I hate to be THAT guy and again, i've been advocating for and defending Construct against criticism in the past but as someone who animates for a living this is just very close to heart...

As a background, I produce animation for corporate training and educational purposes, lead a team of two people as a creative director for a fortune 500 company where we produce a lot of animation and freelance for more "fun" projects next to all that like i.e. a credited brief stint as an animator on an adult swim show.

I've worked with After Effects, Flash (now Animate), Moho Pro and, my favorite, Toon Boom Harmony Premium.

There is absolutely NO WAY that i would use Construct for animation over any of the above mentioned software packages, which have literally decades of development behind them and were very carefully catered for animators and suits all their needs.

When it comes to producing HTML5 animation for the web, i'd either go with Animate CC, which i rarely use these days but it comes with our company wide CC subscription OR, would look into Rive.App, which was recommended to me by my colleagues and seems to be a really robust piece of software that is very similar to tools found in the above mentioned packages.

I maybe used the Construct timeline once or twice in my projects since i found it to be extremely confusing and non-intuitive. If i have to think longer than 30 seconds about how a timeline works, there's really something wrong, sorry, but by now after using so many timelines, this is just something so standardized, that it should work in a more standardized way. Beside that, in my experience the timeline used to crash a lot. I don't know how it is these days, it might be better.

In any case, the claim that Construct is the "BEST and EASIEST" animation tool to me is just either delusional or simply a very bold claim that can be debunked and backfire very easily.

Construct's animation features are just very clearly developed with neither a clear understanding of animation workflows nor any sort of input from professional animators and it shows. The interactivity might be nice but it's probably already a total overkill for most animators, who definitely won't spend the time learning the ins and outs of the event sheets. As intuitive as they are, they still need time to learn. Compared to something like Rive or all your usual prototyping tools like Figma or Invision, which can export HTML 5 and offer easy(er) to use interactivity features as well, it's really not all that intuitive as you might think.

Again, i don't mean to be nasty or criticising just for the sake of it but it seems to me, that Scirra tries to enter a market that they neither really understand the customer base nor the competition. They saw an opportunity to kill two flies with one blow with the timeline and went for it, which is commendable, but for Construct Animate to be in any way a consideration for animators it would need a HUGE and i mean HUGE, probably months to years, amount of research, programming, testing and marketing.

I just hope they didn't bite off more than they can chew and hope they really go in and look at whats out there and what the people they want to sell this to actually need. Which also brings me to this: WHO is this for exactly? WHAT animators? Motion Graphics people who work for video? Definitely won't use it, and one video export option with a file format that is highly compressed won't change that either (usually you animate either directly in the compositing software or export image sequences and then go to compositing or some ProRes or other video format with less noticable compression).

Character animators, game animators, UI designers, etc. etc. there is really no clear indication, who they want to develop this for...

I've never been this critical of any of Scirra's decision and i've been with them since the early C2 days and was a day one adopter of C3. But this project, to me, doesn't seem to be under a good star, unless they are willing to put enormous resources into it and i can't see how that will NOT affect C3.

But just my 2 cents, rant over :D

Updated again:

* fixed the coloring issue.

* let you use "white" or "black" as a color in addition to "r,g,b".

* added an option to change the background to be darker when using lighter colors.

* now generates the "spacing data json" that C3 uses. So in c3 no events are needed to setup the spacing. joelmayer

* some general event cleanups.

R0J0hound

Dude thank you so much seriously. I can imagine it took you hours and I really appreciate that a lot, this thing will be so useful in the future for so many people. Really really appreciate it thanks a ton!!!

Again, if I can give you a small donation or anything anywhere, let me know I don't want you to feel like your time and effort is taken for granted.

Thanks!!!! <3 <3 <3

Got a little error message while trying to open it :) Probably just needs a conversion to str in front of an expression or sth.

C3 is the most used engine on itch.io. It IS already successful... GameMaker has been around literally decades longer and therefore a you'll find more stuff of it online and not everybody NEEDS the level of ease of use that Construct offers. Some people want to code traditionally, especially if they have a programming background. And yeah if you want to do 3D then of course you'll go with Unity or a similiar tool.

And tbh if i would be a GameMaker user for the last ten years then i would be VERY weary of learning anything new vs. just making my next project because i'm simply just used to it. Not because GameMaker is inherently better but because i would already know how to use it. In the end it's about making games not endlessly deliberating on engines.

Now Construct has its own wrappers too that allow for lightweight apps on Mac and Windows.

As for Consoles: every Unity dev i know who released a game on console worked with a publisher who did the ports for them. I think people underestimate the enormous complexity involved with publishing to these platforms. Construct has two publishers/porting houses that i know of: Ratalaika and Chowdren. So it's not really an issue.

In the end, it comes all down to personal preference. That's why there are 100 flavors of Pringles and not just one. Same with game engines.

And from what i can see, Construct is growing steadily and already a pretty big player in its range. Like the GMS2 CEO once said, he doesn't see himself in competition with Unity at all because they are targeting different types of developers. And the same is true with Construct.

So just keep using it as long as it suits your need. BTW, nobody sais you should only learn one tool. I know many people who use Construct next to stuff like Unity etc. I personally i.e. use THREE different animation apps (Toon Boom, Moho, Grease Pencil) depending on whatever job i have to do and which one is the strongest tool for that. So yeah, there's my 2 cents.