Here are a couple of ideas *I* use when deciding what game I want to work on next:

1. Play a lot of games, including games from lesser-known sites. Often I will find a title that has an interesting mechanic, but it's poorly implemented, or there are other features that I don't like. Use that as a starting point for a new game, where you fix the stuff that's wrong and add your own ideas.

2. Alternately, you can take that same cool mechanic and change the theme/setting/characters. "Angry Birds" is basically just "Crush the Castle" with birds and pigs! (And a lot more personality, of course.)

3. The physics engine is very powerful, so come up with a simple mechanic and just "play" with it for awhile. That will often suggest new game concepts. For example, one day I got curious if I could use the left and right cursor keys to affect an object's rotation. After I got that working I realized that it was fun to make the object do "flips" once it bounced into the air. That suggested a slew of different game ideas.

UPDATE: I wrote some VBA code in Excel to export my spreadsheet into C2's .json format. I made this a Project File and then used "AJAX.LastData" to "LOAD" the file into my array. Works great!

NEW QUESTIONS:

I want to make my web app available to my wife and other people in my French class. Ideally, the app will keep track of which words/phrases they get right and wrong so I can make the latter come up more often. I'll also need to add new words/phrases to the list by updating the .json file on the server.

What would be the best way to do this? Here's what I am currently considering:

PHRASES ARRAY:

[id] = Sequential numbering from 1 to the total number of cards. Doesn't change.

[french] = A French word/phrase

[english] = The English equivalent

[score] = This variable is used to determine how often that flashcard appears (based on whether players got it right or wrong)

LOCALSTORAGE:

[id]

[score]

Then I'll do something like this?

1. App starts - load Phrases Array from .json file on server

2. Load LocalStorage

3. Copy local [score] to array [score] by using the matching [id]

Then I'll show the Flashcards with the lowest score. If users get a card right then I'll raise the score. If they get a card wrong I'll lower the score.

If I store my Phrases Array with the [id] first and the [score] last then I should be able to sort the array on the X axis (sort by [id]). Or, Sort the array on the Y axis and then sort it on the X axis (sort by [score]). Right?

Using Clickteam's tools I sometimes get unexpected behavior when I try to put too many actions on the same event line. For example, on a Start of Frame event if you try to read data from an array and then use that data there can be issues. So you have to create another Start of Frame event and put the new actions there. Is this a problem in C2, as well?

I continue to be impressed by Construct 2's features. I was playing around with the debugger this weekend and it's SUPER useful! Very happy with my purchase.

Ack! I already tried that and it didn't work, but this time I re-imported the file and everything is working as intended. Thanks Ramones!

I'm working on a Flashcard app and earlier today, with some community help, I figured out how to get my French/English dictionary loaded into a properly formatted array. There's only one problem. All the accented characters are showing up as black diamond shapes with question marks in the middle.

The characters look fine in the .txt file I'm loading with the AJAX object. Is it a problem with the array object? Is this fixable? If not, what are my other options?

Thanks for the reply. I was looking at the CSV2Array plugin as I thought it would let me download a CSV and add the data to an Array. But I don't think it works like that; I apparently have to copy my data and paste it into a small field. I have 1000 rows of words and sentences, and I wasn't sure if it would accept that much data. Do you know?

UPDATE: I just tried to convert my data to .json but the array feature "download json" doesn't do what I thought it did. Back to square one. Maybe my first approach is still the best.

I am trying to learn French so I have created an Excel file with about a thousand rows of French words and phrases, along with the English translations. I have exported the file to .csv and it looks like this:

[ID,French,English]1,Je m'appelle,My name is
2,Tu t'appelles,Your name is (informal)
3,Il s'appelle,His name is
[/code:2lu9b3tr]

How do I get this data into my Array object?  

I added the .CSV to my Project files and I've successfully read it using AJAX.  Should I use a "For" loop and "tokenat" to parse it into the Array (using "Insert")?  It seems like Construct 2 prefers .json files so maybe I should just convert the Excel file to .json and read it into the array that way?

What's the best approach here?  Any thoughts or suggestions will be appreciated!

I'm working on a simple HTML5 game that is hosted on my website. It uses the physics engine and everything looks great on my PC and my iPad Plus. But on my wife's older iPad it looks like the game is running in slow motion. It's odd because the movement isn't jerky, like the game has low FPS, it's just that movement and bounces are slow.

I just realized that my wife's iPad is still running 7.1 and I don't think WebGL was introduced until iOS 8, right? She will divorce me if I mess up her iPad so I have been hesitant to upgrade, but would that make my game run better?

Some research last night taught me about delta time and I learned that older devices CAN make physics-based objects look like they are moving in slow motion. But the same article said that the built-in objects already use some form of delta time. So I was surprised when I noticed that my object with sine movement (period of 1 second) was moving about 50% faster on my PC than my wife's iPad. Shouldn't sine movement be framerate independent?

That's the kind of reply I was hoping to get Blurymind! Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my questions. (Thanks for your reply too, Eisenhans.)

Based on my research it sounds like C2's biggest weakness is exporting to other platforms, due to the reliance on HTMl5 wrappers which can be a little slow. I'm mainly looking for a rapid prototyping tool to test and show (in a web browser) game features at work, and maybe a tool to help me make some simple HTML5 games and apps at home. (For example, I'm working in Paris now and trying to learn French, so I wanted to make a flashcard app. I wanted accurate speech synthesis, and maybe even speech recognition, but I couldn't figure out ANY way to create such an app. Then, a few months later, I download C2 and it has examples of both features!!)

Ordering my license now.

I've been pretty busy at work so my time with the Free Version has been limited. A few more comparison questions, for anyone who has time:

1. Although I've used Clickteam products for years, it has some quirks. For example, you can't put certain actions on the same event line, and you have to remember to adjust the order of the actions in an event. Are there similar "gotchas" using Construct 2?

2. Last week I tried to use Construct 2 to move a sprite along a path, but there doesn't appear to be a way to define a path and have an object follow it. I can do this in Fusion, and there's a similar (even better) feature in Gamemaker. I could use Pathfinding for an RTS or Tower Defense game, but how would I make something like Zuma?

3. Earlier this evening, I did a test with 8 bouncing objects using the physics engine. I then created the exact same test in Fusion and ran both as HTML5 apps in Chrome.) The movement of the objects was noticeably smoother in Construct 2, but just before the first bounce C2 always had a split second freeze in the movement. When I would restart the program the "hitch" was gone, so it seemed like some sort of caching problem? Is there a best practice for pre-loading that would prevent this?

4. You can't easily make a multi-level game in Fusion without first creating your own level editor. (It's not super hard to do, but is sort of time-consuming.) It sounds like I can use Layouts for my levels in Construct 2 and hook most -- or all -- of them up to a single Event sheet. Is that right?

Despite the lack of a "path" movement (#2 above), I have been kind of blown away by all the features in C2. Last night I discovered tilemaps and before that I was very impressed with the text-to-speech and speech recognition examples.

Thanks for the reply Eisenhans. To be clear, I'm not looking for qualitative feedback; I'm mainly interested in quantitative feedback from experienced "Clickers". Specifically:

• About how long would it take you to make a simple Space Invaders level in Fusion 2.5?
• About how long would it take you to make the same level in Construct 2? (Could you do it faster/easier?)

I have years of experience with Clickteam products, but only a few days with Construct 2. It will take me awhile to get proficient with C2 so I can't really do this comparison myself...

I've been a professional game designer for over 30 years. Since I'm a horrible coder I use tools like Fusion 2.5 and GameMaker to create prototypes and test features. Unfortunately, I just started a new job and everyone at work (but me) uses a Mac... which means no one can actually *play* any of my prototypes or tests.

To solve this problem I bought the HTML5 exporter for Fusion. It works reasonably well, though it's not perfect. As a possible alternative I downloaded Construct 2 and I'm learning to use it. There's a lot to like!

My question for "Clickers" is about workflow and time. Can you develop simple prototypes quicker using Clickteam's products, or using Construct 2? Any other advantages/disadvantages I should know about?

NOTE: I like Fusion 2.5 (and Gamemaker) and will continue to use them both, when it's appropriate to do so. Just wondering if I should add Construct 2 to my arsenal. I may make some simple HTML5 games in my spare time, for friends and family, therefore I've been paying for my own tools and software. It's getting sort of expensive... so I don't want to buy Construct 2, or invest time learning to use it, if it isn't going to be beneficial in the long run. Hence, my questions.