Ashley's Forum Posts

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    I honestly think if we did what many are suggesting - and post all the features first and hype it up even more, then make the same announcement - it would have gone down worse. Everyone would have accused us of being deceptive, pulling some kind of bait-and-switch scam. We knew this would be a shock to many people, the only question was when to say it. So we chose to say it first, so you know from the start. I'm not surprised, I get the frustration, but I think this is the most transparent and up-front way of doing it.

    I'm not sure how to even reply to everyone - for example some people are saying we should have been upfront, and I genuinely think we were, in a way many other companies wouldn't have been. Lots of people are saying we should have announced features - and we did, but they were largely ignored (which we kind of expected). Multiplatform is huge. Chrome OS is huge. I get it, not a big deal if you're already happy with Windows, but that is still aimed squarely at the persistently top feature requests for years - Mac and Linux support. And there's a ton more. We have weeks and weeks of announcements lined up still.

  • We've been clear on this for a long time - we're not doing native exporters. I wrote about this in detail here: https://www.scirra.com/blog/ashley/28/the-case-against-native-engines

    In many cases, doing a native engine won't actually get people what they're asking for - e.g. it won't improve GPU-bottlenecked games. We've also been clear that 3D amounts to a different product so we're sticking to 2D. There's nothing new about any of this.

  • Modern browsers have multiprocess architectures that ensure tabs are isolated at the operating-system level. So other tabs shouldn't affect the performance or stability of Construct 3. It even means crashes in other tabs are isolated and won't take down C3 as well.

    If you open 100+ tabs, you're giving your computer a huge amount of work to do. It's like opening 100 different apps on your desktop. You have a finite amount of computing resources available, and it's amazing it can even handle as much as some people throw at it.

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  • One-off payments are not really a viable model for web-based services. In fact it's only a viable business model for C2 because we get a steady enough stream of new users buying it that we stay in business. With that model, if we stopped getting new users, we'd go out of business, even if we had tens of thousands of active users.

    For the years I've been working on Construct 2, users have routinely asked for simultaneously more features and lower prices. We have to draw a line somewhere.

  • chaimg - this thread is about 5 years old and all the technology has changed since then. You should start a new thread and include full details about what you're doing.

  • The overhead is around ~60mb with default compression settings - less if you use specialist compression tools like RAR. So if you're worried about the download size, that's a more realistic overhead. If you're worried about the size on disk, why? Modern desktop systems have hundreds of gigabytes of storage.

    In my view this doesn't matter. If you're making a small, casual game, why not just put it in the browser? If you're making a larger game, 60mb isn't much, especially when modern PC games are tens of gigabytes big.

  • I don't like to say this but the ffmpeg.dll that ships with Electron doesn't have this problem.

    I think they might do the same thing as that GitHub account: they just say "hey look, we built it, here's a DLL if you want it - but it's entirely up to you to determine if you're allowed to use it. It's not our responsibility and don't complain to us if somebody sues you."

    So the fact it's available for download does not mean you're allowed to use it. IMO NW.js takes the right approach of distributing something you're definitely allowed to use, rather than something you likely need a license for.

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    In the latest versions of C2, you can also record videos of the canvas from events.

  • I deliberately did not change this expression in WebGL 2 mode for two reasons:

    • what are you going to do differently if it's supported? Probably nothing - there isn't much different other than slightly improved visual quality in some specific circumstances. So it should not be important to the game logic if WebGL 2 is supported.
    • I assume there are lots of projects out there that do something like "if renderer = "webgl", do some cool effects, otherwise turn them off" (intending this to fall back to canvas2d). If there is a new "webgl2" mode, this will then fail that check, and possibly make the game disable effects when there's no need to. In other words it's a backwards-incompatible change. People hate it when they update C2 and something is broken.

    So there's not much to gain and a lot to lose.

  • I asked previously for all the necessary files to reproduce the problem. I still don't see that anyone has provided them. I cannot investigate the issue without that.

  • That seems to contradict what I've heard from other sources. But I can't speak on behalf of Microsoft here.

  • Closing as the .capx relies on a third-party plugin. Please see our bug report guidelines. This could also be a change on the part of YouTube - maybe they don't want you playing videos from NW.js.

    You absolutely should not download and use a different ffmpeg DLL unless you've seen this notice on that website, understand the legal implications, and have paid for the correct codec licenses:

    [quote:2qapn1ct]Using MP3 and H.264 codecs requires you to pay attention to the patent royalties and the license of the source code. Consult a lawyer if you do not understand the licensing constraints and using patented media formats in your application. For more information about the license of the source code, check here.

    This also applies regardless of where you obtain ffmpeg.dll from, if it includes certain codecs.

    The version that ships with NW.js does not include any patented codecs, so is free to use. AFAIK YouTube supports open codecs, so it should be possible to get it working, but it's not our responsibility to investigate or fix third-party plugins.

  • I think it's important to note:

    • the exact laws vary around the world and depend on the jurisdiction
    • if you want to know for sure, get proper legal advice - consult a lawyer

    Still the easiest answer is - just don't do it. At least one sure-fire way of avoiding copyright infringement is to simply not go down the fan game route at all.

    As far as I am aware (as a non-expert, non-lawyer) in some cases companies are required to issue takedown notices, to keep their trademarks valid. For example if you could prove that Nintendo knew about, but did not try to take down, a game using the Mario character, they could lose the rights to use Mario themselves. So they have to come after you. They probably have staff hunting for this kind of thing. This makes it pretty risky to release anything at all, ever. And I think the reddit post is correct in saying that making it free does not change anything.

    If you make a game privately and never release it to anyone else ever, I guess you might get away with it. But I think most people eventually want to share what they've made, and I'd guess keeping it private still doesn't make it legal either.

    I also think in the community there's an interesting comparison to C2 devs who want their games protected. Lots of users are worried someone will rip off their games, and often ask questions about how to best protect the code & assets, what to do if someone copies your name/character ideas etc. It's funny that so many people in this community are worried about this exact problem happening to them, yet others seemingly defend the whole fan-game idea, which is often doing just that. I don't know if any particular individuals exist who are both worried someone will rip off their game and is also in favour of ripping off other people's games, but it's still interesting that these conflicting views exist in the community.

  • Last I wrote that it was true (quite a while ago now), but if you can rename the .exe and everything still works... I guess they fixed it!

  • There shouldn't be any performance difference between them, but I find PhoneGap Build more convenient to use.