Construct 2 - platform poll

Agreed with the recent few posts.

If Microsoft's market strategy chose supporting the 360, they must have made their decision on very solid grounds, enermous reasearch must have went into it. They must forsee the market flows more clearly than us, I think, so imitating their plans wouldn't be adverse for small-scale companies.

As for the future customer base of Construct, sooner or later it will be the favourite choice of indie game developers, I think. And their purpose will be to port their products to best-selling and most wide-spread platforms. If Construct can help them in achieving their aim, then they're more likely to vote for Construct, and support it. It is all about the benefit of economies of scale, I think.

And about the representativeness of this poll:

Current poll's many votes for Linux / Mac must have derived from hobbyists I think, who prefer comfort to long-term plans. But would they fund Construct as well as the real wage-earner indies?

ldmn

I think the devs are planning to make at least two ports. Definitely one for PC, and one for Linux.

As you mentioned Linux is more of a hobbyist's platform, and therefore has a huge amount of tools available for an indie to use for development. Keep in mind I'm talking about the program itself, not just for games. It just so happens though that a port to Linux will probably mean you will be able to produce games that will run on it.

I suppose the topic of the thread should have said "What platforms do you want Construct2 to run on, and what platforms do you want to be able to export to?"

Obviously you cant run C2 on consoles, or xbla, and a browser.... that's just scary.

Thanx Newt,

of course ( my bad English)!

I wanted to say exporting games to 360, not running Construct on them.

I suppose the topic of the thread should have said "What platforms do you want Construct2 to run on, and what platforms do you want to be able to export to?"

Obviously you cant run C2 on consoles, or xbla, and a browser.... that's just scary.

Oh of course, that's the line of thought we're all on. The title of the poll is what platform do you want your games to run, not what platform do you want Construct to run on. So I'm assuming this is regarding porting ability first and foremost.

If Construct is looking to grow and establish itself as one of the best, if not the best, Indie game development engine, then porting to consoles is an essential tool to provide. Torque is another engine that can provide this feature, as well as porting to Wii and iPhone, but charges between $100 - $1,500 depending on the number of porting licenses you're after.

If Construct could start offering these porting capabilities too, then they can charge a competitive rate and share that market. I would happily pay for a license in order to port my games, and wouldn't expect those licenses to be free, even if the engine itself remains free-to-use.

EDIT: Look at what has just been posted on Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/5647455/xbox-live-indie-clips-radiangames-inferno Xbox Live Indie games get a lot of press when they're made well.

If Construct is looking to grow and establish itself as one of the best, if not the best, Indie game development engine, then porting to consoles is an essential tool to provide. Torque is another engine that can provide this feature, as well as porting to Wii and iPhone, but charges between $100 - $1,500 depending on the number of porting licenses you're after.

But I think with Torque (if I'm not mistaken), you still have to know C# to make anything decent.

If Construct could start offering these porting capabilities too, then they can charge a competitive rate and share that market. I would happily pay for a license in order to port my games, and wouldn't expect those licenses to be free, even if the engine itself remains free-to-use.

Agreed! I would gladly pay. As long as they allow me to do everything with events like I can now and not have to write in a language. I'd pay top dollar for that.

EDIT: Look at what has just been posted on Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/5647455/xbox-live-indie-clips-radiangames-inferno Xbox Live Indie games get a lot of press when they're made well.

That game is going to do well and it's priced to move.

[quote:3phieygz]In a hierarchy of 1 to 10 (1 highest, 10 lowest), I'd say it's:

1. Internet-based (Flash, Java)

2. xna (though I'd want an xna export first, Flash clearly has the biggest reach).

3. Phones

4-9. Anything you can think of.

10. Mac

...

... 20. Linux

Yep, 10 and 20 are that low on purpose

Linux at the bottom

Sounds like all of you want your games to run on the platforms from where you can get money.

I'm not saying that Export to Consoles shouldn't be there, but it should be given lower priority than linux and internet platforms, since there are a lot of people out there who are running linux.

But whatever you say, since Construct will be OpenGl based then running Construct and it's exported game on Linux will not be such a problem.

Linux at the bottom

Sounds like all of you want your games to run on the platforms from where you can get money.

That's exactly what we want. As a serious Indie developer who is looking for the best way to get his games to as many people as possible, to turn as big a profit as possible, and to get his development talent noticed by larger companies, I'm looking for an engine that provides porting to consoles.

I'm not saying that Export to Consoles shouldn't be there, but it should be given lower priority than linux and internet platforms, since there are a lot of people out there who are running linux.

You're arguing that Linux is a higher priority because of the large numbers of people who use Linux? Over the number of people that use consoles? I'm confused.

Linux at the bottom

Sounds like all of you want your games to run on the platforms from where you can get money.

I'm not saying that Export to Consoles shouldn't be there, but it should be given lower priority than linux and internet platforms, since there are a lot of people out there who are running linux.

But whatever you say, since Construct will be OpenGl based then running Construct and it's exported game on Linux will not be such a problem.

^^^ No way.

Linux's personal consumer userbase (not business/IT, just personal sector which is all that's relevant here) is small... VERY, VERRRRRRRY small, because the support isn't there. It may be a more stable OS, but the support is all with Windows. I heard a number like 0.83% of personal computer users use Linux. Then you have to reduce that number even more significantly since only a tiny fraction of those people actually make games... then consider that plenty of games won't run on Linux to begin with, you'll have to reduce it even further... so in the end you're left with an incredibly tiny number.

To people who use Linux this may be hard to swallow, but you have to think mainstream here and realize that the market is simply not there as the mainstream is using everything else except Linux. The average user has never even heard of it and has never seen it. All they know is windows. I'd put Linux at the 100 spot and it would still be a legitimate placing... the market for it for gaming and game-making is nothing.

Like it's been stated, anything Construct does with MAC and Linux is going to be nothing more than a humanitarian effort, with Linux being the least wanted of the two. If you're making a professional product, why waste time on things that the majority of your users won't care about? Wouldn't make sense, and precious development time can be spent on things you know your userbase is actually going to want and actually going to use. Export to Linux? LOL... where is the market? Granted, because you'd have very little competition you'd get some pub in the Linux circle, but will you make any money? Highly doubtful.

I agree that internet-based is going to have the biggest draw, but if making some money is the goal your best bet is still on Consoles right now. Like I said earlier, people are making money on XBLIG. Basically any game that gets uploaded there makes at least something. By comparison, most games put on the internet never make a penny... ever.

>

> Linux at the bottom

> Sounds like all of you want your games to run on the platforms from where you can get money.

>

>

That's exactly what we want. As a serious Indie developer who is looking for the best way to get his games to as many people as possible, to turn as big a profit as possible, and to get his development talent noticed by larger companies, I'm looking for an engine that provides porting to consoles.

>

> I'm not saying that Export to Consoles shouldn't be there, but it should be given lower priority than linux and internet platforms, since there are a lot of people out there who are running linux.

>

>

You're arguing that Linux is a higher priority because of the large numbers of people who use Linux? Over the number of people that use consoles? I'm confused.

Linux is the only other viable platform to run the development tools on... other than Apple.

That's one of the reasons it should be given higher priority.

Plus you need to remember the devs are only thinking of having one other non os to export to.

Bringing in Linux's user base might actually help to get some of the other formats ported.

I think there is a bit of confusion here. I'm pretty sure the poll is meant to be a question--as it states--about which platforms you'd like to be able to export your games to. The stuff about running Construct on other platforms besides Windows is a different topic.

I concur with Silver's thoughts. If you're trying to build a resume and make it into the commercial sector, you have no shot making games specifically for Linux. You have a small shot with Mac platforms. You have the most realistic shot with games that are exports to any of the Windows/Microsoft platforms. I don't see anything wrong with Indie's wanting to make a living from what they love to do. Thing is, the further you get away from Windows/MS platforms, the less chance you have at doing that.

Linux is the only other viable platform to run the development tools on... other than Apple.

That's one of the reasons it should be given higher priority.

Plus you need to remember the devs are only thinking of having one other non os to export to.

Bringing in Linux's user base might actually help to get some of the other formats ported.

Is that the topic of this thread though? The poll is asking what platform we'd most like to see our games run on. The simple answer to that from a serious developer's point of view is easily: Consoles.

If the poll read: which platforms would you also like to be able to run Construct from to develop games, then Linux and Mac OS systems would easily be the best answer. But unless I misinterpreted the poll, that's not what is being asked in this thread.

So essentially: If this engine's aim is to become a viable tool for serious Indie game developers interested in creating video games for a living - then console porting is an important feature to add.

On the other hand, if the engine is only aiming to cater to a handful of people who create games as a hobby and past-time, and would like to see their games run on their OS of choice as well as Windows, then Mac and Linux support could be the answer.

So it entirely depends on the goals of the engine and its creators. If console porting doesn't get provided in the next release, then developers like myself can easily look to other engines like Torque. Construct seems to be a great engine that's easy to pick up and more than capable of making great Indie games, so I'm very interested in seeing which way the engine will be heading in the future.

Since C2 is going to use openGL, there's a much better chance linux users will be able to run construct games via wine, anyway.

Well I'm not saying it should be top on the list as far as exporting goes. When you think about it chances are, that since C2 is using OpenGL, games will probably run on Linux anyway.

So nothing to Wine about there. heh

The thing that I worry about is that setting up for an export is almost like reinventing the wheel.

We have two dev's with no pay. Only a pat on the back, and few donations here and there.

Ash mentioned something about a pay version... perhaps these versions that have export to other platforms should be the ones people pay for.

Edit:

Wine, Arima beat me to it.

I haven't cast a vote yet, because there are so many factors. The one I wonder about the most is licensing. People have talked a lot about exporting their game to consoles to make cash, but I doubt it is that simple. There are approval processes and licensing issues to be considered.

Here are some of the questions I've been considering:

1) Will the devs have to buy an SDK (e.g. last I heard the PSP SDK was $1500) in order to make a working exporter?

2) Is it legal to reproduce the SDK in their software?

3) XNA allows unlimited use on Windows, but not on Xbox 360, Zune, Windows Phone, or with Windows Live API in general. Will the devs even be able to include those APIs?

4) If consoles win will it even be practical for most Construct users to get licensing rights for the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii?

5) Will the devs have to rewrite the exporters when the next-gen systems are released?

I hope somebody can bring some clarity to this for me. So far I am leaning towards Linux as many OSs are based on Linux (e.g Andriod); Linux can be installed on many devices (e.g. PS2/3, DS); and most web servers are running Linux. All of which I'm thinking will make running games on a wide variety of platforms easier, also there are no licensing issues.

4) maybe not most, but me personally, though I don't consider myself to have a lot of money to throw away I would definitely invest in the $1300 or $3000(can't remember which) ps3 dev kit if it was required to publish a ps3 game if I had completed a working windows version

5) of course, unless xna continues to be supported

I hope somebody can bring some clarity to this for me. So far I am leaning towards Linux as many OSs are based on Linux (e.g Andriod); Linux can be installed on many devices (e.g. PS2/3, DS); and most web servers are running Linux. All of which I'm thinking will make running games on a wide variety of platforms easier, also there are no licensing issues.

I don't think a general linux exporter will work for android, it has it's own specialized version of linux, so you can't just install a linux program on it. ps3 no longer allows linux to be installed, and a game doesn't have to run on linux for it to use linux servers