I'm worried about the future.

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  • I never said C3 must go opensource after those "5 years", only that it could go to normal license, provided that Scirra has moved on to new versions for main income, so to say?

    It is normal for old versions (and there's newer versions) to get cheaper so this might be the way for subscription software that get old and replaced with newer versions, these could get new type of license..

    But yeah, it is really up to Scirra this whole thing.

  • Only time will tell, but I think that the subscriptions will hurt Scirra in the long run:

    Let's say that the average lifetime of C3 will be around 5 years (like C2 is now):

    C2: 5 users -> 5 x 100$

    C3: 1 user -> 1 x 500$

    So for the same money, you could have 5 users that would use the product, develop plugins and make publicity for Construct instead of only one user.

    Yes, you can argue that C3: 5 users -> 5 x 500$ (five times more than C2: 5 users), but is clear that C3 userbase will not surpass current C2 userbase.

    In my opinion Construct downgraded from competing with Fusion and Game Maker, to competing with Stencyl and Game Salad.

    By no means C3 is a bad software, on contrary, is actually a miracle of new technologies and shows the power of HTML5/Javascript, but it falls short in the current gaming industry

  • I never said C3 must go opensource after those "5 years", only that it could go to normal license, provided that Scirra has moved on to new versions for main income, so to say?

    It is normal for old versions (and there's newer versions) to get cheaper so this might be the way for subscription software that get old and replaced with newer versions, these could get new type of license..

    But yeah, it is really up to Scirra this whole thing.

    If it goes normal license, the developer is still maintaining it.

    Open source means that the community is invited to commit code to the project, fork it, add new features and bug fixes. That takes some work off the shoulders of the developer, however you still need to have someone who knows the engine well to review the incoming patches. That is another thing open source projects can't succeed without - a maintainer/lead

    There is a clone of construct that is open source called gdevelop, but it has only two semi active developers. Being open source doesn't guarantee big community contributions and that project has seen very slow progress over the years, regardless of some of it's recent success on kickstarter and porting to native android. It has much less features than construct and its editor is still somewhat more unstable/clunky on some platforms.

    The very actively and feature full game engines tend to be the ones that used to be proprietary for years and used in industry, but have been open sourced- like Unreal and Godot for example. Their dev scene is very very active and a lot of experienced devs actively contributing to those engines. Why they decide to go with godot over something like gdevelop? They probably like the code base better and dont care much about the visual programming part.

    After learning some gdscript, I have to say that once you figure out how to read the api reference and have learned a bit of basic python, scripting in godot is pretty much easier than even visual scripting in construct2- as it is more predictable. It however requires more investment and patience. Godot has many nodes, or premade behavior/game objects you can use - just like construct2. It has actually much more built in functionality in the runtime than construct2 and clickteam put together. You can even parent objects to other objects - even parent scenes to other scenes. I believe clickteam is going for that design approach for fusion3 as well. It is incredibly powerful and flexible. But to use that stuff, you have to learn what the magic words are and how to address nodes. That means actually reading the api doc.

    With unreal you have blueprints and literally connect nodes, but I hate that kind of approach to visual programming. It just wastes so much empty space and can turn into spaghetti. Construct's event sheet is much more elegant. Unreal however is a better engine that supports more platforms natively and again leads in features - especially if you wanna make a 3d game, but dont wanna write code

    When you are doing visual scripting - be it construct, fusion, stencyl, unreal or some other engine - you are still programming. I would actually argue that construct2 is a great way to get your toes dipped in the stuff - because it can help you learn some fundamental concepts such as variable scopes and functions. They apply to most programming languages you will learn in the future. So my point is- dont be afraid of writing code. try to learn it anyways

  • blurymind

    I am currently teaching myself Godot, and Godot's basic architecture using nodes is - dare I say it? - beautiful. The concept is very well thought out, and ideal for game development. Not only that, the one thing missing for me in Construct 2 is the lack of a decent "animate all" timeline. Godot has it. And so many other things.

    Also, I just love how I can use Blender to animate 2d puppets, and the IK and animations are directly supported in Godot. And render 3d models to 2d sprites. Wonderful.

    It might be one of the best 2d engines out there currently - but visual scripting is not part of it (yet). They are working on it, though. It's stunning that Godot is open source and free. But you are correct: Godot's language is easy to pick up.

    I am unsure whether Scirra's decision to switch to a browser-based editor and completely rewrite it was such a good idea, but we'll see what we'll see. I keep saying I won't be part of it, because I am still terribly disappointed about their decision to go rental-only, and it really is a crying shame. I'd rather have preferred real improvements to the editor of Construct, such as a built-in animate-all timeline with graph editor control.

    Luckily, with all the (free) alternatives currently available to 2d game developers, I certainly am not worrying about the future. Frustrated by the Scirra's rental model, though.

  • Nothing here to be worried about mate there is loads of alternative out.... currently I am learning buildbox and it is waye easy to use over c2 only thing is the price but hey my point is there is nothing to be worried about mate

  • Buildbox is also a subscription model, you pay 99 USD or 84 USD each month.

    Scirra subscription model cost 99 USD a year which is something more than 8 USD a month.

    Please stop moaning about the new Scirra subscription model, it is very fairly priced and give Scirra more resources to maintain and update the software.

  • Buildbox is also a subscription model, you pay 99 USD or 84 USD each month.

    Yes, and even if Buildbox was made of gold I would not touch it either because of the rental-only option. It is not about pricing.

    Scirra subscription model cost 99 USD a year which is something more than 8 USD a month.

    Your point being? It is still an rental plan. I would gladly pay $99 for a perpetual license with paid updates, and the choice to update or not.

    Renting software (almost) always puts the user at a disadvantage compared to a perpetual license with regular (paid) updates.

    Please stop moaning about the new Scirra subscription model, it is very fairly priced and give Scirra more resources to maintain and update the software.

    Whether the rental-only business model will hurt or help Scirra remains to be seen. Their position is very different compared to Adobe, who are the industry standard, with little or no competition on a professional level. Scirra, on the other hand, will have to deal with excellent alternatives that A) are less expensive (free), and/or B) seen as the professional standard, and/or C) offer perpetual licenses.

    Renting makes sense to (semi)professional game developers and companies, not to hobbyists and small freelancers (which Scirra are primarily aiming at).

    And we (long-time Scirra users who have been with Scirra since version 1 and who hate renting software) have all the right to moan and complain in the hopes that Scirra will change their minds - just as much as you have every right to hail software rental as the best thing ever.

    Very simple: offer BOTH options. Everybody happy.

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  • > Buildbox is also a subscription model, you pay 99 USD or 84 USD each month.

    >

    Very simple: offer BOTH options. Everybody happy.

    Why don't you give it a rest and wait to see it when it is released. They will have a free version to test so you certainly can not complain about that and if you are correct and people do not want a subscription based engine and there is not enough new features to make it a good deal then they won't sell any and will have to change their marketing strategy right?

    Beating up Scirra over releasing a new engine is not helping and is driving down moral on the forum in my opinion.

  • >

    > > Buildbox is also a subscription model, you pay 99 USD or 84 USD each month.

    > >

    >

    > Very simple: offer BOTH options. Everybody happy.

    >

    Why don't you give it a rest and wait to see it when it is released. They will have a free version to test so you certainly can not complain about that and if you are correct and people do not want a subscription based engine and there is not enough new features to make it a good deal then they won't sell any and will have to change their marketing strategy right?

    Beating up Scirra over releasing a new engine is not helping and is driving down moral on the forum in my opinion.

    I was merely responding to Bad Wolf's post.

    A limited free version will not change the fact it is rental-only, will it? And many competing alternatives offer a free version that is fully functional.

    You are right, though - no sense in continuously beating a dead horse, as the expression goes. I'll stop yapping now, and concentrate on learning new things instead - more constructive indeed.

    Apologies for the wailing and crying

  • blurymind

    I am currently teaching myself Godot, and Godot's basic architecture using nodes is - dare I say it? - beautiful. The concept is very well thought out, and ideal for game development. Not only that, the one thing missing for me in Construct 2 is the lack of a decent "animate all" timeline. Godot has it. And so many other things.

    Also, I just love how I can use Blender to animate 2d puppets, and the IK and animations are directly supported in Godot. And render 3d models to 2d sprites. Wonderful.

    It might be one of the best 2d engines out there currently - but visual scripting is not part of it (yet). They are working on it, though. It's stunning that Godot is open source and free. But you are correct: Godot's language is easy to pick up.

    I am unsure whether Scirra's decision to switch to a browser-based editor and completely rewrite it was such a good idea, but we'll see what we'll see. I keep saying I won't be part of it, because I am still terribly disappointed about their decision to go rental-only, and it really is a crying shame. I'd rather have preferred real improvements to the editor of Construct, such as a built-in animate-all timeline with graph editor control.

    Luckily, with all the (free) alternatives currently available to 2d game developers, I certainly am not worrying about the future. Frustrated by the Scirra's rental model, though.

    Godot 3 is coming on the horizon too you know - an alpha will be available in april <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing">

    Juan (main dev) has been simplifying gdscript even more there - adopting ideas from game maker's gml, but still keeping the compatibility. The feature that most people are most excited about is the modern rewrite of the 3d rendering engine. I am personally excited about the inclusion of a spine2d like animation editing in godot3- with 2d mesh deformation.

    Imagine spine2d being included in the editor- for free.

    Right now gotod can already animate - right in the editor. However it only supports cutout animation. If construct3 had a built in animation editor with 2d mesh deformation support - I might buy that license. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_surprised.gif" alt=":o" title="Surprised">

    Godot has visual scripting approach that is optional and is loosely based on the design of blueprints in Unreal. I personally do not like it and prefer to use gdscript, but that will perhaps start to change as they improve it.

    But to improve it, people need to use it and submit feedback and reports to godot's github tracker!

    I wanted to mention it in regards of ashley's bold statement that construct has more features because it exports just to the web. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing"> That is simply not true. Construct has a good visual scripting event sheet and a nice editor. But it is beaten in features by many other popular game engines (obviously unity and unreal there too, but also game maker) and all of those export to native.

    Godot is quickly becoming popular, but as said before - you have to sit down and learn some python if you are serious about learning gdscipt. Gdscript looks very much like python.

    Coursera actually has an excellent free course here:

    https://www.coursera.org/learn/python

    It is the best introduction to scripting that you will ever get imo and very quick to complete.

    Godot's documentation and tutorials are also abundant.

    In any case, I would love to see python like scripting in construct3 for plugins, but it looks like it will be using javascript.

    I love python's syntax because it is clean and simple. Java script blows up in your face if you miss a bracket somewhere and has got some weird and annoying caveats, but am trying to learn it as well..

    btw today clickteam announced that Fusion 3 will not only export to native platforms, but it will also be able to export to html5

    http://www.clickteam.com/fusion-3-devel ... ?f3id=8904

    They are taking the approach that godot is using for exporting native code games to html5- using emscripten

    [quote:3f6scvia]Emscripten is a source-to-source compiler that takes something called LLVM bitcode and spits out javascript. Basically it allows us to compile Fusion 3 made games into javascript based games/apps with relatively little effort and with very high performance.

    Won’t C++ compiled to Javascript be slow?

    Not really. Emscripten compiles to a subset of Javascript called “asm.js”. It is basically fully valid javascript but since only a specific subset of it is ever used it allows the browser to do some very aggressive optimizations on the code and even on-the-fly compile the code to native code for the platform you are running it on. This means that even though your game/app will go through a Javascript step it will “just be a phase” so to speak.

    Pleople will still have the option to export to native android,win,linux,mac,ios - so no need for wrappers. If you however just want a web app/game - html5 is available. A lot of the other big game engines seem to be using emscripten for html5 export - Unreal and Unity included!

    To put some light on the name of this thread - you should not be worried about the future. We have never before had it so good in terms of choice and quality of game engines. There is something for everyone <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

    The future is incredibly bright!

  • Construct is still nothing more than a prototyping tool. I would never consider paying for a fake Multiplatform software and this insane subscription model. Even with cocoon and intel xdk you can compile you games for free. There are a lot of other alternatives to make games (not prototypes) and compile then without have to upload your files. In my opnion, there is absolutely no reason to stop using Construct 2 yet, even for mac users like me (bootcamp). Still worried about Scirras future and its awesome community anyway...

    Yeah the forums great!

    We even have users that come here to inform us about other software.

  • We even have users that come here to inform us about other software.

    newt you got jokes

  • > Construct is still nothing more than a prototyping tool. I would never consider paying for a fake Multiplatform software and this insane subscription model. Even with cocoon and intel xdk you can compile you games for free. There are a lot of other alternatives to make games (not prototypes) and compile then without have to upload your files. In my opnion, there is absolutely no reason to stop using Construct 2 yet, even for mac users like me (bootcamp). Still worried about Scirras future and its awesome community anyway...

    >

    Yeah the forums great!

    We even have users that come here to inform us about other software.

    I'm actually really impressed by scirra's extremely liberal stance on users freedom of speech around here. Most boards would close and delete if there were any early warning signs of mutiny.

  • > blurymind

    >

    > btw today clickteam announced that Fusion 3 will not only export to native platforms, but it will also be able to export to html5

    > clickteam.com/fusion-3-devel ... ?f3id=8904

    >

    > They are taking the approach that godot is using for exporting native code games to html5- using emscripten

    > [quote:2t7l8x3q]Emscripten is a source-to-source compiler that takes something called LLVM bitcode and spits out javascript. Basically it allows us to compile Fusion 3 made games into javascript based games/apps with relatively little effort and with very high performance.

    > Won’t C++ compiled to Javascript be slow?

    > Not really. Emscripten compiles to a subset of Javascript called “asm.js”. It is basically fully valid javascript but since only a specific subset of it is ever used it allows the browser to do some very aggressive optimizations on the code and even on-the-fly compile the code to native code for the platform you are running it on. This means that even though your game/app will go through a Javascript step it will “just be a phase” so to speak.

    >

    Pleople will still have the option to export to native android,win,linux,mac,ios - so no need for wrappers. If you however just want a web app/game - html5 is available. A lot of the other big game engines seem to be using emscripten for html5 export - Unreal and Unity included!

    To put some light on the name of this thread - you should not be worried about the future. We have never before had it so good in terms of choice and quality of game engines. There is something for everyone <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" />

    The future is incredibly bright!

    I believe it when I see it! If it's anything like Unitys HTML5 export, you will not be playing those games on mobile devices that's for sure. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" />

  • >

    > > Construct is still nothing more than a prototyping tool. I would never consider paying for a fake Multiplatform software and this insane subscription model. Even with cocoon and intel xdk you can compile you games for free. There are a lot of other alternatives to make games (not prototypes) and compile then without have to upload your files. In my opnion, there is absolutely no reason to stop using Construct 2 yet, even for mac users like me (bootcamp). Still worried about Scirras future and its awesome community anyway...

    > >

    >

    > Yeah the forums great!

    >

    > We even have users that come here to inform us about other software.

    >

    I'm actually really impressed by scirra's extremely liberal stance on users freedom of speech around here. Most boards would close and delete if there were any early warning signs of mutiny.

    They probably factored in the loss before deciding on such a controversial business model. So any detractors are people who would not have gone for the rental system anyway (probably the majority of the community looking at the posts and opinions), I'm guessing they only need a fraction of the current community to be on subscription for it to be viable. You'll be left with those who don't object to the model, a handful who'll try it out for a bit and a few who'll grumble a bit but put up with it due to customer loyalty etc. I'd say though that if the subscription model isn't at least tweaked a bit there might be a bit of an exodus.

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