Verdant Village

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    Verdant Village
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    You've washed ashore in a foreign land. With nothing to your name other than a few tools you’ll have to learn how to live off the land. Explore, grow crops, and...

    3 years ago
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  • Aside from this there were minor little things that always sort of bothered me. NW.js is basically just a chrome window running as a desktop app. That came with weird stipulations surrounding the mouse and updating the window size, setting fullscreen, etc. Nothing major, just minor little annoyances in my mind.

    Now, all of this aside the other issue, which really only became relevant in the more recent console gens I think is the porting issue. If you weren't aware you can't really (to my knowledge) easily port your Construct game to consoles like switch, xbox, and playstation. This may not matter to you at all, but if you are looking to make money you are cutting out a huge chunk of the market.

    • Back when Construct 2 was the engine here I believe one of its main selling points was that it could be easily ported around because the base of the engine is HTML which is a fairly universal language. What Scirra likely couldn't predict is that consoles decided basically within one generation of hardware that they didn't want to support HTML anymore which kind of killed the whole idea.

      Now. I will say, if you want to use C3 and still port to console there are apparently options. The link below is an example of one.

      construct.net/en/forum/construct-2/general-discussion-17/chowdren-fast-construct-134395

      • I don't know much about it, but it seems like a third party porting option. This likely works fine, but as someone who works in computer science, I don't tend to like pushing a program through another porting program to get it to work. There's the danger of something breaking obviously, but there's also the concern of losing efficiency because you are basically taking code that is made to work in one language and transforming it into another. Something like that usually doesn't happen cleanly.

        I don't want to slight the people who make porting programs like this, I'm sure they are very smart (likely way smarter than me) and capable, it just makes me nervous. More so when I think about how the entire game I'm working on is reliant on not just the engine I'm making it in sticking around, but now a separate porting program to actually get it to run also being around and keeping up with any changes to the C3 engine it concerns me.

        • Basically, too many layers for me to be comfortable. Also, while they don't outright say it I have to assume that using a porting program like that probably costs a pretty penny to do a base port and potentially some sort of additional fee each time you want to patch it (but that's just speculation).

          All this said, the game in this engine also had more than a few issues in terms of my code. I learned a lot as I made this game, but by the time I realized some of the things I did wrong it was far too late to change them without ripping everything out. Remaking it in a new engine provided an opportunity to fix those issues and make other changes to the game as well.

          • Last thing, which may not matter if you aren't looking for a more simplified engine. C3 does a lot of stuff to simply things for the coder. If this is what you want its great, and don't let anyone tell you that you can't make a game without directly writing code, they're completely wrong. However. In simplifying things you take away options which in turn creates restrictions. The most obvious example of this is the sprite in C3. The sprite basically works as both the object and the image in C3. Its a bit hard to explain without going into even more detail (and this is already super long) but by tying everything together like that you lock in a lot of details, disallow things, and also likely cause some redundancy in your assets. None of this is a death sentence but it can be restrictive.

            • So, I'll stop rambling now. I've gone on long enough. Construct 3 is a fine engine if you are looking to make a game. The most obvious concerns I can bring up are those revolving around the NW.js exports. NW.js is a shell program that Scirra simply uses for exporting. It is still in beta to my knowledge and is open source which means a whole bunch of people just collaborate on making it better. Because Scirra doesn't make the NW.js framework they are at the whims of the people who do. So issues revolving around graphics cards compatibility and errors in running NW.js won't necessarily be fixed. I mean they probably will but you have to remember the people making NW.js aren't making it for Construct specifically. They are just making it. So if you have an issue with your export it may not be fixed for some time, if ever. Also reporting the issue to the NW.js people is usually pretty hard unless you want to get fairly deep into coding stuff.

              • But, I've started rambling again. Sorry. This is all just my experience. Large games have been made in Construct. Iconoclasts is the one I remember being made in Construct Classic as sort of a proof of concept for me using the engine (its on Steam if you aren't familiar). I don't think its a bad choice of engine, especially if you don't want to get lost in code, just be wary of the potential issues you could have.

                • Also, last word of advice, I promise. I could be completely wrong, but you remind me of me when I was younger and wanted to start making games. The first thing I wanted to make was an MMO like world of warcraft. You've likely seen this opinion all across the internet but its best to start small in terms of projects. A game like this seems like it would be simple on the surface, plant some crops, raise some animals, mine some rocks, etc. I can tell you from experience that it cascades into a huge undertaking. Of course, far be it from me to dash your dreams. I believe that if you are willing to work for it you can make whatever you want regardless of experience. Just understand that it may be a long and bumpy road. Regardless, good luck, and I'm sorry for writing a short story here.

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