Browsers as a development platform

So the news is interesting, I wish we would have gotten more feature info instead of just pricing information but nonetheless.

I'm unsure about a web based editor, a couple problems that initially come to mind:

• Chrome Tabs can become unresponsive and crash pretty frequently, I hope there is a real time autosave or something to offset this.
• This seems like it will make creating custom behaviors and plugins more difficult? Maybe I'm wrong there.
• Will Chrome be able to manage huge projects with a huge amount of assets? (500mb+)
• This seems like it will add another layer to wrapping up desktop and native mobile apps, a lot of people wanted native exporters, which may not have been realistically do-able, but this seems like a step toward the total web based mindset. Scirra has stated they want Construct 3 to be the best 2D game creator, so that should include native apps, PC platforms like steam, as well as console support as much as possible.
• More upkeep costs for Scirra, they have to host servers for cloud storage, etc.
• Less layout options, I use dual monitors, you will no longer be able to drag elements to another screen unless it's hosted in a separate tab, which I doubt is how the editor works.

Hopefully these will be addressed, but let's also consider the potential benefits of a browser-based editor.

• Multiplatform
• Excellent Collaboration tools, this is the first reason I would think they would move to a browser based editor, but we haven't heard anything in this regard so if real time collaboration hasn't been implemented I'm interested why the platform switch, it doesn't seems like the plausible cons aren't worth it if the only benefit from this is being multiplatform. Consider about 85% of users use windows PC.

What are your thoughts?

- This seems like it will make creating custom behaviors and plugins more difficult? Maybe I'm wrong there.

- Will Chrome be able to manage huge projects with a huge amount of assets? (500mb+)

+1

Also your game "Protoshift" in your signature says "Protoshit" Was that intentional?

> - This seems like it will make creating custom behaviors and plugins more difficult? Maybe I'm wrong there.

> - Will Chrome be able to manage huge projects with a huge amount of assets? (500mb+)

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+1

Also your game "Protoshift" in your signature says "Protoshit" Was that intentional?

Thanks for the heads up, hahaha.

I think webbrowsers can handle the editor if done well, no, the issue I think will be when (not if, WHEN) a critical browser bug occurs, would the scirra team won't fix it since it is not their job, that was always the mindset with C2 "if it is a browser bug let's wait for them to fix it", that is my main concern about that.

Not that I'll be using C3 after the horrible, stupid announcement they did but still.

Guys we use Nwjs to make games, and it's browser based.

In fact Nwjs uses Chrome, and Node js.

Think about it.....

After putting in some thought, I think there could be some workflow benefits.

Firstly, collaboration could be far more streamlined like this. Obviously, you'd need to be online, but that's not a big deal for collaboration to me.

But as far as workflow, it could be awesome. Hear me out. So if it were a possible multi-tab thing, it could really be great. So there are obvious things like layouts and event sheets being in different tabs (if you want). So now drag one of those tabs out into its own window on another monitor. Cool so long as they update each other. Now allow plugins to be in their own tabs or windows. You could work with a timeline plugin or animation plugin in its own tab and watch it update the project on the other monitor. Cool, now have a teammate doing that on their own machine while you do control work. You could multitask yourself or with teammates across operating systems in near-realtime (probably 'save' could be an auto-cloud-push). Then maybe plugins are paired to your account but hosted by Scirra. Have the stuff available everywhere even if your work rig is not.

And that could all be possible without any teammate having to install anything. Ever. That's a service and workflow I can get behind.

Now is this how C3 will actually work? No idea! But I think there's a ton of potential to this and I'm interested to see what Scirra has come up with.

After putting in some thought, I think there could be some workflow benefits.

Firstly, collaboration could be far more streamlined like this. Obviously, you'd need to be online, but that's not a big deal for collaboration to me.

But as far as workflow, it could be awesome. Hear me out. So if it were a possible multi-tab thing, it could really be great. So there are obvious things like layouts and event sheets being in different tabs (if you want). So now drag one of those tabs out into its own window on another monitor. Cool so long as they update each other. Now allow plugins to be in their own tabs or windows. You could work with a timeline plugin or animation plugin in its own tab and watch it update the project on the other monitor. Cool, now have a teammate doing that on their own machine while you do control work. You could multitask yourself or with teammates across operating systems in near-realtime (probably 'save' could be an auto-cloud-push). Then maybe plugins are paired to your account but hosted by Scirra. Have the stuff available everywhere even if your work rig is not.

And that could all be possible without any teammate having to install anything. Ever. That's a service and workflow I can get behind.

Now is this how C3 will actually work? No idea! But I think there's a ton of potential to this and I'm interested to see what Scirra has come up with.

That could be really cool but considering they didn't say anything about real time collaboration I get the feeling it's not a feature. Also the layout management is Construct 2 is already really flexible, having multiple tabbed windows would waste so much space because each one will have a browser header.