Can we trust Scirra?

Currently it is very difficult to monetize games with Construct 2. In fact it is sometimes impossible because every official monetization plugin have been broken for several years. And every bug report has been completely ignored. People are forced to use cranberry plugins which may or may not work.

Game Center, Google Play, IAP, Ads etc… It is all still broken. If this has not been fixed in years in Construct 2. How can we be sure that it all will work in Construct 3? Especially when the price is fairly steep.

Tom, Ashley

Scirra doesn't make any plugins for android or ios.

They only make plugins that are compatible with those plugins.

They can't fix broken third party plugs.

Scirra doesn't make any plugins for android or ios.

They only make plugins that are compatible with those plugins.

They can't fix broken third party plugs.

He is right. Honestly I don't care about technical stuffs, It's their work not ours. If they can't provide a relyable way to support the games made with their engine then what's the point? It's the same of selling you a car with no engine. A game project with no support to export it properly and with no essencial things like ads, IAP, achievements and leaderboard is not a game because It won't be played by anyone. C2 always lacked the support when It comes to publishing games. When you're developing the game It's awesome, but when you actually need support for publishing matters everything is a mess.

From one of the recent blogs

https://www.scirra.com/blog/187/buildin ... onstruct-3

"IAP & ad plugins

We'll also provide brand-new IAP and ad plugins for iOS and Android, as well as building and maintaining the underlying Cordova plugins ourselves. This should minimise any difficulties with configuration or third-party libraries."

The only problem I see there is that there are multiple ad networks.

But yeah, monetisation has been a huge issue for all platforms. This helps mobile a lot, but desktop, and web still need some options.

I kind of wonder if iap will ever be an option for self publishing for those.

newt

I know about this C3 feature. I read all blogs and I wish we could had better features recently which deserve an entire article. Anyway, the question remains. Will it be broken after a while like in C2? Who knows....

Currently it is very difficult to monetize games with Construct 2. In fact it is sometimes impossible because every official monetization plugin have been broken for several years. And every bug report has been completely ignored. People are forced to use cranberry plugins which may or may not work.

Game Center, Google Play, IAP, Ads etc… It is all still broken. If this has not been fixed in years in Construct 2. How can we be sure that it all will work in Construct 3? Especially when the price is fairly steep.

Tom, Ashley

This is something I'm thinking about too. Ive tried to engage Ashley and Tom (see post here), but they are yet to reply.

I recently published a game on iOS and Android. For features like iAP and Achievements/Leaderboards I tried to use the official plugins first and I found it impossible to get them working. In my experience your statement is true at09, the official plugins are broken and don't work for these features. I was forced to use the third party plugins by Cranberrygame for iAP and Achievements and I also used a Cranberrygame ads plugin too, because I didn't want to use the AdMob network (I didn't try the official ad plugin so I cant comment if that works or not).

So I feel like I'm in a precarious situation. If these plugins stop working there's nothing I can do about it, and unfortunately Cranberrygame doesn't have a good reputation when it comes to maintaining his plugins. Ive messaged him via all his available contact channels on a few occasions asking for support for his plugins which I have paid for, and never received a single reply.

It would be different if these plugins were developed by devs like rexrainbow or MadSpy. You could have confidence they'd be maintained. But it would be infinitely better if they were maintained by Scirra.

In my opinion full iAP support, ability to connect to marketplace Achievements / Leaderboards (Android, iOS, WinPhone, Steam), a couple of major mobile ads networks... these features should be core to Construct2 / 3 and should be maintained by Scirra, not left to third party devs.

As newt said Scirra recently posted this:

[quote:3g4e8ibn]We'll also provide brand-new IAP and ad plugins for iOS and Android, as well as building and maintaining the underlying Cordova plugins ourselves. This should minimise any difficulties with configuration or third-party libraries.

This is great! Im super excited to hear that news. This along with news about the new build process for mobile which Scirra will host is the easily the highlight of the C3 features revealed so far for me!

But like I posted in my thread above, Id like to know about a plugin for Achievements / Leaderboards. Will that also be updated in C3? I can't imagine they would provide updated plugs for iAP and ads, but leave the core functionality of connecting to GameCenter and GooglePlay Services to a third party? Would they? I mean, the original intention was for C2 to provide a plugin for that it's just that Scirra stopped maintaining it and allowed Cranberrygame's CordovaGame plugin to fill the niche.

And how about Steam and WinPhone? Will there be any plugins for those platforms? And as for ads, will there be more than one ad network supported?

I really hope that Scirra's reticence to comment about these features is because they are saving the news for a future blog post

A while ago we asked Kyatric to thoroughly document the process of setting up IAP on Android and iOS. His tutorials are up.

From what I can tell the main problems are:

1) it's difficult to configure the IAP stuff on the dashboards - on both Apple's developer site and Google Play. These usually are set up for technical developers, and most C2 users are non-technical. On top of that it's difficult to keep documentation up-to-date because these services keep changing their web interfaces.

2) the build systems we recommend sometimes make it difficult to use the underlying Cordova plugins.

If you work around the issues, AFAIK everything works. I do agree though that it is too difficult. This is why we're rebuilding the feature and integrating it with our own build system for C3.

What about the question of connecting to GameCenter and GooglePlay for achievements / leaderboards Ashley Will there be updated plugins to support that functionality in C3?

We already have a Google Play plugin, but I think it also runs in to issue #1. We aren't currently working on anything new for GameCenter, but we could look in to it later down the line.

We already have a Google Play plugin, but I think it also runs in to issue #1. We aren't currently working on anything new for GameCenter, but we could look in to it later down the line.

Wow. This seems promising. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy"> Ashley , can you add this feature to the GooglePlay Plugin?.. So far, no one has been able to implement this feature to their third-party GooglePlay plugin. But I assure this is one of the most important feature for Android. Especially for multiplayer, syncing and with-IAP games.

Google Play Saved Games:

https://developers.google.com/games/ser ... savedgames

Original Forum Post:

request-google-play-saved-games_t125260

Intel Plugin: https://github.com/01org/cordova-google ... s-services

This feature will enable sync of data stored in an android device to other android device logged in to that account and stored inside their Google Drive. It's so great that you don't have to host your own server. Just use their own Google Drive to store data and it is even inaccessible, so no one can cheat on it.

A big issue in making an android game here in C2 is that saved state are also deleted after uninstalling the game.

We need this feature Ashley please.

I think no need to focus on ios any more in the future , it's a dying product if they do not change their politic.

in india 97% of smartphones are Android even in USA Android did take over iOS in 2015 .

9 of 10 Smartphones and Tablets in the whole world have an Android OS

you can read this article : http://www.phonearena.com/news/Android- ... OS_id46001

It's because Android is more open and cheaper and IOS is *ohh brother so many restrictions...

But when it comes to paid apps, I bet more on selling it on IOS rather than Android.

But for "Free to Play" and ADs i'd go with Android.

It depends on where you want to market, to the people who spend money or to those who sell their information.

I don't think that we should ignore a market that big (even if we compare it to Android).

A while ago we asked Kyatric to thoroughly document the process of setting up IAP on Android and iOS. His tutorials are up.

From what I can tell the main problems are:

1) it's difficult to configure the IAP stuff on the dashboards - on both Apple's developer site and Google Play. These usually are set up for technical developers, and most C2 users are non-technical. On top of that it's difficult to keep documentation up-to-date because these services keep changing their web interfaces.

2) the build systems we recommend sometimes make it difficult to use the underlying Cordova plugins.

If you work around the issues, AFAIK everything works. I do agree though that it is too difficult. This is why we're rebuilding the feature and integrating it with our own build system for C3.

We already have a Google Play plugin, but I think it also runs in to issue #1. We aren't currently working on anything new for GameCenter, but we could look in to it later down the line.

Hi ASHLEY.

It would be a huge relief to me, and many others Im sure, if Scirra could maintain plugins for GoogePlay and GameCenter achievements / leaderboards, to bring those plugins under the umbrella of 'officially maintained Scirra plugins' alongside the updated iAP and Ads plugins for C3.

You mention you could consider updating the GameCenter plugin in the future. I would ask you to please follow through on that and to also update the GooglePlay plugin as well. Id be prepared to pay for additional GameCenter / GooglePlay plugins if you sold them separately in the Store or something. To me it would be worth the extra cost if they were going to be reliably maintained. I feel like im in a precarious position using Cranberrygame's plugins for iAP, GooglePlay / GameCenter connectivity and Ads... because they may not work in future.

For the record, while I agree it's a pain setting up the iAP and Achievements / Leaderboards stuff on the GooglePlay / GameCenter Dashboards, in my case that's not what stopped me from using the official C2 plugins. It was that they don't work as the documentation says they are supposed to. In my recent experience, this was true for both the official iAP and GameCenter plugins. I tested the official C2 iAP plugin extensively. I followed — tutorial to the tee with no success. It seemed the 'has product' condition failed. So I was forced into relying on third party plugins for these core functionalities.

I think no need to focus on ios any more in the future , it's a dying product if they do not change their politic.

Sorry but this comment is completely uninformed.. and just.. idiotic.

iDouches are considered to be the upper end of the market when it comes to game / app development. iDevice owners are generally more cashed up (they need to be to afford Apple products) and are more prepared to pay for games and iAPs. There may be many more Android devices but generally speaking their users are less willing to pay.

In addition the higher bar required to get games / apps onto the Apple AppStore means that there are (relatively) less garbage games / clones etc to compete with. Meaning its easier to get you games discovered on Apple devices compared to Android, where the GooglePlay store is just awash with tsunamis of trash clones.

The fact that it's possible to make better revenue on iOS is reflected by the fact some devs target Apple devices exclusively, or consider Android to be firmly a secondary priority. My own short experience as a game dev focused on mobile shows how critical it is to target iOS. So far 95% + of my income has come from my game on the Apple AppStore.

Apple users represent the premium end of the market and game devs aiming for mobile wanting to make an income should absolutely 100% target them.

But you go ahead and ignore iOS — if you think its a waste of time