I've forgotten everything about MMF

I got kinda curious as to how Clickteam was doing, so I reinstalled MMF2 and ran the update. Holy crap... that program is confusing as hell

Seriously, I think I've been spoiled by how easy Construct is to use. Hell, it took me a second to even remember how to add a movement to an active object. Granted, I haven't used it about a year, but still. I remember opening Construct for the first time, and it actually made sense.

I also checked out their HWA. They're still way behind Construct in that department:

[quote:22oq5g7c]Just for info, what doesn't work or will be improved :

• full screen (doesn't work).
• transitions (don't work).
• some graphical extensions don't work (Screen Capture, Lens, Viewport, Get Pixel, Flame [hehe ], Alpha Channel, etc).
• others work but are not optimized (text blitter, speech bubble, etc).
• fine collisions between rotated or stretched sprites are slow.
• the quick backdrop object in ellipse mode is slow.
• there are still problems when you resize the frame window.
• effects on layers will be optimized in a future version.
• an option to prevent resampling when the "resize to fill screen" option is used will be added.
• a few options are still missing in the effects, to read the background surface behind the objects.
• the background behind dialog boxes is not correctly refreshed.

Yikes. They've been at it for how long now? And that's their full-time job. Uh... I think.

I also checked out the Phizix object, and I gotta say that thing is confusing as hell. Instead of assigning physics properties to individual objects, you have to do everything from the event editor and run it through the phizix object itself. So if you want a sprite to have physics, you have to first create an event where you set up a "body" with mass in phizix, then you have to create a polygon for the body (yes, in the event editor, like... with just numbers ), then create an event where you attach the sprite to it, then create an event where the object is updated in the physics world. And you have to do all that in the event editor. Talk about user-unfriendly.

Sure, they have a couple neat features that we don't have, like slider joints and collision threshholds (woulda been springs too, but Dave or Rich (can't remember) said we were getting those soon).

I dunno, I guess I'm trying to say thanks for making Construct, guys. Otherwise I'd probably still be struggling with MMF.

[quote:3hwc3d4f]I've forgotten everything about MMF

Good. Your home is here now...

~Sol

Clickteams priorities are all messed up right now. It's like they can't settle on what to work on. Java? HWA? MMF3? MMF 3D? Apparently all of those are being worked on right now.

HWA was and is the only thing I care about, and it will probably be a year total delay when the next beta of that comes out.

Because of the DirectSound issues I reinstalled MMF2 recently, and am working with it until the issue is resolved, but man is it annoying hehe. Have to work around using extensions in case it slows it all down for no reason.

But hey, at least I can get sound on Vista lol.

Man. I've thought so much about the MMF vs Construct thing. Theres a few issues i had with MMF, and their HWA engine feels more like a hack than a feature. You can't position sprites at decimal points (X = 100.556) etc. Positions are all integers.

While i do have alot of respect for the developers, i really like the way construct is going. It so fresh

When I first transitioned to construct I thought it was confusing, but after getting used to it (and realising ctrl+drag copies events!) its so much better. So much so that I tried to understand some old (uncommented ofc) MMF code and couldn't understand what the heck was going on, and the main reason is the events are displayed in such a weird way - with no indication as to the order your events are in. Sure MMF's event editor is probably still a little faster to use, but with a couple of refinements Construct's event editor can be just as fast (I've stated how I think this can be done in another thread).

The other understated but huge advantage construct has over MMF is that the developers (sucking up now heh) really watch this forum and implement new stuff that people want, and update these things into construct relatively frequently. So much so that I feel like most things that I request vaguely feeling like it could be useful, will eventually make their way into the program... and all for free!

I appreciate that you guys like Construct, but I don't think we have any room to be complacent just yet. Construct is still officially not finished, and is missing several features that MMF and other game creators have. While we hope to have a complete featureset by 1.0, as things stand MMF still has a wider userbase and more extensions. I don't want to speculate on what they're planning - I'm still not very happy with them about the past frivilous legal threats they made against us. But we are not competitors in a commercial sense. You may perceive competition in featureset, but whether or not any other game creator is successful or not doesn't actually affect a free, open-source project - and even if we end up in some kind of arms race for features, that's really good for the users - everyone ends up using better software!

Since Construct is not in competition with anyone, making comparisons seems a bit redundant. You could also post a similar comparison about Game Maker. What good does that do anyone except anger users and developers of another program and encourage us to be pretentious? It might be nice to celebrate what we have achieved with Construct, but we have to be realistic, otherwise we will just end up alienating new users and losing perspective of where we really are right now.

I don't mean to rekindle the flames between Scirra and Clickteam or anything. Yes, MMF is the more complete product. If someone were to set out on a big project it would make sense for them to consider MMF over Construct in that regard. I was just surprised about the ease of use thing. Maybe I'm misremembering things but it certainly seems to me that Construct was much easier to start with right off the bat.

As for HWA and physics, I think it's fair to compare those two features on their own merits as long as you concede that Clickteam is still working on theirs. Their phizix object though appears to be as complete as it's going to get. The creator doesn't seem too interested in developing it further.

As for Game Maker, don't get me started

(Though if you want to play some really good Game Maker games, look up Cactus. He's awesome. He's some kind of Game Maker wizard.)

I'm still not very happy with them about the past frivilous legal threats they made against us.

on what basis were those thrown at you guys?

not sure if its my place to go here, so ashley please feel free to delete this post if its undesireable.

I'm not sure if its a good idea to go into the whole clickteam vs scirra thing. please correct me if im wrong but It was basically because Ashley used to use MMF2 alot and was close with the devs. He then started making construct and as the products are quite similar in some ways, there was a little bit of friction there.

I don't know the exact details, but i know that rumors and stuff made it escalate, alot of which were based on nothing (I should know, i later found out that when a website related to CT went down, someone pointed the finger over here but it was actually my fault! Lulz).

But yeah, i think Ashley would probably like this to be end of

He didn't just use MMF, he made stuff for them. He was/is Tigerworks.

Edit:

And I'm sorry if this thread is inappropriate or you're afraid of it leading to more flaming/drama... go ahead and close it if you think that's for the best. I don't want to cause a ruckus.

Since it might get closed, I'd like to add I don't find the programs all that similar.

The layout and events etc, are not an exclusive clickteam design ... Powerpoint comes to mind ... The similarities come from both being a game creation tool.

Anyways, onward!

In all fairness, I think we are more than capable of having a discussion about this topic in a mature and respectable manner. If Ash wants it closed then that's another story, but I personally think it's good to be able to openly discuss this. Ash and the Scirra team didn't do anything wrong, so why worry about it?

I have to agree with Ashley though, bagging other game programs is not a polite thing to do... though not illegal, it's still not nice. If it wasn't for programs like Klik and Play, Game Factory, etc... Construct might not even be here. Fair enough I'm sure we all agree that we like Construct better, and drawing comparisons between other software is perfectly fine... but putting someone else down in a obviously non-constructive manner (no pun intended... I seem to do that a lot) is rude and uncalled for.

Just my 2 cents... keep the change

~Sol

Keep the 2 cents? Oh man ... what to buy first!?

Keep the 2 cents? Oh man ... what to buy first!?

I dunno... there are a few Clickteam produ.... JOKING!!

~Sol

<img src="http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e71/nazpel/oh-no-you-didnt.jpg">