What I like about Construct better than other engines.

Hi all.

For those who have used other engines, what do you like?

I have used unity for almost 9 years now. Ashley sometimes tells us not to compare construct features to AAA engine features, but the fact is, I have complained on Unity forums about all the things that construct does better.

The fact is, nobody over there usually listens at all. Fundamental engine breaking bugs go unaddressed for years while new features get added in other areas.

1. Construct imo, does a kickass job at addressing bugs and getting them fixed asap. Construct is stable in a way Unity has never been.

Outside of that, Scirra is very amiable to feedback that is within the scope of what they can feasibly do, and willing to explain why a suggestion won't work, from their perspective.

2. Construct has a kickass engine paradigm that makes hooking up global space logic a breeze. The SOL is sweet, and the general flow of creating event sheets is great and faster than creating scripts in unity. (Freaking assembly reloading times are an iterative workflow killer in unity).

2.a You make a tweak to your logic and relaunch the preview in seconds. Unity takes minutes sometimes to reload the assembly. It sucks.

3. Construct is Kickass fast at the basics. Importing a new sprite, adding a few variables, and getting it to work is faster in c3 than basically any other engine I have used. I can create a dozen objects in c3 in a fraction of the time I can in Unity.

4. Construct is Kickass at 2d. The rendering modes, the layers, everything. Unity has 2d mode, but remember how I complained about bugs going unaddressed for years. The best part of unity is the ease of extending it (especially the editor and the renderer). Without that (and the asset) market, Unity is pretty bad for 2d games. In recent years, they have added alot of 3rd party tools into their engine proper. I think if c3 could learn anything, it would be to have a better system for creating 3rd party editor side tools and encouraging their production.

Anyway, that's my short list. I think an honorable mention goes to the included behaviors, but honestly, I end up always tooling my own, but the simple ones like drag and drop, are icing on the cake. I had to make all those when I moved to unity back in the day.

It's so fast and just makes sense. Rarely if not ever feel like the C3 gets in the way of what I'm trying to do.

You could do something, a mistake happens, and 9 times out of 10, it's a random mistake you made, and if it's not, or it's a limitation, then you can often work around it with the huge variety of actions, conditions, plugins, etc.

Yes every software has its weird parts, or could improve somewhere, but I simply don't encounter this.

Multiplayer is a good example, it's my favourite plugin, I don't get all the buzz about it not being good enough or something. Even if the built-in sync stuff is not for you, then, you can do everything by hand anyway, we have the getbit/setbit actions, we have the ability send messages reliably or unreliably. Yes, again, always room for improvement, maybe room options or more properties for room info (such as name of host when displaying a room list), but guess what, you can workaround this and inject the name into the room name, and tokenise the room name when showing it to the player! Ahh this stuff is why I love game dev. Maybe to some it is convoluted, but to me it's adaptable.

Major kudos to Scirra team for what they've achieved, but I want to point out Ashley, Diego, and other past devs, because - it's clear that almost every game developer HATES designing UI, can you imagine how it must be making C3... that... Is incomprehensible. Not to mention the rest of the behind the scenes stuff like runtime, bug fixes, backwards compatibility, but, cmon, UI is notoriously hated. The level of patience they must have is God tier.

Also major kudos to the third party devs, unlocking even further usability within C3, effects, and things thought to be impossible or unlikely to see. I can't comprehend the work that goes in and will just default to "magic", undermining the the actual skill involved.

I never thought I would be able to make a video game character walk, I had always dreamed of it as a child but never thought I could do it, one day I don't know how I ended up using an engine to create video games, I prefer not to mention the name for don't discredit it, I loved it and used it for more than a year, unfortunately it had many limitations, this led me to Construct, it was infinitely better, easy to use and with many more functions.

I can only praise the work done and be happy with it.

I read the comparison with Unity above, I didn't think it had so many bug problems etc but I'll take the opportunity to say that in recent days I've seen the vfx effects it allows you to create, they are fantastic and that's what I really miss here on construct, something that allows you to create light effects, lasers, energy spheres etc. graphic effects that are up to date, it would be nice if there were some ready-made effects that you can easily modify to create spectacular effects

Using any visual scripting other than Construct's event sheet feels pathetic. No idea why people keep on trying to make the noodle system work as programming replacement when Scirra already has the perfect solution available since 2010. It's stolen from Clickteam btw but they had it coming. Now, if only somebody could copy the node system from Godot...

It's stolen from Clickteam btw but they had it coming.

Wouldn't say stolen, but would say inspired.

Clickteam, for a long time, had that "tick box grid" system, with an extremely basic "list view" in MMF. Even subevents were an addon that came wayyy later (I think when MMF renamed to CF2.5). Don't even understand how I lived without subevents for so long!

Construct Classic certainly hit the ground running with its event sheet system, and the rest is history.

inspiration aint that far from stealing

Clickteam, for a long time, had that "tick box grid" system

yeah this one is just insane, it's like that retirement home game grandpas play

imagine living like this fr fr

The event system really is amazing and I love working with it even after all these years. I hope construct continues to stay ahead of the game in this regard!

The engine is perfect to onboard non-programmers into programming. The eventsheets work surprisingly close to regular javascript, they just don't look like it and seem less obscure to a nooby than a bunch of textblocks with weird cryptic looking words. So by working with eventsheets, you also learn the overall logical structure that javascript uses without noticing it.

Also as a general thing, not compared to a gameengine but rather specifically adobe. The support is just peak. You post a bug, you'll get at least an answer even if the answer is no. Adobe on the other hand... lol. I've had a bug with photoshop that would freeze photoshop when I use a wacom graphics tablet. No real solutions found to be anywhere, other users have the same problem. I've went through different iterations of photoshop, windows software, pc hardware and tablet hardware/drivers over the years and I've always ran into this problem again and again. Other drawing software works perfectly fine, so the issue clearly has to be fixed from Adobes side. It is unfixed to this very day in 2024 (I recently bought a new tablet, thought I'd give it another try and behold, the same issue again), I've first encountered the issue in ~2012, and repeatedly since then. It's been reported to Adobe multiple times by me and others, no fix for well over a decade.

Alright that's enough adobe slander for today.

I like bringing a project back from years ago and being able to get it working in the most recent version. I also like being able to run off of browsers.

yours

winkr7

I remember being anti-browser, like surely an app can't be feature-rich if it's confined to a browser. Google docs was good example although an unfair example, felt like a weaker version of Office.

But then it dawns on you, Discord is web based, even the installed version is web based and can be compared to exporting your game in NWJS.

But eventually I learned, it really doesn't matter. Much like a successful video game, does anyone judge that FNAF is made in CF2.5? Does anyone judge Undertale being made in GameMaker? No? Right, because it's the actual game itself and how it's designed that's important. Doesn't matter if its made in assembly, JS, Scratch, whatever, it just needs to be a good game.

So, yeah, C3 is designed very well, does what C2 could do with exception of very few differences, such as LAN preview (but we have remote url which has more benefits, no port forwarding or virtual LAN servers like with C2 if you wanna share a link). If C3 was made in Scratch, that'd be both impossibly impressive and really doesn't matter, because it works and does the job it sets out to do.

Also as a general thing, not compared to a gameengine but rather specifically adobe. The support is just peak. You post a bug, you'll get at least an answer even if the answer is no. Adobe on the other hand... lol.

Lol, there isn't enough time in the day to rant about everything adobe has done wrong in the last decade. Have had similar issues with tablets, lag, etc... every time you try to contact adobe... "did you reinstall adobe, and remove all other applications from the computer..." when literally every other drawing program just works out of the box or with minimal effort.

Freaking flipped the table, bought aseprite, Sai, rebelle, and affinity photo and designer, all permenent licenses for less than adobe costs in a few months. I still use adobe cs6 to avoid the nightmare of cc, No... every time I see a new piece of drawing software, I'm like oh cool. If only I didn't need a few other applications on the adobe pile of crap. Luckily, I have an license for work, otherwise I would try harder to find alternatives to animate and aftereffects and premier. :(

Scirra is 1000x better at customer service, bugs, and reliability compared to adobe. I keep thinnking I should seel my stocks, but somehow adobe keeps making money.

I like bringing a project back from years ago and being able to get it working in the most recent version. I also like being able to run off of browsers.

yours

winkr7

That is often forgotten gold.

People still love the simplicity of 2D games & C3 is screaming fast at production. I have lots of ideas in my head & I love that i can code my ideas & see results very quickly (I'm inpatient & old). This is perfect for that. And you don't have to sacrifice quality for production time. C3 is a shortcut to production without compromise, that's why I love it. Most other editors have some kind of barrier or restriction to publication, but I have been able to publish to most any platform I desire with C3. It gets the job done & does not limit my creativity. You can come onto C3 with limited skills & still be comfortable.

I know its a 2d game maker, and it excels at it, but i just wish they'd put a little more into 3d. With just a few more things it could be really great for 3d too.