What tools/engines did you try before Construct?

You're missing the magic in Construct.

Nope, not at all. I'm well aware of the magic, which is why I've been here for years and switched over from other programs to use it almost exclusively for game development.

You don't need a book or much a guide to teach you logic based eventing.

I hate the term "eventing", it makes me cringe, lol. It's a term that I feel is used to try to separate this type of development from programming, even though it is still programming by definition, it's just a simplified method... but that's neither here nor there :)

Anyway, if a person has a base of programming knowledge to draw from already, then they may not need a book. But even that's been proven to not always be the case since it's common for people who are language coders to still ask for lots of help with these programs (the forums between Construct, MMF2 and others are filled with it). Heck, I've coded in several languages myself (I'm pretty good at one of them) and still have had to get help with Construct over the years, because what I would normally do in VB or C# doesn't directly translate to the way it's done in Construct in terms of process and operation.

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.

I don't use C2, yet. I was meaning this in terms of Construct Classic, which AFAIK only has two commercial books, and one of them is not very comprehensive at all (the book by Hobby Press).

I'm not really comparing the amount of documentation in Construct specifically vs. coding languages. I'm just saying that event-based programming dev kits in general have far less documentation as a factual statement, and with respect to the short amount of time that they've been around. In time, that will change, and obviously the devs of C2 understand the importance of having good documentation and I think that's great because it'll certainly cut down on the entry frustration that many users express, both programmer and non-programmer alike.

MrMiller: Oh sorry I hadn't realized you were referring to CC, and on that I agree that the documentation is far more sporadic.

The wiki is pretty incomplete and not up to date, and it's true that the main documentation resource is the forum and its community.

Anyway, if a person has a base of programming knowledge to draw from already, then they may not need a book. But even that's been proven to not always be the case since it's common for people who are language coders to still ask for lots of help with these programs (the forums between Construct, MMF2 and others are filled with it). Heck, I've coded in several languages myself (I'm pretty good at one of them) and still have had to get help with Construct over the years, because what I would normally do in VB or C# doesn't directly translate to the way it's done in Construct in terms of process and operation.

Not much else to comment on, I do agree with much you say.

More documention would be good of course, but I'm an artist with hardly any programming background other than some VB6 from back in my days at Mirage Source, and I managed to create a complete quite complex puzzle game in 2 days for a competition dateline thanks to C2. To me most things felt natural, the way I thought of how the things would work, translated straight into events and actions.

Tagged myself

RPG Maker (Enterbrain), Stencyl, Indie Game Maker (Enterbrain), Game Maker, Express Game Maker, Zelda Classic game maker, and so on.

I think C2 have the best of all these.

I started with RPG Maker XP when I was a teenager. I never finished any single game but I loved doing stuff in this software when I had free time. I remember a talented Pokemon fanboy created a very complete Pokemon engine based on RPG Maker and I used it for a long time.

Then when I was a game design student we had to use a 3D game engine called Virtools and it was terrible. This tool was very painful to use, buggy and outdated but we had to do with it. Anyone knows Virtools here?

Now I use C2 and it's way better than the other.

Previously, I have been using Unity3d with the android add-on. It's a great engine, but not really suitable for 2D games and it has hidden costs so I switched.

First, I used Stencyl. Felt too clunky for me. (The way you laid out objects on the scene was horrendous!)

Then, I tried Unity. You had to learn programming. The reason I was looking for a game maker other than Visual Studio is that I suck at learning programming. Also, it was for 3D games. Not ready for that.

Finally, I came across C2. I love it.

THE END

I have been through at least 7 engines but none of them were as easy to use or as powerful as c2. Engines I have tried include stencyl(A bit too fiddly), Gamemaker(Way too expensive) and 3d rad(No object types, only instances.). C2 is by far the best out of all of them.

For my personnal experience, I've tried first to... Program, which was long, and really frustrating, and also.. too much time consuming for me (and even with organisation, I was like "what this is doing, oh, I see" and 2 seconds later "what this is doing again?").

After that, I just wanted to make a "game", not to make a "program" (and as fun as it should, I also tried to do board games at home ^-^, so you underdstand easily why I think a program isn't the game itself).

I tried first RPG Maker (not sure of the version), and soon after, I realised my version was illegal (really.. I wasn't aware of that), I removed it quickly, I don't want illegals things on my computer! <img src="smileys/smiley21.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

After, I tried Game Maker (8.1 I think, not sure), What the point of using GML if some other language can do more, and also, the D&D doesn't offer good results for me, the Demo itself was weird... simple functions wasn't included, and GMS later was.. Expensive.. And the Economy politics of YoyoGames don't encourage me to go to it

Even I didn't really liked it, I used It for a little time, doing some little things, and finally someone talk to me about Construct Classic (which I didn't try really much) and later, about Construct 2, And that was just... What I needed, I wasn't able to connect to the French community forum (It took me a complete year, because of technical Captcha problems), so I had to understand, and learn, and try and retry the program, which was a lot of fun, and also rewarding

I tried Construct2, Construct 2 Tried me, I payed It some days before the r100, And I'll stay with Construct2, because it is what I needed, and what I still need.

PS: Special thanks to Kyatric , who presented me Construct and Construct 2 (you know me under the "Powerfish" name)

Hi! I'm actually an artist but I somehow started coding in asm/pascal/C on DOS ages ago, then dropped coding till when I started using javascript/python some years ago, and in meantime I messed with various engines and libraries like rpgmaker, ren'py, allegro, pygame, flixel, etc. The only engine I spent some more serious time with was AGS (adventure game studio) which I like a lot but that has some shortcomings (not truly multiplatform, some technical limitations). I did play with Construct Classic in the past and liked it, so I decided to give Construct 2 a try: in beginning it was feeling weird cos I could not write code at all but then I got more used to it and I'm now liking it a lot, so I'm moving my current game development from AGS to C2 :)

Cool topic.

I started building games using Flash (AS2).

It was the first time that I could think of a game idea and simply build it. It was just... magical.

But in the past couple years devices that support AS2 started to fade away and AS3 just wasn't as fun (more programmer-oriented rather than designer-oriented).

Then I discovered C2. I used it in this last Global Game Jam and was hooked. Haven't really built anything with Flash since (except for my day job). There are a couple things that Flash supports that to the best of my knowledge C2 doesn't (vector art, video footage)- but overall it is hands down better for me.