Construct has been in development for many years. Much like with superseded features, over time new features are occasionally introduced that replace older features. Usually the older features are supported as long as possible to improve backwards compatibility. However sometimes the maintenance burden and additional complications caused by having to continue to have the older features means that they must ultimately be retired.
When you open a project, Construct will warn you of any deprecated or retired features the project uses. The Deprecated features dialog may appear when opening a project to list all such features. It is strongly recommended to act as soon as possible to resolve all the items listed, thereby removing the use of all the deprecated features from your project. This will ensure your project continues to be supported and work correctly in future. If you don't take action, you may find your project stops working, or possibly cannot be opened, in a future release of Construct.
You can view the deprecated feature list for a project at any time, including if you previously checked Don't show again for this project in the dialog, by right-clicking the project name in the Project Bar and selecting Tools►View deprecated features. If the option does not appear, it means the project does not use any deprecated features.
This guide covers every type of deprecation or retirement warning and describes steps to take to stop using the affected feature.
Z axis scale 'Normalized'
Construct was originally a fully 2D engine. One of the first 3D features added was the ability to move 2D objects up and down the Z axis - a feature called "Z elevation" at the time. Originally this had the camera set up at a Z position of 100 regardless of the size of the viewport, so an object moved to a Z position of 50 was always half way to the camera. However this meant the Z axis worked on a different scale to the X and Y axes. This became a problem when adding further 3D features. For example in this mode, if you want to make a 3D shape object a cube, its size may need to be something like 120 x 120 x 15 rather than the more obvious 120 x 120 x 120. As Construct moved further in to 3D features this increasingly became a problem.
In 2022 Construct added an option to set the Z axis scale to 'Regular', which fixed this problem. In 2025 the 'Regular' mode became the new default. Some new 3D features require 'Regular' mode to work, and the old 'Normalized' mode does not really make sense to use any more; meanwhile its presence complicates the on-going development of Construct. Therefore 'Normalized' mode is deprecated and will ultimately be removed. However there remains a backwards compatibility problem as there were a few years where all new projects were set to the 'Normalized' mode, and it is difficult to automatically update projects to the new mode.
Updating projects to 'Regular' mode
As of r487, in many cases Construct will automatically update 2D projects to use Z axis scale 'Regular'. It does this when it detects there is no use of the Z axis and so the project should continue to work exactly the same. A notification still appears when Construct does this to make sure you're aware it happened.
Where Construct cannot automatically update the project, you may see a deprecation warning, and you will have to manually make changes. To convert your project, follow these steps.
- Make a backup of your project in case anything goes wrong.
- Make sure the project has the 3D camera object if it doesn't already.
- Select the 3D camera object in the Project Bar so you can see its properties in the Properties Bar. Make a note of the Z scale property.
- Select the name of the project in the Project Bar to show the project's properties. In the group Compatibility settings, there should be an item that says Convert Z axis scale with a link saying Convert to 'Regular'. Click that link, and then click OK to confirm. This will update the positions and sizes of all objects in all your project's layouts according to the Z scale to make sure they appear to be in the same place despite the fact the Z axis scale changed.
- The last step is to update your event sheets (and code if you use JavaScript/TypeScript) to work with Z axis scale 'Regular'. Unfortunately it's not possible for Construct to automatically update these for you, so you have to do it manually. Anywhere your project has logic that uses the Z axis, it needs to be scaled by the Z axis scale. For example if there is an action to set an object's Z co-ordinate to 100, and the Z scale you noted down earlier was 2.5, then you need to update the action to set the Z co-ordinate to 250 instead. This can take a fair bit of work in large projects to track down everything that does calculations on the Z axis and make sure it is scaled for the new Z axis scale. Note this includes the depth (formerly "Z height") of 3D objects like 3D shape.
Once your project is updated, you'll also be able to make use of the latest features like the 3D editor view, which requires using Z axis scale 'Regular'.
3D shape 'Z tiling factor'
The 3D shape object can display a Tiled Background on one of its faces. The 'Z tiling factor' property existed to help adjust how the tiling appears on the Z axis to mitigate the different scale when using Z axis scale 'Normalized'. However as explained above, the Z axis scale 'Normalized' is to be retired in favor of 'Regular'. That therefore makes this property redundant - when using 'Regular' Z axis scale, this property should always be 1. In future once the Z axis scale 'Normalized' has been removed, this property will also be removed as it will have essentially been made redundant.
Export file structure 'Flat' mode
Historically Construct exported projects with all project files in the root folder and with lowercased filenames, referred to as flat mode. In 2022 Construct was updated to preserve the folder structure and filename case of project files, referred to as folders mode. This is a much better mode as it preserves your folder organization and is important for features like JavaScript Modules. However changing the mode could break some projects, as it changes where some project files are found, such as when requesting project files by URL.
For example consider a project using a file named "Hello.txt" in a subfolder named "myfolder". The file path is in fact "myfolder/Hello.txt". However in flat mode, where project files are referred to by a string, this file could be loaded from the path "hello.txt", as it exports all files in the root folder with lowercased names. After changing to folders mode, the file must be referred to with the string "myfolder/Hello.txt", reflecting its true path; the old string will no longer refer to the file and may return an error such as 404 Not Found. This also applies to audio files referred to by a string, although the file extension is omitted for those.
In r450+, released in 2025, the legacy flat mode was removed, and all projects automatically use folders mode. Older projects may show a warning that the project used to use flat mode, which may mean you need to update any changed file references as described above.
Deprecated plugins/behaviors
Construct will list any plugins or behaviors used in your project that are marked deprecated. This means the entire plugin or behavior is no longer supported and should not be used any more. Usually this is because it has been replaced by a newer addon or feature, or the addon was for a third-party service that was shut down. If your project uses deprecated addons, you should delete them from your project, and where applicable replace them with a newer addon or different feature.
To remove a deprecated plugin, all object types based on the plugin must be deleted from the Project Bar. To remove a deprecated behavior, all objects using the behavior must have the behavior removed.
To help you identify where a deprecated addon is used, follow these steps.
- Right-click the name of the project in the Project Bar.
- Choose Tools►View used addons.
- Find the deprecated addon in the list.
- In the References column, the first few object names using the plugin or behavior are listed. To see a comprehensive list, right-click on the addon and choose Find all references....
Deprecated plugins and behaviors are hidden from the list when adding a new object or behavior. Therefore any plugins or behaviors you can still add from Construct are not deprecated. Any of these can be used as replacements for deprecated addons.
Functions
The legacy Function plugin will also be listed as a deprecated plugin. In 2019, Construct 3 introduced a new built-in functions feature which replaces the old Function plugin. Projects using legacy Functions should switch to using the new built-in system.
To help with converting to built-in functions, you can right-click an On function condition in the old Function plugin, and select Replace with built-in function. Note due to differences between the features, it may not always be possible to automatically replace the function, and you will need to do it manually instead.
For more information on built-in functions, see the manual section on Functions.
Classic scripts
Construct's JavaScript coding feature relies on JavaScript Modules, using import and export statements. However it originally used "classic" mode scripts, which don't support import or export statements. In 2020 Construct added support for modules, and in 2021 it removed support for the legacy "classic" mode scripts. To help you identify compatibility problems with old projects, Construct continues to warn you if you open a project that was still using "classic" mode scripts.
To update the project to use modules, refer to the tutorial Upgrading projects from classic scripts to modules. The next time you save the project the deprecation warning will no longer appear.
Other deprecated features
Sometimes individual conditions, actions or expressions are marked deprecated, or effects are deprecated. Construct does not currently notify you about these, because they are generally minor and easy to continue to support in the long term. However you may notice these as some conditions, actions, expressions or effects that you can access from the user interface differ from the ones referenced in an old project. If this is annoying for any reason, you can delete the old usage and add it back with the new usage to update it, but usually this is not necessary to keep the project working.