Time to move forward?

Hi guys, I just want to talk about C2 and the Scirra future. Recent events have led to question whether it makes sense to continue the game development on the C2. I'm talking about this: scirra.com/forum/ios-sound-problems-since-ios-9-2_t167412?start=70 Yes, after all Ashley fixed the bug, but under pressure. (And btw, he made a new bug in r223 beta! Now, canvas goes to wrong size on an iPhone).

And this is just one example of all. Let's face it: You can make on C2 cool games, but you will experience hell every time when you make a release. I'm talking by my own 2,5 years experience with C2. My feel is: I'm too old for this **** and I don't have time for this ****. Now I'm starting to look at other options. Seriously look at Unity and Game Maker. I just visited the Game Maker forum and they seem be happy happy.

What do you say about this? I overreacted, or we have a situation when we see that it's time to switch on better software and supports? C3 is coming, but we do not know anything about it. We do not know when it coming. We do not know it's better or not. We do not know what Scirra going to do next and can we really trust in Scirra mission: "Our goal is to make Construct 3 the best game making editor ever -construct3.com".

I just no longer believe in what Ashley is doing.

150 updates+ over 5 years of post release development for a one time payment from what amounts to a one man coding army while also maintaining relatively constant community presence and responsive feedback on these forums?

Not to mention he gave away pretty much full functionality to I'd assume a majority of users who's projects never make it over 100 events.

I'd say it was well worth it just provide a very low barrier to entry and exposing a large amount of people to programming and thinking through algorithmic logic, but I'm not the one who needs to feed himself with software sales.

So yeah I believe in what Ashley is doing.

Besides that, its not like your license, assuming you bought one, ever expires or you'll stop getting free updates. There's nothing stopping you from experiencing/using multiple tools and sticking with what works best for you. In fact I highly recommend exposing yourself to all the tools available to you to be able to properly compare experiences rather than just through general impression based on a software's public forum.

Ok, bye.

Your comments show a lack of experience with game engines and software companies.

[quote:m5l94zm8] I just visited the Game Maker forum and they seem be happy happy.

Bold words.

It is a room without a roof.

Believe in the dreams, believe in what is and what will happen in the future.

Construct 2 is not the best and it's quite simple to say that it's somewhat out of date. But it's still being updated and still receiving so much support!

Construct 3 is what we need to have hope for in future terms. Construct 2, the present.

If you want you leave C2, take a break and go onto other game engines, then do it. Nobody will hate you for it. You're a game developer like the rest of us here and all we really want is to develop the games we want with ease and versatility.

Is C2 gonna change into the engine that you envision? Probably not, because Scirra is now more focused on C3 and perhaps that will be the engine that you envision.

I think that Construct 3 is what will move Scirra forward. I know that many people think that Scirra is basically jumping ship but I think they've seen many flaws and have heard enough flaws to know that they need a stronger product for the competition that you yourself have mentioned.

150 updates+ over 5 years of post release development for a one time payment from what amounts to a one man coding army while also maintaining relatively constant community presence and responsive feedback on these forums?

Not to mention he gave away pretty much full functionality to I'd assume a majority of users who's projects never make it over 100 events.

I'd say it was well worth it just provide a very low barrier to entry and exposing a large amount of people to programming and thinking through algorithmic logic, but I'm not the one who needs to feed himself with software sales.

So yeah I believe in what Ashley is doing.

+1

There's nothing stopping you from experiencing/using multiple tools and sticking with what works best for you. In fact I highly recommend exposing yourself to all the tools available to you to be able to properly compare experiences rather than just through general impression based on a software's public forum.

I also believe that a good developer knows more tools than just one. Go ahead an experiment with well known ones (for ex. I still use C2, but in the meantime I'm also learning to use UE4). But don't forget: There's no such thing as a perfect tool. Construct 2 has issues, yes, but all the other engines do. You just haven't discovered them yet. I'd advise you to leave Game Maker alone and go for either Unreal Engine 4 or Unity for a more professional experience.

Thanks for the answers guys. You have strong points. I agree, I should use the other tools as well. But it requires time. And what time is it? Time is money. I've already spent 2,5 years to C2 of my time. And what do I have? I have a pile of games that cannot be published in App Store due to different bugs. Sometimes it's Scirra bugs, sometimes Apple, sometimes Ludei and Intel XDK. We are like beggars "please Ashley fix the bug, please Ludei fix the bug, Intel please.. please..."

I'm really surprised how the majority thinks. I can read all the time on this forum when someone says "one time payment" and "a one man coding". Well, Scirra is a company or Ashley's hobby? At the bottom of the page reads "Scirra Ltd". Ltd - A limited company. It's not my problem if Scirra Ltd don't have employees. It's not my problem if Scirra Ltd does not know how to make money in order to be able to hire workers. I am happy if I can pay monthly fee (for example monthly fee) and I know that my money be spent on development of the program. But Ashley clearly wants to be an indie software developer...

No hard feelings, I just say what I think.

It's frustrating to be blamed for bugs in other people's software, and that specific iOS audio issue you referenced is the latest and strongest example of this. I am almost certain the bug is in either Safari or the iOS operating system. In this case, it doesn't matter what tool you use: anything at all that runs in Safari will be affected by the same bug. So I guess you can choose a different tool if you like, but you could easily run in to the same bug again, because the problem is in Safari or iOS, not Construct 2.

I didn't even fix the bug, so I can't even take credit for that. It's impossible for us to fix problems in Apple's own software. All I did was found a crazy hack that seemed to work around the bug. So the bug is still there and Apple still need to fix it. Personally I regard this kind of hacking-around-bugs as beyond the call of duty - I'm sure there are companies out there who'd just say "we've reported it to Apple, hopefully iOS 10 fixes it" - but we go beyond that and try to work around (emphasis on work around - not fix) defects in other software we rely on where it's feasible to do so. Note it is not always feasible to do so. The fact this particular iOS bug is worked around pretty much amounts to luck.

Usually someone then blames us for relying on certain tools or libraries which have bugs, but all software has bugs. It's naive to think that if we switch to some other library or framework, everything will suddenly work perfectly. Common suggestions are things like: why not use Haxe? It could have bugs, and we could equally be screwed by its bugs. Why not use {insert library here}? If it's not developed by companies as large as Apple, Google, and Microsoft, it's probably even less reliable. Why not write native code? Operating systems have bugs, and graphics drivers have severe bugs - we have direct experience of that, and they are often far worse than the kind of issue we just dealt with on iOS. They tend to be of the class "all devices with this GPU crash on startup", and there is no diagnostic information whatsoever. In the past we've literally resorted to desperately guessing solutions over a period of days, then ultimately given up. That actually happened with the Construct 2 editor in the early days (it uses OpenGL to render the layout view). Eventually months later we got a tip out of the blue, and we finally managed to work around it. Hardly a reliable approach, but there's little else we can do when it's not our code that's broken.

I know this is super frustrating and when your games aren't working, you naturally look to us for support. However the nature of software development is everything - all platforms, frameworks, libraries - depend on a huge amount of third party code, and that code is as imperfect as everything else. It's implausible to expect any software company at all to magically fix everyone else's code. It affects everyone, regardless of their technology choices.

FWIW Scirra has been larger than just me for a while now. Check the team page. We should be growing again soon as well.

I'm not trying to defend anybody, but I can completely understand both sides. No one writes code that doesn't rely on other people's code these days and you can't hold someone responsible for other people's mistakes in their code. The approach Scirra takes to rely on big companies' work is a good one IMO, because it ensures that the libaries they use will be supported for as long as possible. I guess with bigger companies come more users that can end up in delays (sometimes extreme delays) regarding some bugfixing.

However I can see your frustration as well — A bug is a bug whoever's fault it is and if you don't have any control to fix it, you are basically stuck.

...We should be growing again soon as well.

That's good news, congratulations

I see Ashley, I see… What about C2/C3 own exporters? I guess you understand that the problems associated often do just that? What's more third-party variables, the greater the problems. We could have only C2 problems and publishing platform (in this case iOS) problems. Now we have Ludei and Intel problems as well. Don't answer on this. I know your opinion about exporters. You just say that you don't have time for it.

We should be growing again soon as well.

I really hope this. Believe me. I'm invested in Scirra software a lot of my time. Will see...

Honestly, I have been around the web development world a bit, and Construct is, by far, the most expansive, standards-compliant, bug-free, easy-to-use web development platform that I have found. This software trivially easily exceeds GameMaker in HTML5 game development, and has the potential to match Google Web Toolkit pound for pound in critical enterprise applications if developed in that direction.

I, and my team, have nearly two years of time and effort invested into Construct, and we have never looked back. We tried a number of platforms before selecting Construct, including Google Web Toolkit, GameMaker, D3, raw HTML5, and none were as easy to learn or as quick to demonstrably perform our most intensive graphics requirements without overloading our test machines. Our test litmus program involved generating one hundred thousand objects and displaying all of them in screen in a fully zoom/pannable dynamic user interface at once. GameMaker was not able to do this without stalling and freezing our test machine.

No, C2 is one of the most unbelievable pieces of software that I have found in the web development world, and we are very anxiously awaiting C3.

Construct 3 is what we need to have hope for in future terms.

...

Is C2 gonna change into the engine that you envision? Probably not, because Scirra is now more focused on C3 and perhaps that will be the engine that you envision.

...

I think that Construct 3 is what will move Scirra forward.

and we are very anxiously awaiting C3.

You both know that C3 is planning on using the exact same HTML5 export/runtime as C2 right?

BTW the stated goal of C3 is to rebuild the editor and keep the same runtime, so this is not really the kind of thing we intend to change anyway in the scope of that project.

Source: will-the-top-level-design-be-removed-in-c3_p980758?#p980758

The only thing you can actually anticipate for is devices, browsers, and NodeJS to all catch up to the "standard" of HTML5...which is also the same dragon C2 users have been chasing since the first betas came out in 2011.

Granted, it's getting better slowly but surely. However, if you're making and releasing games *now* you would hope that your game works the same across all of your customers devices right? And it doesn't, it's all over the map with desktop export, mobile, and even web browsers still have major differences between them (Chrome goes through cycles of breaking-changes and patches, etc).

Don't forget that you are a customer of Construct 2 meaning you are also buying a product which is supposed to do what it says on the box, so when it tells you that you can export to "Windows, Mac, and Linux" using a Node-Webkit wrapper ( https://www.scirra.com/construct2#multi ) and then your game fails to run on the "Mac and Linux" parts, it is not acceptable! and telling us to "just wait for it to improve/get fixed" is also not a valid response!

I don't care if it's Node-Webkit that is broken, I paid Scirra for a tool that they say will work on Mac and Linux, and it doesn't for my (commercial) game. It barely even runs the same/without glitches across my Steam customers' computers too, and they have hardware that might be way better than mine or the exact same specs, it's random and *my* customers do not accept "Please wait for approximately 2 years for NodeJS to improve the export by using the latest Chrome...which will also disable Steam Achievements until Greenworks is updated, and introduce random new bugs because Chrome was updated".

Ashley has done wonders with CC and C2, and has made an awesome tool for "learning game development" and "making small games for mobile and web" with a great editor and really cool way of visually coding games, but for Construct to really move forward into the status that the "more professional" game development tools have it needs a stronger export option. I don't care if that means exporting to a format that can be imported by other engines, but the native export to console and desktop is looking like the absolute minimum export options that commercial game devs need to grow. (And no, WiiU doesn't count, because it doesn't support WebGL).

Don't forget that you are a customer of Construct 2 meaning you are also buying a product which is supposed to do what it says on the box, so when it tells you that you can export to "Windows, Mac, and Linux" using a Node-Webkit wrapper (scirra.com/construct2#multi ) and then your game fails to run on the "Mac and Linux" parts, it is not acceptable! and telling us to "just wait for it to improve/get fixed" is also not a valid response!

because Chrome was updated".

Exactly! This is what I try to say.

Imagine you buy a bicycle. But it does not have wheels. The seller tells to you: this is not my fault, only the manufacturer. What is your response to it? "Well, here not have any bicycles with wheels.. never mind."??? really...

OK that's fair. But it is also true that you actually CAN export to every platform and people have done so with finished creations, as advertised. What I think is phenomenal is the support you get when the problem is normally what I would feel is out of the scope of construct to begin with.

Maybe this is an issue of you get what you pay for? It seems you have advanced to the point where you'll need more robust development kit and in that case it really is time to move on, truthfully.

But as an artist first I haven't found anything I can slam a prototype/concept together faster than in c2, and having that experience in hand before putting the game together in another development environment is worth immeasurably more than the cost.

For your analogy....

Think of construct as the tool box needed to build a bike by hand. Intuitive to use. Cheaper than buying machines to manufacture a bike! The method you use to put it together is up to your own creativity. But this way relies on other peoples parts. Some of these parts don't work as well as the others, but construct gives you what you need to put them together anyway. Eventually though, it could make sense to buy a factory to make your own parts and put them together as well. Best be prepared that that comes with it's own set of problems... Otherwise why don't we see every AAA game released on every platform simultaneously bug free?

Basically just wanted to make the point that the ideal all in one software that works flawlessly with every platform is really not the job of one company, and it might never be.

In the end, even if you build a flawlessly working bike, a pothole can wreck you.