Does C2 require no programming?

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  • To answser the question of whether or not programming knowledge is required to use C2. You have first to define what programming is.

    If, to you programming is the sum of some obscure syntax and some mathematical formula. I'd say you've got a narrow view of it.

    If you define programming as "a way to tell the computer what to do", then everything you do in your event sheet, is actually, a form of programming.

    And once you learn more common way to program (C, Java, Javascript,...), you will notice that you're just doing exactly the same thing. In programming you have condition, you can make the computer do things (actions) and you definitely use some expression. You can also use loops and function.

    In my opinion (and that's only mine), I don't think that "no programming knowledge required" is really true. I would rather say "no scripting knowledge required" and also "a really fast programming learning curve".

    Because using Construct2, you have under the hood some boilerplate code in the form of the C2 engine itself, some plugins and behaviors that allows you to directly start with the most interesting part: making things move on screen using some inputs.

    If you were to code a game in raw javascript from scratch, and I did, you would have to handle asset loading, collision polygon creation, some way to create levels, and also be careful about browser compatibility and performance.

    Using Construct2, you can just (almost) ignore everything, and get started.

    And because you can directly see results, you learn some programming concepts very fast. Those who learnt programming the hard way had to write awefully boring programs with assignements like:

    "write an isLeapYear function to find if a year is a leap year" or "model a shopping cart" or "write a sorting function to sort numbers in an array" etc.

    Some find that interesting (and I did), but seriously... Learning programming while making your own game is so much more motivating.

    So in conclusion, to me, C2 is programming made accessible for every beginners.

  • dimakoles: If you want to move instant, just change acc and dec to 5000^^. There might be another way, but this is one of them^^. Just don't put Max Speed too high, 200-500 should be fine, experiment with it.You want to say that if I want to make acceleration equals to 0 I should change it to 5000?

    That's really very intuitive and simple :-)

  • I totally agree to yann's post. Just wasn't able to express myself in that detail. With "no programing" I mean "no syntax". And as Yann said, learning while making a game makes C2 so viable for me and many other ppl.

    When you put acc to 0, the sprite will accelereted with 0px/second.

    Putting it to 5000 and there is no visible progres of acceleration, cause it's instanly at its max speed. :P

  • Putting it to 5000 and there is no visible progres of acceleration, cause it's instanly at its max speed. :PI mean I expect velocity instead of acceleration

  • Hm, so what do you want to make exactly? Anything else where we can help?

  • One thing I've missed out is that C2 does not allow me to make build fail.

    <img src="http://s21.postimg.org/cfriyebiv/wwttttt.png" border="0" />

    Now I understand why C2 does not require programming. Thanks for your replies.

  • Hm, so what do you want to make exactly?I want to make velocity of object equals to 500 and I'm confused with C2 approach that has acceleration variable instead of velocity variable. This is not question :-)

  • I think Construct 2 is more capable than it's advertising suggests. Saying no programming required is kind of something that makes you think that Construct 2 is limited.

    I would advertise C2 in a more appealing way. For example, create powerful HTML5 games with innovative visual scripting. Take your existing skills and create fast prototypes for your company. Construct 2 is easy to learn even for beginners and powerful enough for the advanced users.

    And my opinion about if you need to know programming to use C2? To create something playable for you and your friends you don't need to know anything about anything. And to create something that others would play? I think you need to know at least some basics of scripting to create your own game and to understand what you are doing and why. If you don't know anything, then it's just like altering ini-files and textures for AAA-games.

  • Just set max speed to 500. Acc does slowly or fast increases the speed until its max. So Acc 5000 + Speed 500 = instant move the Sprite on 500 Speed^^.

  • Just set max speed to 500. Acc does slowly or fast increases the speed until its max. So Acc 5000 + Speed 500 = instant move the Sprite on 500 Speed^^.If I want to set velocity to 500 without acceleration why should I think about acceleration? Just

    velocity = 500

    acceleration = 0

    will be nicer :-)

  • Then use another behavior :) Custom movement behavior is more detailed.

  • Then use another behavior :) Custom movement behavior is more detailed.Okay, thank you

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  • I would say "Self.X + Self.speed * dt" is not programming, it is only an expression. It's closer to maths than programming. I don't think the fact it contains the word 'Self' changes that, because it's just a way to tell C2 where to get the variable, so I think that keeps it in the realm of maths. We could disallow anyone from typing in syntax like that, or use a patronising block system where you first have to drag in a multiply block, then the dt block, then the Self.speed block, and so on and on. I think both options are clearly inferior. Anyone with a basic grasp of math should be fine using the typed expressions. There are lots of advanced expression features, but you don't have to use them - if you like you can just use things like Sprite.X + 1.

    I would agree that "no programming required" is not strictly true, since the event system allows things like recursive functions, local variables, and loops. However I do think it's the most succinct way to describe it to new users. A more accurate line would be "no traditional programming required", but simply from a marketing point of view we think it gets the point across more clearly saying "no programming required".

    The point of Construct 2 is it makes game development accessible. Drop a sprite in to a game, give it the 8 direction behavior, and run it in a browser. To code just that by hand, you need a good knowledge of the javascript programming language, including its syntax, performance issues, quirks and gotchas; you need to know a bit of HTML and CSS; setting up the WebGL renderer and asset loading in a memory-efficient way requires technical knowledge of how GPUs work; how to make an identically-drawing canavs2D renderer to fall back to when WebGL is unavailable; you need to know how game loops work, how to accurately measure delta-time, how to receive user input; how to do everything so far while dealing with cross-browser quirks and differing feature support; probably how to use a simple code editor and the Chrome dev tools debugger, how to configure a local HTTP server for testing, and probably a few other things I forgot. Construct 2 lowers this barrier enormously, and the example I just gave truly does not involve programming. Construct 2 makes it deceptively easy - you might see the object moving around with arrow key controls and think "what's so hard about that?". Potentially, there's a lot hard with that, if you're coding!

  • I find it quite funny how this kind of topics come back on a regular basis.

    There's already been quite some discussions on the subject here or here in the past.

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