Construct 3 Addon Exchange

Hello!

I've added an addon exchange for both Construct 2 and Construct 3:

Construct 2 Addon Exchange

https://www.construct.net/construct-2/addons

Construct 3 Addon Exchange

https://www.construct.net/make-games/addons

The addon exchange is hosted on Construct.net as previously explained because our eventual goal is to shut down Scirra.com and make Construct.net the home of everything Construct 2 and Construct 3.

There's a few more features to add - but it's basically complete. We hope in the future to add some sort of API so you can manage/update your addons from the editor directly, but that might take some time to complete!

Please do NOT upload addons to these exchanges unless you are the copyright holder otherwise your account may be suspended.

At some point in the future, this will support paid addons. But for now, it's open source only.

Amazing work, thanks for creating this addon sharing platform!

This should make things a lot easier for everyone using C2 and C3.

Bugs & Feature Requests:

• <Bug> Using special chars in descriptions is causing an error (e.g. "<", ">")
• <Bug> Official plugin documentations are causing a "Runtime Error"
• <Bug> Adding a line "hr" doesn't seem to work
• <Bug> Using "h1, h2, h2" with other types of formatting like "bold" or "italic" doesn't seem to work
• <Feature Request> Downloadable Construct 3 official addons
• <Feature Request> Automatically update/refresh existing preview window instead of opening a new one
• <Feature Request> Transparency for addon icons and less/better compression

Wow! I was waiting for this. You even put Patreon button for the addon creators. Thank you!

I have two suggestions, a search bar and ability to save the addons to a list and the list can be downloaded to C3.

I was working to add an effect, but the upload was rejected with this message:

• The extension .fx is not permitted. (Path in archive: '/effect.fx')

Should we be able to add effects now, or is there another method? I set the 'type' to effect.

.fx now allowed, if you run into any other dissallowed extensions email me on tom at scirra and I'll add it.

<Bug> Using special chars in descriptions is causing an error (e.g. "<", ">")

Fixed for next upload

<Bug> Official plugin documentations are causing a "Runtime Error"

Fixed for next upload

<Bug> Adding a line "hr" doesn't seem to work

Seems to work for me, if the HR is the first or last thing on the document it will remove it by design for style reasons.

<Bug> Using "h1, h2, h2" with other types of formatting like "bold" or "italic" doesn't seem to work

Looking into this

<Feature Request> Downloadable Construct 3 official addons

Chatted to Ash about this, unlikely will be doing this.

<Feature Request> Automatically update/refresh existing preview window instead of opening a new one

Probably not for now, although I'd like to add this. Is a lot of work. On my list of things I'd like to do!

<Feature Request> Transparency for addon icons and less/better compression

Transparency is supported but is on a white background when rendered on the site as a by design style choice. RE bad compression, can you send me by email an icon that you uploaded which isn't compressing well?

Wow! I was waiting for this. You even put Patreon button for the addon creators. Thank you!

I have two suggestions, a search bar and ability to save the addons to a list and the list can be downloaded to C3.

We're hoping to add an addon manager into the C3 editor itself in the future which will make installing/updating/finding addons a breeze.

> Wow! I was waiting for this. You even put Patreon button for the addon creators. Thank you!

>

> I have two suggestions, a search bar and ability to save the addons to a list and the list can be downloaded to C3.

>

We're hoping to add an addon manager into the C3 editor itself in the future which will make installing/updating/finding addons a breeze.

Awesome!

<Feature Request> Downloadable Construct 3 official addons

Chatted to Ash about this, unlikely will be doing this.

Is there a reason for why Ashley would deny this?

I understand why "paid" plugins wouldn't be downloadable but why the free ones?

Addon dev's have always looked into the official plugins for references and all kinds of other useful information they could obtain in order to create enhanced versions of those plugins or generally in order to see how a well-made official addon would look like.

<Feature Request> Transparency for addon icons and less/better compression

Transparency is supported but is on a white background when rendered on the site as a by design style choice. RE bad compression, can you send me by email an icon that you uploaded which isn't compressing well?

After taking another look, I think that this might be a browser issue with downscaling and not compression.

I assume that's at fault and svg support should make it possible to workaround that anyway so nothing to worry about on your end. (If you would like to check it out yourself regardless, HERE is the image file.)

Preview Quality Icon:

Main Page Quality Icon:

Will post all bugs on the C3 issues github from now on, just found out that it's possible to do so.

Is there a reason for why Ashley would deny this?

I understand why "paid" plugins wouldn't be downloadable but why the free ones?

A couple of reasons, firstly it would be a maintenance burden to keep them updated on the addon exchange and the product itself. Secondly he doesn't want people looking at the plugin source and creating branches or adaptations.

Secondly he doesn't want people looking at the plugin source and creating branches or adaptations.

That's quite a hit for addon dev's. For example, my mouselocking plugin is making use of some of Ashley's official mouse plugin code. It would've been a lot more tedious and difficult to literally rewrite the exact same code instead of straight up copying his and slightly modifying it.

There's nothing we can do I guess, if that's his decision then we'll have to work with it.

Have fixed a lot of issues, and improved the search significantly now.

This whole approach of copy-pasting an official addon, tweaking it, and releasing it as a third-party addon, is disastrous for compatibility. It's been a perpetual source of compatibility problems, even though we've long asked developers not to do it. The compatibility problems have even involved corrupting user's projects who then panic and we end up supporting them and recovering their projects for them. So we are deliberately hiding the source code to try to prevent this entirely.

Generally there's no need for third-party addons to carry around a copy of a whole official addon with them just to add one small feature, and it adds a large surface area for causing more compatibility problems down the line. We'd rather these plugins add the minimal extra functionality alone without copying any aspect of any other plugin. This makes addons smaller, easier to maintain, far reduces the compatibility headaches that users face, and reduces the burden on our support.

If any plugin developers have questions about how to achieve certain things in the SDK, I'm happy to offer help on the forum, or create additional minimal SDK samples to demonstrate things like attaching to DOM events and such.

I am giddy thinking about the future implications for the editor with a web based exchange - a game engine with the addon/extensability of a code editor like Brackets or VS Code is intoxicating.

Hey, I made a tool to generate the ACEs tabs for the addon exchange. Do you think this could be implemented at some point inside the addon exchange itself? Or even have it detect ACEs and do it on its own?