So What Is Your First Impression Of C3?

The main hateful thing is the subscription. So, For me, I'm trying to find an alternative game engine. Maybe Game Maker Studio. The only thing is making me wait is the hope that Scirra may change their mind and sell C3 in a reasonable one time payment (with no subscription). Otherwise, it means good bye Scirra.

Tom Ashley

The fix for the subscription issue has been solved by another company in the development space (not games development): Jetbrains. They had the same controversies moving to a subscription model and they introduced perpetual licences: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/ar ... k-license-

The idea is simple, at the end of each 12 month period of a subscription you can use the last major version without an active subscription. So if you purchase Construct 3 and then after 12 months cancel your subscription, you can continue to use it but receive no new updates.

If you're planning on supporting native iOS and Android exports like Clickteam Fusion 2.5 offers, then a subscription fee is not unreasonable (at least to me). That alone would be enough of an upgrade for me. The current means of exporting to those platforms in Construct 2 pales in comparison to Clickteam Fusion.

The idea is simple, at the end of each 12 month period of a subscription you can use the last major version without an active subscription. So if you purchase Construct 3 and then after 12 months cancel your subscription, you can continue to use it but receive no new updates.

This is exactly what I was talking about in my earlier reply. I would have no issue with a subscription system if I could keep using updates up to the point I stopped paying. That's essentially what Microsoft also does with Windows and I never heard anyone complain.

Speaking of which, I'm starting to think Scirra is actually going this route and they were either vague or misunderstood by everyone. I haven't really read into it much, but this just makes too much sense compared to they just want a subscription system that cuts you off entirely if you stop paying. I suspect this because of things like the editor works offline too.

> The idea is simple, at the end of each 12 month period of a subscription you can use the last major version without an active subscription. So if you purchase Construct 3 and then after 12 months cancel your subscription, you can continue to use it but receive no new updates.

>

This is exactly what I was talking about in my earlier reply. I would have no issue with a subscription system if I could keep using updates up to the point I stopped paying. That's essentially what Microsoft also does with Windows and I never heard anyone complain.

Speaking of which, I'm starting to think Scirra is actually going this route and they were either vague or misunderstood by everyone. I haven't really read into it much, but this just makes too much sense compared to they just want a subscription system that cuts you off entirely if you stop paying. I suspect this because of things like the editor works offline too.

I hope this is the path Tom and Ashley do take. If they don't, I'm definitely not going to buy into the subscription model at all.

>

> > The idea is simple, at the end of each 12 month period of a subscription you can use the last major version without an active subscription. So if you purchase Construct 3 and then after 12 months cancel your subscription, you can continue to use it but receive no new updates.

> >

>

> This is exactly what I was talking about in my earlier reply. I would have no issue with a subscription system if I could keep using updates up to the point I stopped paying. That's essentially what Microsoft also does with Windows and I never heard anyone complain.

>

> Speaking of which, I'm starting to think Scirra is actually going this route and they were either vague or misunderstood by everyone. I haven't really read into it much, but this just makes too much sense compared to they just want a subscription system that cuts you off entirely if you stop paying. I suspect this because of things like the editor works offline too.

>

I hope this is the path Tom and Ashley do take. If they don't, I'm definitely not going to buy into the subscription model at all.

Tom, Ashley

This is good idea, I think C3 should do this way

Tom

When are we gonna learn the theme of the Newgrounds C3 Jam?

Tom Fulp wanted to announce it much closer to the time, all will be revealed in due course

Please don't take this thread off topic and there is lots of good feedback here for Tom and Ashley to consider.

There is a topic on Jams for those questions.

Thanks!

It's really hard to do frozen updates. The free edition is always kept up-to-date, as it's really part of our marketing and we want to make sure there's the latest and greatest version for people to use. So this approach means for some users, you sign in and then it has to downgrade you to an older version than you're already running. If that downgrade doesn't work or is blocked, you get the latest update anyway. Plus I think on the off-chance there's a Chrome bug that breaks even just very old versions, currently that doesn't matter, but with frozen updates it will cut some people off. I think that would work out very badly: either we have to effectively fork our support and maintain multiple different versions of the codebase for essential fixes, which is a big drag on development, or we just tell users sorry, we're not patching it, and then I'm sure they'll get upset anyway because something they once paid for no longer works.

It's a great deal easier and simpler just to keep everyone up-to-date.

I have started a new thread now that most of us have tried C3 and I would love to hear your feedback about C3.

So What Is Your Second Impression of C3 And Will You Buy?

https://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=191&t=190060

It's really hard to do frozen updates. The free edition is always kept up-to-date, as it's really part of our marketing and we want to make sure there's the latest and greatest version for people to use. So this approach means for some users, you sign in and then it has to downgrade you to an older version than you're already running. If that downgrade doesn't work or is blocked, you get the latest update anyway. Plus I think on the off-chance there's a Chrome bug that breaks even just very old versions, currently that doesn't matter, but with frozen updates it will cut some people off. I think that would work out very badly: either we have to effectively fork our support and maintain multiple different versions of the codebase for essential fixes, which is a big drag on development, or we just tell users sorry, we're not patching it, and then I'm sure they'll get upset anyway because something they once paid for no longer works.

It's a great deal easier and simpler just to keep everyone up-to-date.

In my eyes this problem is simple to solve:

• Just provide a frozen version for the offline edition only.
• Keep only the newest versions supported. Warn the users that if they are going to use the frozen version, they won't receive support till they re-subscribe and update again.

This way you would solve the problems you mentioned in your post and also ease the souls of those who fear the lockout (myself included).

> It's really hard to do frozen updates. The free edition is always kept up-to-date, as it's really part of our marketing and we want to make sure there's the latest and greatest version for people to use. So this approach means for some users, you sign in and then it has to downgrade you to an older version than you're already running. If that downgrade doesn't work or is blocked, you get the latest update anyway. Plus I think on the off-chance there's a Chrome bug that breaks even just very old versions, currently that doesn't matter, but with frozen updates it will cut some people off. I think that would work out very badly: either we have to effectively fork our support and maintain multiple different versions of the codebase for essential fixes, which is a big drag on development, or we just tell users sorry, we're not patching it, and then I'm sure they'll get upset anyway because something they once paid for no longer works.

>

> It's a great deal easier and simpler just to keep everyone up-to-date.

>

In my eyes this problem is simple to solve:

- Just provide a frozen version for the offline edition only.

- Keep only the newest versions supported. Warn the users that if they are going to use the frozen version, they won't receive support till they re-subscribe and update again.

This way you would solve the problems you mentioned in your post and also ease the souls of those who fear the lockout (myself included).

Customers would expect bug fixes, and retro fixes for breaking changes. This would be a headache to maintain. Secondly, support would become mired in difficulties with everyone running different versions.

Customers would expect bug fixes, and retro fixes for breaking changes. This would be a headache to maintain. Secondly, support would become mired in difficulties with everyone running different versions.

I understand that. However it's either you don't provide these frozen versions regardless of how much users want it to feel safe for their projects or you'll put up a big warning sign that says something like "This version is no longer supported officially. We'd strongly encourage you to update to the latest version for new features, bug fixes and official support."

There will be always people who'll post topics with later versions, not understanding what that sign says. But since you constantly get questions for native exports and 3D support, I don't think that this would be such a big problem. Also, what about the offline versions? Say, an educational institute installs offline versions on their computers which don't have internet access and therefore can't be updated. When they ask for support, isn't this the same situation as someone using a frozen version?

There has been numerous examples of companies posted in different topics who do this frozen version thing. I don't think that they constantly support 100s of versions, yet they still can provide the frozen versions for their loyal subscribers. Just an idea: Make the user subscribe for a year, than only provide the frozen version when they renew their subscription. This would eliminate the problem of using old versions (since the user would update), but still would give them something to hold on. In my eyes the frozen versions' purpose would be to ease the community and give them something that can open/edit/export the projects that they made with the previous versions. The frozen version is not something that would need to be supported later on. I think anyone who is asking for such knows that, since you can't expect even a large company to support outdated versions of their software. However, providing these (at least in my eyes) would align with the open minded philosophy of Scirra.

Limiting it to the desktop app doesn't fix anything. You still only need to find a newer version.

They can't have an unlimited editor out in the wild. It could be copied endlessly.