I think that sounds pretty terrible ($5000) if you actually do make something that makes money and still would prefer a free alternative... What if you managed to make something that some day reaches $250,000 and you've already invested some of that? Because of the slow and steady climb you're suddenly slapped with a $5000 price. The premise of that is much worse than paying $50 once at the start, I think.
Yeah I see what you're saying. I guess it would depend on the person if they consider it acceptable to pay 2% of their product's revenue (5,000 out of 250,000) when/if they reach that point. In my own thinking this seems acceptable, providing it works as well as you need it to (and as far as I've been hearing in the indie circuit, RakNet is considered to be of the highest quality). Not everyone is going to see it that way, I admit.
Just so we're on the same page I'm not suggesting that a RakNet plugin would completely replace the need for a free (presumably lesser featured) alternative either. As you said, if you only want to use the networking features in a limited fashion, $5,000 is uh... pretty steep. Rich has been working on such a plugin for quite a while now though, so we'll be seeing that free alternative at some point at least.
In the mean time, we could have a powerful full-featured network plugin that is free for non-commercial use, and free for indie use up until your game has generated some significant revenue (again, $250,000). I'd prefer this over no network functionality at all.
Is there a way in Construct to do stuff like uploading scores to databases yet? If I'd need this plugin for that, it would be even more annoying with such a fee looming! <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" />
The only method I'm aware of so far is using the HTTP object. Though admittedly I haven't personally used it as of yet, so I can't really comment on it's level of functionality.