. We are opening a discussion, even a brainstorm, if you will... collective can come up with better solutions than just an individual.

Open discussion can only lead to improving usability, either by showing ready solutions to problem, or showing others how to cope with the problem.

Peace.

I for one hope Scirra continue to focus on the core features of C2, instead of trying to shoehorn it into something it wasn't meant to be.

Well, if the coffee maker advertises soda making capabilities, why shouldn't I comment?

A valid point. In this case, the coffee maker in question says you can make soda by using a 3rd party carbonator and adding it to the syrup you can create in the coffee maker (which I have done, btw...)