Construct and Multimedia Fusion Comparison

What are the subtle differences between Clickteam's Multimedia Fusion and Construct. Briefly looking at Construct, I can see it is following along a similar "ease of use" formula.

I am very impressed with the interface of Construct -- but I'm still hesitant about commenting on the functionality. (I need to mess with it a bit more.)

Well, there's a lot really... to name a few, animations work completely differently, the events sheet editor has a completely different interface, and we have a lot of features Multimedia Fusion are yet to implement, such as full hardware acceleration with chains of multiple pixel shaders, physics etc - and vice versa (we're not going to come up with a java runtime any time soon, unless the codebase is beseiged by open source java coders).

Yeah, the Construct event system is a lot more powerful than MMF's, with more advanced functions and loops, and you can do subevents.

Are you an MMF user already and just trying Construct as an alternative, or are you trying to decide between the two?

MMF has the obvious advantage that it's finished, has a lot of users, a lot of examples and a lot of documentation already out there. But that's not a benefit of the software, per se, just its age.

Construct also has an awesome physics engine being grafted onto it. While similar plans are underway for an extension in MMF, I don't see how it will be as powerful (because it has to be a plugin, whereas Construct can handle it a bit more directly).

Are you an MMF user already and just trying Construct as an alternative, or are you trying to decide between the two?

I've been using MMF for years now, (on and off,) and always looking for newer and faster ways to create applications. I got started using The Games Factory back in 1997 and purchased MMF1.5 back in 1999 or 2000 -- not sure when MMF1.5 came out.

So I've been a "quasi" regular with Clickteam products.

There's also the ability to include multiple event sheets on one layout, so if you have a section of events that you need to run on multiple frames, you don't have to copy them repeatedly to different frames.

Some more things:

A bunch of new movements

Working movements

Better image editor

You can create your own familys!!!

Infinate private variables (as far as i can tell)

Infinate global variables

Extremely quick response to reported bugs.

I think that Clickteam has generally been evolving over years, and since they've used the same old source code then they've sort of bolted on new features.

Apparently MMF2 had a fair bit of the code redone but it still wasn't a total recoding as people seem to think. I asked on their forums and they said they basically had only recoded the Corel bits and weren't about to rewrite over a million lines of code.

Whilst this makes MMF more stable than Construct i think Construct does some things better, like global events etc.

Clickteam admit they can't even add 'else' because of the way their event system works. And i think their graphics engine has given them a lot of problems, now they're trying to update to things like Hardware Acceleration.

Also Clickteams wierd fetish for only allowing certain amounts of alterable values and strings and only on certain objects has always annoyed me.

And not being able to rename flags and things, seemingly small things like that which still don't get done after years of asking.

OK, let's not turn this in to an analysis of how Clickteam work <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /> They have a stable product with many users, something Construct has not yet achieved.

Anyways I'll add that yes, private variables and global variables have no limit, and parameters/expressions are another area I'm particularly pleased with - expressions are very flexible, when the Learn section opens, I'll write an article on everything you can do with them.

Hey Ashley, would you like to have help with the Learn section? I could do some examples and explain Construct, I've done this things before, I wrote tutorials in different sites. For now I'll show you this italian one. Since I need to get a hobby, except gaming, I would like to write tutorials/help <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

http://www.clickitaliansoftware.net/mod ... iaux&did=9

^ Please take note I made this 2 years ago.

Sure, the learn section should definitely be a collaborative effort, since we're open source after all. If anyone wants to contribute anything, they'd be welcome.

Hmm, I suggest something like the link I posted up there. You can sumbit your own tutorials, the staff checks them and then release them to the public. And if you do n�X tutorials, what can I say, you get some prize or tag?