change all of these cyptic, programmer specific terms into their "human readable" forms?
Hehehe, you should try real programming!
Seriously, though, I do think the terminology used in Construct is sufficiently simple. We have to strike a balancing act. On the one hand, beginners like you have to have a fighting chance. On the other hand, we aim Construct to design commercial quality 2D games, and if you're an experienced user, the "big colourful simple easy" approach of software like Kodu is nothing but a hindrance. By the way, I fired off an email to one of the guys on the Kodu project a while ago because I thought it was interesting. He described the project as aimed at children, and their site emphasises their young target audience. Construct isn't meant to be a kid's program and completely dumbed down.
[quote:310po22e]Having downloaded the program and clicked around quite a bit, I can't say I find it to be totally as comprehensible as I had hoped.
Did you try a tutorial like Ghost Shooter or Deadeye's excellent Platform School? They guide you through the basics step by step. I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't figure out a fairly complicated bit of software like Construct just by "clicking around".
[quote:310po22e]Another thing I noticed after studying the Wiki and such is that the tiny icons that are strung together in sequence, indicating the order of "events" and "functions" are not incredibly descriptive
Are you in the right event sheet editor view? It sounds like you're in chronological view, which is designed to be compact and you have to hover over icons to see what they are. If you switch to List view in the Events tab of the ribbon, everything's laid out descriptively.
[quote:310po22e]the obligatory "programmer speak" begins to emerge all over the place - words like "variables", "global variables", "functions", "z-order", "exclusion"
Many of these terms are not programmer specific and are actually general to game design. If you want to design games, for example, you have to ultimately use variables, even if they're managed by something as simple as drag and drop blocks. You simply can't avoid it for game design with any tool, any programming language, any design system anywhere. It's like trying to do math without being able to count. Another tool might "simplify" it by calling them "numbers" or something, but that's misleading. For example, you can store text in variables as well as numbers, so it would be counterintuitive and confusing to call variables "numbers" in Construct. Ultimately, that's what they are - they really are variables - so it's correct and appropriate to name them so. If you want to get in to any specialised field, even in an amateur way, you have to learn a little bit of jargon.
FYI the terms you mentioned mean:
variable: a value that can be changed (varied, hence variable), such as your current speed
global variable: a value that keeps its value over the whole application, between layouts, such as your score
functions: this is in fact named after the programming equivalent, and is to do with a special plugin that can be very useful for intermediate/advanced users. However, beginners can get by just fine without ever having to use it, it's more a shortcut for experienced users.
z-order: the front-to-back (depth, hence Z) order of objects, such as which object shows on top when two overlap
exclusion: an effect which has the same name and appearance of the photoshop exclusion blend
You can find much more on the wiki.
In short you a) need to learn a few terms to give yourself a fair chance of succeeding in game design and b) can safely ignore anything you don't understand. With Construct a beginner can make a wide variety of simple games with very few plugins and features: sprites, tiled backgrounds, text and simple events. If you don't understand a plugin or term, you don't have to use it. But it's there for if you ever do need it, and for experienced users who need to take advantage of it.
Hope that helps