Are any of these coming in 2018: Native .EXE compile? Switch? PS4?

Hey All,

First of all sorry about my bad English, second I apologies ahead but I cannot share names or extra details because these are my colleagues, this is my work and I cannot risk it. but I think that this information need to be asked here or shared by Scirra with us clients and community.

Another thing, I'm NEW to construct and don't know a lot of things about it or the future of it, I may missed some news about the future of C3, please forgive me if I did.

The reason I'm asking about it is because I just had an interesting conversation with some of my colleagues who are programmers and executive manager works for a game publisher, I'm a professional animator who works with them on projects from time to time.

So I had to ask this because the conversation lead to the subject of how Nintendo and Sony are looking at HTML5 as a very amature and not taking it seriously. which I didn't know or realize.

Do we have bright future with Construct 3 or should I be really sad and start looking for an alternative game engine? :(

I must mention that I'm new to Construct 3, I'm learning it thanks to working on my first game, thanks to the AMAZING community and help on the forums and I enjoy so much using it... but I just realize that I'm limited to PC-Browser compiles and PC and probably Xbox if I'm not mistaken it works great with C3? right? I'm clueless...

For now as I'm working on my first Game, I stay with Construct 3 but these questions about future compile options can sure encourage me and many others to stay with C3 as I didn't realize HTML5 is that "bad" to the big sharks out there, again.. I'm just an animator not a programmer or publisher and my colleagues, they know what they're saying as they are in the games industry for many years. they just opened my eyes to these questions.

I hope to hear some good news about this from Scirra's team, for now... I'll keep practice Construct 3 and fall in love with it even more! (how can I not? it's so cool!) :)

Newt answered the question perfectly.

To add to it Here's Ashley doing a talk at some event:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KObqQUQSbaI

I would say this, If your an artist who is going to be working on a team and is responsible for importing and programming the animations; I wold learn the engine that my team uses.

As an artist that is going to be making projects by themselves; I would definitely recommend sticking with an engine that reduces the work.

Don't be afraid to try other engines, doing so may help you realize how great Construct really is. I came from Game Maker Studio and find Construct to be robust enough for me. If I feel a game is going to be for a console audience or I need a performance kick or more control, I would rebuild in Unity. But I will always start my projects in Construct, it's just too damn fast to get content down and working.

Thanks for the reply guys,

Originally I came from a an other game engine called Fusion, and the reason was it didn't have many features I was looking for and Construct 2 have it, also Construct have MUCH better interface and easier event sheet (consider I'm still learning it).

After few months with Game Maker Studio 2, I tried the DnD (Drag & Drop) and of course the GML script which only made my brain got much more confused after few tutorials... then I moved to Construct!

I tried Unity, I tried Unreal Engine and many others during the years...

There is no doubt, Construct so far is my FAVORITE game engine even that I have much more to learn.

After watching the video, which is really nice to see Ashley speaks about the history and the tech behind it, I wish Scirra would upload more of these to the official YouTube channel so all of us can enjoy. :)

Anyway, back to the original subject / question:

From your replys and from Ashley's video I understand that there is a focus only on HTML5 I'm getting the impression that this is what Consrtuct 3 will stay with and... I'm starting to think over maybe I do need to move to another game engine after I'll prototype my game since I feel more "At home" in Construct then in any other game engine I tried.

Still, maybe there is a chance for an official answer from Ashley, Tom or any of the official Scirra members about the future plans for some good news about Nintendo / Sony / and of course: Native .EXE for desktop instead of everything based on Browser.

I'm guessing the goal is stay with HTML5... but again, an official answer will be most appreciated

Thanks ahead! :)

The blog post I wrote around 2 years ago on the case against native engines is still pretty relevant. For us, for the foreseeable future, going to multiple codebases would do more harm than good. For example say goodbye to regular releases as all our engineering time is sucked in to huge porting projects to multiple platforms.

HTML5 is definitely a viable platform for games - all the games built with C2 and C3 prove that, and it's even more the case with technologies like WebAssembly, WebGL 2 and (in future) WebGPU. If the console manufacturers don't recognise that yet, then I think they're behind the times. Remember though that Microsoft have seen what's possible - you can already build and publish Xbox One games using Construct! It's only Sony and Nintendo who are behind the curve on this.

There is also a third-party console porting service with Chowdren, so that's an option, although it's entirely independent of Scirra so I can't comment much further on it.

Thanks for the reply Ashley, I appreciate it.

I'm not here to argue, as I said I'm far away from understanding the behind the scenes of all the tech part compare to you or my colleagues that I mentioned who are professionals in the games industry for a long time.

Saying that Nintendo and Sony are behind is something that I can't agree with because the fact is that they are the lead in the gaming industry, they sure know what they're doing and they are not in "the game" for couple of years but for many years now. even that for the last few years they are getting they're hands open for indie devs which is amazing opportunity!

They sure know what they're doing, and my colleagues which are pro publishers as well know the requests of Nintendo, Sony and the others very well so I can't argue with them either.

ANYWAY, I do understand and respect that you are strongly against native exe compile option and HTML5 is the best option in your opinion but I must ask this because it got me curious:

1 - Is it impossible to make Construct to compile native .exe or the all guts and engine behind it will need to be re-make from scratch which is a huge amount of work.

2 - Will you consider to add Native .EXE as extra compile option instead of just HTML5 and let the users choose what is good for them to use?

Thanks ahead for the answers, I still have much more to learn in Construct 3.

And if nobody said this before me:

THANK YOU! for working so hard on this amazing game engine, I truly admire Scirra's hard work.

Sorry about my bad English.

What Ashley means by behind is not that they(Sony & Nintendo) are not working on advanced technology or incompetent. He is referring to the fact that they haven't devoted as much work towards the indie development in the terms of implementing web based tech with their tech.

Sony & Nintendo don't want to open up the flood gates. It's not a simple thing to do and maintain control of their store's quality.

Here's the thing, it's inevitable that web based tech is only going to grow due to the easy access to resources and affordability to publish content. There's no guarantees Sony or Nintendo will welcome it, but since Microsoft did it's more likely than it was a year or so ago.

You can already build EXEs for Windows with the NW.js exporter, as well as UWP apps for Windows 10+ which is the platform Microsoft are trying to replace the ageing Win32 platform with (which interestingly can also run on non-traditional architectures like ARM, which could be a big deal in future). If we built a native engine for Windows, what exactly would be better? This is what that blog post I wrote was all about. I think many games would not even notice a significant difference, and the downsides are massive. It would have to be a complete rewrite with completely different technologies. This would basically kill our productivity for a year or more, and then permanently slow it down beyond that. I cannot see any way this can possibly be justified, especially as web tech continues to improve, and especially while there are other interesting technologies like WebAssembly that can get some of the benefits of native without actually doing a full port.