So What Is Your First Impression Of C3?

New design, smooth animations is cool, but i'm a bit dissapointed of missed/changed features that C2 had.

This is my imho and it's based on my habbits using C2 which i like so much for it's very predictible workflow!

• Ctrl+w - That's the biggest thing. How to close tabs?
• Alt+4 - It's not very handy to use play button each time i work with keyboard only.
• Missing +/- buttons on the add Behaviour, and Variable windows. These windows also looks unfinished(design) without the buttons in compare to C2 version.
• 'Save as' shortcut also Missing

• Menu button. You moved project options in sub section, that's pretty uncomfortable to waltk through all the menus each time i need to save it or export or close a project. And where is the 'Recent projects' option?

Basically the rest of the menu options ( view, preferences , help, store, etc..) are not used that much as the menus that was hidden in "project" section.

• The grey bar at the left of the properties bar. It cuts space and looks not as nice as the rest of ui.

Might be better to make it less wide. Looks like it needs only for separating 2 menu options - 'More information' and 'Project properties'. What about to separate it in other way?

I'm going to buy license of C3 and i'm waiting for it, but would be cool to make it as good as C2 in terms of ui usage. That's my first impression. Good luck!

As I love to use C2, I have to love this sofware because it´s the same.

But my impression is negative. I am not waiting for big improvement since I read about "bounded corners" as a new feature.

The start page as improve, and is more clear, but there is not to many new stuff in there.

I was waiting for improvements anxiosly for improvements on audio objetct in c3, but there is nothing new about it.

There are not new behaviors in this beta.

As a developer I know that a minimal improvement have a lot of work behind it. But I was waiting for something more revolucionary on C3.

My impressions are ambivalent. When I had run it (C3) I felt like I was working on C2 but somehow deprecated. I saw the same options and the same workflow but sometimes I felt a little lost - for example I could not added behaviour to the object for the first time. Just a while later I pressed a right mouse button for a submenu. I had looked for a new stuff but I could not find them fast, so I think I don't need them at now.

I like the plugin idea. It could be added to C2 too

So for me this is a C2 in the browser which doesn't fit my expectations. After the test I was happy to run C2 again.

So in my opinion C2 is a good tool. So good that the new one could not beat it yet...

... and it is working slower than C2.

Since yesterday I´m running my two principal game dev projects (AscDungeon and OrcLeader) in C3 and my first thoughts are:

• It´s a Tech demo IMHO, with a lot of restrictions, or unfinished resources. Really, I´m C2 heavy user, and I´m really dissapointed with this version. More restrictive free version, and a lot of dev friends are pissed off.
• Didn´t like the "browser version" (pop-up windows sux). I´m not run my C3 in mobile devices, I have a big screen and love it.
• Crash 2 times when I running in a slow internet connection (I tested for see what happens)
• I lost a lot of things when when I pressed back button in my Iphone.

It´s very negative in a first momment. I´m really waiting the next weeks...

Since yesterday I´m running my two principal game dev projects (AscDungeon and OrcLeader) in C3 and my first thoughts are:

- It´s a Tech demo IMHO, with a lot of restrictions, or unfinished resources. Really, I´m C2 heavy user, and I´m really dissapointed with this version. More restrictive free version, and a lot of dev friends are pissed off.

- Didn´t like the "browser version" (pop-up windows sux). I´m not run my C3 in mobile devices, I have a big screen and love it.

- Crash 2 times when I running in a slow internet connection (I tested for see what happens)

- I lost a lot of things when when I pressed back button in my Iphone.

It´s very negative in a first momment. I´m really waiting the next weeks...

I agree, But. Give it another 6 or 12 month and it will be getting closer to current C2 level But Anyway sarcasm off, its just needs more time. Its pretty much Alpha testing. I would not even consider to make serious project in C3, at this stage.

As for the Browser, well if it works I dont care if its browser or not but seems this will bring so many issues cause of the Chrome wrapper. Actually is there any other engine like this that uses Browser ? If not maybe there is a reason for this, and thats why all big players on market have Stand Alone Versions for Mac and PC.

[quote:10bxr9xh]It´s a Tech demo IMHO

This is a good summary

The overall impression is great, the UI improvements are fantastic in all regards. Feels a lot nicer to use. Making it a desktop app improves the experience as well. Eventing workflow is improved as well.

Small nitpicks but the color gradients in the tabs for eventsheets and layouts is ugly to me, bit inconsistent with the rest of the UI coloring? Also the X in the corner, to close the windows, is too dull to see on the blue, the X should be a blacker color.

I did see a comment by Ashley somewhere that was going to be further UI design in the beta or something, like color customizations etc. That would be great if it's done better than C2's. All it needs is an option to switch between this and an overall darker theme feeling, like Adobe Photoshop would likely be a nice option.

I'll probably wait till it's out of beta and people have sorted out the bugs before using it again.

I have to wonder why would Scirra tease us for months with so many new features and then release a beta where almost all of these new features are locked. I understand that Scirra wants to test and fix all the basic features first, but why even start teasing with the new features so early when in reality they are months away?

I tested out everything I could think of with the available features. I made a few test games and tested out cloud saving support. Everything worked well for me and I didn't encounter any problems. The editor itself looks and feels almost identical to C2 editor and I really like it.

Hopefully this is a good foundation for better things, but at the moment to be honest it feels (from a user perspective) that all this development time could have been spent building on what you already have and really making something refined and special rather than reinventing it so that it works in a browser. It all feels a bit one step forward, two steps backwards - but I guess it's still early days.

The only thing that wasn't immediately apparent when using it for the first time, was that there was no indication on how to add new behaviours/effects. Right clicking or double tapping reveals the option, which is fine as it's less cluttered I suppose. I only mention that because something that puzzles me for 1 second might confuse a new user for a while. Perhaps I'm the only one though.

(Along with not being able to see the closing X icon in the windows at a glance, that I mentioned before.)

It's an odd situation. It's hard to not like it because its just C2 in a browser and i like C2, but at the same time its hard to like it because it's just C2 in a browser and not really C3.

I played with it for about 10 minutes but it's not easy to get excited to use what you've essencially been using for 7 years, albeit now with some annoying browser limitations. Since then i havent been compelled to try it again.

So far seems pretty sweet, I have a quick question though... Can't get to use the separate Monitors as promised. What am I missing, can't detach like a pop up window the layout view (as the example in the blog post) and drag it to the other monitor. Is this functionality available in the beta? And also, is the sprite sheet functionality available as well? I really want to see how it works.

Thanks.

I love the new start page! I now like c3 but what I can see it's that is full of bugs!!!! Too many

closing X icon in the windows you can't see it right away you really have to focus to see it.

Didn't know how many projects were open after closing their event sheet and layout of each project, I thought the project were close till later on, I found out that I had like 10 projects or more still open from the demos, Temples and Examples

Adding instance variables and behaviors I had to figure out scratching my head, but I guess I just have to get used to it. activating the grid the same hiding.

I thought they will add more new official behavior but I didn't see any, just some improvements on bullet behavior wich you can now toggle step for collision accuracy, and the other one is the Pin behavior wich looks cool.

but they are many behaviors that we need very often still missing, that it should be on the official behavior

Example: proper Rope behavior it's one thing that many games use, I needed that many times in the past for my ideas but I never could manage to implement them because of the rope thing missing, I know that are many good examples on the forum but all them use physics wich brakes the links if it stretched to strong the rope and the links start going crazy no that good for a game. maybe with the new Pin that has Rope Style will work, don't know I will have to try.

And many more.

I love the new start page more organized and has many help examples and temples looks really cool, will be very useful.

The performance and speed were good it only crashed once. I still would love a desktop version feels more comfortable, it's strange I was so happy to go back to C2, where it should be the opposite because I really wanted to like C3, but nothing really catch me to make me stay on C3, I guess I should give it more time.

I would be interested in your impressions.

After a day, I can say my first impression is me thanking myself for knowing Unity. I see nothing about C3 that would make me pay the subscription yet. I would never use this browser engine to create a large project. If I want to make asteroids or a match 3 game, sure, but nothing complex.

The UI is about the same as C2, but somewhere the designer forgot how to design. I won't mention those things here as there is another thread about it. The inability to test all features at the moment is hindering even if I understand their reasoning. I think they should have had an alpha test first with a closed group and then open it up to the public for beta-testing everything. Though not all things work, everything I tried seemed to be okay.

Importing sprite animations was fine, and using the behaviors was easy, but the pop-up window should have a list of behaviors to choose from or at least a plus button so people would know to click it. Right now it's just a blank window. If I had never used C3 before and clicked the Behaviors link and saw that empty pop-up box, I'd be like "um, where are all the behaviors?" (Seems Ashley is fixing this for the next build.)

I could go on, but no. C3 is not for me. I look at it right now as an engine to make browser games, not something for serious game development. But then again, I always knew that.