What tools/engines did you try before Construct?

I spent a solid 2 years and at a pace of around 80 - 100 hours per week working in FPSCx10. This is a 3D engine which is...SADLY...discountinued and hasn't been supported for a long time in favor of their earlier product FPSCx9.

What happened there would be like if everyone here utterly rejected C2 and after a year or so Scirra decided they should just go back to working on Construct Classic. A lot of the problems had to do with the botch operating system known as Vista. Many of the long time users were not going to leave behind their XP machines and DirectX10 does not work in XP.

But anyway....I had my fun their and made a slew of mini-games in a relatively short period of time. Learned absolutely everything was to know about that engine.

Now, I am starting over with C2 and not able to put in the 80-100 weeks like I used to do. However, C2 is so easy to use it is ridiculous.

I've spent time in 3D Rad (and agree about what others have said - it is a cool 3D engine), in Torque 3D, Unreal, and Unity - so far as 3D goes.

I built my own 2D engine using Processing (Java IDE) but the limitations of applets killed that one before I got too far. But it was a great experience and I *HIGHLY* recommend Processing to anyone interested in learned a bit more programming. To this day, if I need to do something 'unusual" like tangible user interfaces or biosensors, I use processing because of the lower level control.

I've worked in Ethanon a 2.5D engine based around C++ syntax with a decent but underdeveloped world builder. It has a fantastic lighting and shader system. But it is developed solely by one person in his spare time and out of the goodness of his heart (i.e. it is free).

I installed GameMaker...but found C2 before ever even messing with it and have no desire to at this point.

That about brings me up to present date. There have been a few other engines here and there but not really worth mentioning beyond what I've listed above.

Cool thread, btw!

srealist, I've had Processing on my to-do list for a while now. Your recommendation may be just what I need to kick me into gear and actually start exploring it a bit further.

MrMiller - interesting you say that about MMF. I've never used it properly, but I've seen some reasonably complex stuff done with it. More power to the people working with it, I guess :)

No doubt, MMF2 is a powerful system that has made some good commercial games. You just have to be willing to stomach that fossil-like event system. When I think of that event system, it almost makes me want to pull out a paper graph and some punch cards...

The Scirra guys used to work with the Clickteam in some capacity in the past. In all honesty, Construct's event system is the modern evolutionary step that Clickteam never took with MMF and appears to refuse to even consider it which is a real shame.

boybokeh

It's a great environment and if you check out openprocessing.org you will find all kinds of very cool examples. The latest version of processing has 3 modes: standard, javascript, and android. The main limitation of the javascript mode, presently, is that community libraries will not work.

This is what killed my little engine. I based it around a community built physics library called fisica (and was more or less a wrapper for box2D) but last I checked it had not been updated to work in javascript mode, thus limited the export options to applets or .exe.

I've a project this fall building a musical tangible user interface for autistic children and will be doing this in processing as I need to program a micro-controller (arduino). Working with sensors and actuators is not really something you can practically or easily do at this point in C2 but maybe one day. Security limitations within html5 specs make things difficult when developing these kinds of applications.

Seems there is always a trade off between accessibility and functionality. It's understandable because the more access you have, the more damage you can do. Being able to develop applications that work on multiple operating systems and multiple devices without separate compiles, is a beautiful thing but there will always be a trade-off.

> MrMiller - interesting you say that about MMF. I've never used it properly, but I've seen some reasonably complex stuff done with it. More power to the people working with it, I guess :)

No doubt, MMF2 is a powerful system that has made some good commercial games. You just have to be willing to stomach that fossil-like event system. When I think of that event system, it almost makes me want to pull out a paper graph and some punch cards...

The Scirra guys used to work with the Clickteam in some capacity in the past. In all honesty, Construct's event system is the modern evolutionary step that Clickteam never took with MMF and appears to refuse to even consider it which is a real shame.

Jamie Clickteam is coding MMF3, he's well aware of Construct and Clickteam is well aware of Scirra, so i expect the next event editor to be nearly identical to Constructs.

My concern is that Scirra may have difficulty competing as inevitably Clickteam will support many native runtimes.

I believe Ashley and Tom have something good going, and Clickteam's MMF3 will definitely be a threat. But I doubt they're going to copy Scirra's event editor wholesale or even make it nearly identical, they also have their own good thing going.

Everything has their own good thing going, and engines all live pretty well with each other. As competitors, inevitably, but each of these software boost interest in people to build games, and as seen in this thread, people move from engine to engine, learning new ways and producing new things.

There's plenty of space for another engine in the market, I'm sure MMF3 will have a different (even slightly) target developers.

There seems to be a NKOTB (coming on the 12th Sep). Going by the name of Freedom Engine, it outputs HTML5 and is purportedly able to release cross-platform on 'droid, Mac, iOS, and Windows in the future. It is also simultaneously a Cloud Service, something that Scirra is seriously lacking.

My analysis is that we may very well find users of the Freedom Engine migrating over to Construct 2 pretty soon.

Or will it be the other way around? Well, especially if you prefer coding in BASIC. I find Scirra's coding technique to be interesting but it does take a short while getting used to it.

What do you think?

Oops... I forgot. The Freedom Engine is over here.

The only thing that peaks my interest with the Freedom Engine is the 3D engine, and depending on ease of entry (and of course stability), it could be dangerous with that feature alone. We'll see.

necromaster: why exactly does scirra need a "cloud service"? What would such service even be?

Construct 2 is still targeting a wider group of users.

Those who don't know how to code BASIC.

Construct 2 is still targeting a wider group of users.

Those who don't know how to code BASIC.

I don't think that's exactly a defined target as much as it's just a by-product of the type of system it is. The whole idea behind event-based development of this kind is to simplify arduous tasks that programming in a language present. When you look around the boards for these types of systems, you run into lots of people who code in various languages, but they prefer to make games with event-based systems because it's much quicker to do by comparison.

That said, you find a lot of people give up on these types of systems often, even very skilled coders, because they find that what they did while programming in a language doesn't always work out with the same logic in this kind of system. These types of kits really are an acquired taste and they're not for everybody. After all, the very nature of it can't really even be considered as exact a science yet as coding in one of the popular languages would be. There are very few books if any (Construct has what, one? Two maybe?) very little documentation, and less history, and for the most part most of the communities in this realm make mostly tech demos as none of us are entirely sure yet just how far we can take these systems, even though making a full game is easily possible and has been done a number of times.

Ignore me... the ignoramus who sometimes types way too fast. It's a "good to have" feature. And if there's a way to edit the forum message, tell me about it.

I still do prefer cloud services as I've used Google Docs to create all my Game Design Documents, presentation materials, and drawings. After which, I could go to any Internet connected computer terminal, log into Google Docs and access the material in the cloud to further work on it.

Cloud services are a good to have feature that's popping up everywhere. I must also add that this is a great "best practice" for indie developers. From here, I can share all my docs to any co-programmers working on the game project.

Now, wouldn't it be excellent if Scirra allowed us to share our code with co-programmers. Another programmer could then check in the project and make his code changes, after which he checks out and someone takes over the job - 24 / 7 round the clock game development.

Talk about AGILE!

> Construct 2 is still targeting a wider group of users.

> Those who don't know how to code BASIC.

I don't think that's exactly a defined target as much as it's just a by-product of the type of system it is. The whole idea behind event-based development of this kind is to simplify arduous tasks that programming in a language present. When you look around the boards for these types of systems, you run into lots of people who code in various languages, but they prefer to make games with event-based systems because it's much quicker to do by comparison.

That said, you find a lot of people give up on these types of systems often, even very skilled coders, because they find that what they did while programming in a language doesn't always work out with the same logic in this kind of system. These types of kits really are an acquired taste and they're not for everybody. After all, the very nature of it can't really even be considered as exact a science yet as coding in one of the popular languages would be. There are very few books if any (Construct has what, one? Two maybe?) very little documentation, and less history, and for the most part most of the communities in this realm make mostly tech demos as none of us are entirely sure yet just how far we can take these systems, even though making a full game is easily possible and has been done a number of times.

You're missing the magic in Construct. You don't need a book or much a guide to teach you logic based eventing. You do need it in most cases to pick up a programming language.

For an artist like me and many others here, Construct is perfect for us to create interactive demos of art we've created and anything else from prototypes to large games all without learning much more.

I still do prefer cloud services as I've used Google Docs to create all my Game Design Documents, presentation materials, and drawings. After which, I could go to any Internet connected computer terminal, log into Google Docs and access the material in the cloud to further work on it.

Cloud services are a good to have feature that's popping up everywhere. I must also add that this is a great "best practice" for indie developers. From here, I can share all my docs to any co-programmers working on the game project.

Now, wouldn't it be excellent if Scirra allowed us to share our code with co-programmers. Another programmer could then check in the project and make his code changes, after which he checks out and someone takes over the job - 24 / 7 round the clock game development.

Talk about AGILE!

necromaster: When you save your project as folder, the files are XML which means, text files that you can put on a repository system like subversion or even github I believe (in the manual entry about saving and sharing projects).

Talk about agile, you already have it from the very design of the project format of C2.

Also C2 itself can be installed on a USB drive (for more portability of not only the project files, but also the software itself).

There are very few books if any (Construct has what, one? Two maybe?) very little documentation, and less history, and for the most part most of the communities in this realm make mostly tech demos as none of us are entirely sure yet just how far we can take these systems, even though making a full game is easily possible and has been done a number of times.

MrMiller: With the manual, the tutorials, the very forums and the number of Scirra's blog articles about C2, the examples shipped with C2 in the folder "examples" and even the section "Example games" in the arcade which let's you often download a commented capx with the game; I don't believe it's a fair statement to say it is very little documentation in regards to a lot of other engines/coding language.

Also, as you said, it has less history, and in regard of the little time C2 has been around, it has quite a fair amount of clear and useful documentation imo, and some more gets added on a daily basis.

Of course if you compare to one C++, you'll have a difference on the mass of documentation you can find. But C2 hasn't been around for 20+ years, and as you mentioned, it helps already having notions/concepts and how-to

knowledge to have stuff done in C2.

But also, the entry bar compared to general coding language is that you can focus on concepts related to game making (you don't need to know exactly how RAM management works to make a game with C2). In that regards, it opens the "target" to, like Rory said even ppl with no knowledge of how to program just yet.

Truth is, they'll learn as they use C2. Without even necessary noticing it themselves.

From the moment you're starting to talk about variables and instances, you're programming <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle">