Why Construct 3?

I just want to voice my opinion here about Construct 3 and maybe pose something to Ashley along with the rest of the Construct team.

First off I think it's an amazing engine you've built and generally am a fan of the work you've been able to do so what I'm about to say isn't a personal attack against you or the company so here goes.

What's the point of making Construct 3 other than finding a way to charge people again for the same product? To me it looks like nothing more than a UI graphics update and also I want to point out that Construct 2 was a one time payment but now Construct 3 is a pay per year product and I got to be honest I'm not gonna buy because of that, Subscriptions suck! It seems to me that Construct 3 has less value than Construct 2 did simply from what you promoted with Construct 2 with it's "Updates for life" advertisement and the fact that I don't have to come up with $100 every year to use the product. You're taking the Adobe route and I personally don't feel it's a good move. Now the other more serious part of this is I've seen post here on the forums talking about how an update would only be done in Construct 3 essentially leaving Construct 2 to rot in the dust even after people paying over $100 for it and you're promise of updates for life.

I'm an old user and I've noticed the changes for the worst here, You threw up a bunch of flare but in the end really stiffed us. You could of reworked construct 2, Renamed it to just be Construct and kept your promise of updates for life then found new ways to earn extra money other than just selling the main game engine. How about an interactive learning class, Or making the engine more modular and sell add-ons to increase functionality in specific ways. I get you want to take yourself seriously with these new graphical updates across the program and website but to me I feel disconnected from it.

If you wanted to sell a product that wasn't the same thing as construct 2 you could of at least offered some kind of deal to people who owned construct 2 and encouraged people to switch but you didn't. You got $99 up there like hey! come buy me, I'm new and cheaper but not really cheaper and actually the only thing new is a polish UI. To the people who may get upset at this post, Remember that Construct 2 was supposed to keep getting updates ("FOR LIFE") meaning buy once and never worry again which I've seen users bring up issues that they've found with Construct 2 and basically been told nothing would be done because hey... Screw the old community am I Right?... If they said hey this is the end of development line for Construct 2 we've done all we can do with the current tech and are moving to making a 3rd better version and heres a deal to get you to switch with the same pay once deal. Then yeah I wouldn't of even posted this.

What's the point of making Construct 3 other than finding a way to charge people again for the same product? To me it looks like nothing more than a UI graphics update

Lots of changes are documented here:

construct.net/make-games/new-features

Also, the new runtime will be in Construct 3 only which offers significant performance improvements.

If you wanted to sell a product that wasn't the same thing as construct 2 you could of at least offered some kind of deal to people who owned construct 2 and encouraged people to switch but you didn't.

We did. All Construct 2 license holders up to a certain date received between 50% and 100% discount on their initial year of Construct 3.

Is there no way to extend that deal to everyone who bought construct 2 but that didn't get the message?

Also I don't want to skip over this, What's the deal with Construct 2? Will you keep supporting it like you said you would or is it just Construct 3 now?

I felt the same. I bought the C2 license 2 days before I could have got 100% off. 1 1/2 years spent in Construct 2 made me realize how great the engine is. The founders are active in the forum, it's constantly updated.

Their competitors are on average charge $100 more a year.

The more money that gets pumped into Scirra the better service we will have, the more subs should keep the price down, though I don't speak for them. I always think of it by how much time the engine saves me, its like paying the worlds lowest wage for help with a very technical job.

You'll be putting your money in good hands.

I've actively used C2 for 2+ years and released a game to Steam. Was totally happy with it during developing my game.

But i got into some really heavy technical troubles while putting C2 game into Steam. Like i had to manually edit EACH exported build to add increments (like --ignoregpublacklist etc). In C3 i did it only once at the export screen.

Also lots of quality of life features were added in C3 like visual array editor and global search (which sold C3 to me - it saves MONTHS of work time even at medium sized games).

About the deals, as a C2 license holder i got 50% discount for a year of C3 - awesome deal, if you ask me. It was time-limited, and ran for several months or even longer.

People tend to say that 100$/year is much. I'll tell you that it's GENEROUS and HUMBLE. Average C2 made game makes 100$ a month (actually lots of steam indies earn that much disregarding engine used). Of course, you have to create that average game first, and release it on Steam.

So yeah, as for me C2 outlived itself and technology moves forward. Even creating a game you can get into position where scrapping a project (or parts of it) is the only reasonable way to move on. So i totally understand Ashley and Tom.

C3 is already lots better than C2, thanks to dropping aged code parts (was explained in one of Scirra blogs). You feel bad for paying 100 bucks for C2, while you already payed for C2 5 years ago? It's capitalism, ok? Or you want Scirra to maintain C2 until they die of hunger? People have to pay the bills, you know.

In C3 there are no most important plugins C2, so C3 does not make sense. I do not want to make games easily. I want to do it right.

The only major downside of C3 at the moment is the lack of 3rd party plugins, some of which will have effectively been made 3 times (once for C2, once for the C3 IDE using the C2 runtime, and once for the C3 runtime).

However, as we get ever closer to the C3 runtime being feature complete, we start to enter a phase of development that I am massively excited for - Scirra will have the largest dev team it's ever had, working almost exclusively on new features; so new behaviours, more official plugins, and even better functionality.

The other replies in this thread have made excellent points regarding the benefits of C3, but the main one for me is that it's the future.

Actually i purchased C3 prior to the discount message and sent in an email to ask if i could get a refund on my purchase, never got a response, probably "lost in the email" world, but i haven't bothered to bother them about chump change refund, a $100 annual fee really isn't much, less than $10 a month and it pays them to keep building on the app, so i am not squaking about the price, honestly i think i owned C2 for over a year and never really enjoyed it, then i got C3 and i simply love it because of the mobility to use my iPad, although with some current limitations and bugs, but whatever, I got through about 75% of my game development just on my tablet, having to do the rest on my computer due to those limitations i am talking about, but what other engine on the planet offers you to program on your iPad? zip that i can see, not U3 or Unity, as examples.

Personally, i program for a living, have for decades, started in aseembly, wrote my own compiler, used LUA to allow others to program into my stuff through scripting, wrote in Ansi C through Pascal and Fortran, up through tons of other languages, i find this stuff they did rather interesting and it is really just a hobby to make games. I can logically see every place and how this thing works in my mind as i work through issues, i just have a hell of a time relating what i am finding problems with to Ashley and her team, given up on several attempts at communicating the problem and moved on to try to find other solutions until i run into solid brick walls, then instead of posting yet another bug report on the exact same problem I've had all along, i just ask the community for input.

For the most part, i find the community very forthcoming and very helpful.

But to do things takes money, to expand takes money, they need to get paid, just like everyone else in the world has bills, so do they, and $100 a year for the work they are putting out, isn't asking a whole lot, consider it more of a support group than an annual subscription.

Little bit about me here, but as far as this engine goes, i'll keep chugging at it and have fun with it, i enjoy supporting companies that really make a difference, and they do.

linkedin.com/in/jbwood

I think that C3 is good for its creators only. To me (and all users I've talked to) it was completely unnecessary to make a new Construct instead of putting all these new features on existing C2 engine.

As true as this may be I doubt it. Software can get out of hand, from what I understand the Gullen brothers were probably in their 20's when building C2, I'm sure mistakes were made. All of the wisdom in the world wouldn't get you to build the perfect modular piece of software.

> I think that C3 is good for its creators only. To me (and all users I've talked to) it was completely unnecessary to make a new Construct instead of putting all these new features on existing C2 engine.

As true as this may be I doubt it. Software can get out of hand, from what I understand the Gullen brothers were probably in their 20's when building C2, I'm sure mistakes were made. All of the wisdom in the world wouldn't get you to build the perfect modular piece of software.

The fact that the authors of the engine arrive logically does not make their decisions correct. All these clone applications that are made on Construct, for the most part - vanity and time-killing with a very short product lifetime. People who want to do something more serious than single-day games, look at the engine's capabilities and the policies of its authors, shake their heads and change the development environment.

Ashley consciously makes this choice. He understands what he is taking on board, and what he leaves behind. Those who see all this marketing struggle for a place under the sun, understand that conversations here will not help.

The fact that the authors of the engine arrive logically does not make their decisions correct. All these clone applications that are made on Construct...

Oh but it does, they calculate how much effort it's going to take to maintain and grow the engine and put an offer on the table.

Clones are made on all types of engines, people tend to make what they can comprehend.

Ashley consciously makes this choice. He understands what he is taking on board, and what he leaves behind. Those who see all this marketing struggle for a place under the sun, understand that conversations here will not help.

Yes he does, and he does a pretty good job at it.

The conversation is 'Why Construct 3' hence the tittle. There're counters relating to marketing, so that's were the conversation goes.

Actually i purchased C3 prior to the discount message and sent in an email to ask if i could get a refund on my purchase, never got a response, probably "lost in the email" world

We strive to answer every email promptly, yours should of been replied to. Do email us again or me directly on tomlyx@scirra.com and I'll look into it for you.