In any case, I was wondering if anyone who's used Construct quite a bit and is more used to its features by now can provide me with a list of features this program has...
Construct is quite differently designed, so the list would be very long! However, a very much non-exhaustive list of Construct's strong points amongst other game creators would include:
- Sub-events
- Re-usable event sheets
- 'For', 'While', 'For Each' loops (in a single condition)
- Designed entirely around a hardware-accelerated engine & pixel shaders; advanced effects like full-display or per-layer zoom, motion blur, skew, bumpmapping, dynamic lighting & shadows, etc
- Flexible behaviors engine (formerly 'Movements'): every behavior is a plugin with unique actions, conditions and expressions
- Containers engine to make picking groups of instances very easy
- Simple expression syntax; parameter editing in a list; useful expression facilities such as string concatenation ('&' operator)
- Function object for advanced eventing (condition aliasing, pick-preserving function calls, expression functions...)
- No limits on variables, objects, events...
- Built-in inline Python scripting
- Proper timing engine for consistent gameplay speed on all computers, even with V-sync and differing framerates - including TimeDelta expression
[quote:jssza63n]I've been hearing a lot about pixel shaders in recent versions of all game design programs
They're just effects, like Monochrome. Add Monochrome to an object, and it appears black & white. This is done at runtime, and uses fancy hardware, so us geeks get excited over it. Most of the effects run very fast!