Construct 2 and 1080p Capabilities?

Ashley - Excellent contribution! Good note on the node-webkit as well. I will spend some time reading up on that today as well. I'm very glad that there are so many helpful and knowledgable people here in your forums... don't suppose there's a discount code for personal licenses per someone's birthday? Mine's is next Friday, heh.

Yeah, didn't think so. Don't get all awkward and silent on me, had to try.

Rich food for thought today people. I'm actively going to link my team/peoples to this thread as it goes on... I'm going to keep fooling around with the free edition but I can already feel the walls closing in on me, so to speak. It's not your fault, I'm just hesitant to spend "more money" on "programs like this" to discover their limits halfway through a project and have to abandon everything while I read up on alternatives.

Surely you know of "The Game Creators"? No good rat b-------... they put some of their game creation software on sale with a selection of model packs, and once I swipe the card and get it all downloaded, installed and updated, I discover that over half of the content bundled "is no longer compatible with the program" as of 8 updates ago. So, the tradeoff there was, "You can use the buggier, unstable older version of the program to fully utilize your purchase or update to the latest version and suffer through it's headaches while you gamble on buying model packs that may/may not work... ever."

Gamemaker Studio feels obtuse. It's very "small" considering, but what made it worth trying was the fact that it HAS been used in a handful of commercially-released, money-making games. It's a proven platform, even if it too has its limits.

Gamesalad... they want $300 a year or so, and if you're developing in Windows there seems to be a distinct disadvantage compared to developing on a MAC. Right there that's asking me to pick up a $2000 machine (I never buy entry level, that's my own fault there) just to experiment with something that ultimately releases heavily unoptimized gameplay experiences on it's target devices. It IS very easy to use however, and for web game experiences? Pretty straight forward. A lot of people will probably get a lot of enjoyment from it, but it doesn't do what I'd like it to do.

Construct 2 is where I've settled, I'm in love with the son of a bitch, but I want to "do right" by it. We've got the guts, creativity and (hopefully soon) the know-how to do something head-turning for Construct 2, but you look up at the history of horror stories we've had, you will see that "we spent a lot of cash and time producing titles and learning environments and have zero to show for it". It's put up or shut up time, and Construct 2 looks like it'll hold up its end of the bargain the more we talk about it.

I have no problem starting off with "retro" games as a test bed/experiment... but such a thing doesn't really flex the muscle here. Such a thing can get lost in the sea of similar "retro" games that are springing up all over the internet. Who knows? If our big game idea proves unfeasible, these may very well be the kinds of games we work on, but 1080p is still the target.

At this point I'm even leaning towards 720p to be honest... just how does Construct 2 upscale the image for full screen display? Can you just blow it up pixel-perfect, akin to playing the NES on a 65" widescreen display, or does it try to somehow "soften" or "smooth" the picture? That stuff drives me nuts. I'd much rather retain my pixels.

For now, my thoughts will go towards creating a web game I suppose. If we can stand out in the arcade, I know we can stand out in the real world as well. Does the free edition allow export for stand-alone PC titles? Or is this one of the features we're gonna have to buy upfront to test? (Raises eyebrow)

We developed Mortar Melon with a target resolution of 1600x1000. It's a bit less than 1080p but we're using the same resolution on mobile, tablet and desktop devices, with no loss of performance.

We developed Mortar Melon with a target resolution of 1600x1000. It's a bit less than 1080p but we're using the same resolution on mobile, tablet and desktop devices, with no loss of performance.

Very nice. Would you care to specify what mobile and tablet devices you are testing with? I'm not finding it on Google Play w/ my phone.

Mortar Melon is on the Windows Store and soon to be on the Windows Phone Store as well if it isn't already. It plays great on my Surface RT. One thing that you need to know is that Mortar Melon is a physics/catapult type game. Not an Angry Birds clone, but of the same genre. This means that it doesn't have as many moving sprites on screen at once, but relies heavily on physics, which leads me to believe it is more CPU bound than GPU bound.

But playing it on the Surface means it is basically using the IE engine when I run it and it still performs seamlessly at HD resolutions though IE is definitely not the front runner for HTML5 performance. So not sure how much of a direct comparison you can draw, but HD and running in IE and it still does great.

about the performance, when you play on your browser, the game runs better or worst then when exported for desktop?or its the same?

i steel have the free version of C2 and, is not possible to export in this version

i steel have the free version of C2 and, is not possible to export in this version

That's the real rub there... as I may (I think on these forums) mentioned, while Construct 2 is free to pick up and play with, you're pretty much going to have to invest $120 to find out if it'll carry your ideas through to "finished product". I've spent a lot of money on different programs that all work really well for getting the game put together, but ultimately, when the time comes to publish: Everything falls apart. The game doesn't run as smoothly for others as it did for you, the online component is buggy and nearly impossible to configure, for a game that's fairly simple it requires fairly high system requirements... and NO: LET ME CLARIFY RIGHT NOW THAT THIS ISN'T A CRITICISM OF CONSTRUCT 2.

Fact is, I haven't spent the money to know one way or the other about the "Export to PC" functionality apart from hearing that there's now a Node App Web Kit or some such hocus pocus that's included with Construct 2 now. I've read on the forum that results with it vary. Some people have issues with sound playing, some people have issues with the fonts not rendering properly (requiring them to create sprite-based assets for many things), and crazy framerate variations from 5fps - 60fps for next to no logical explaination other than "It seems Construct 2 has no native export options apart from HTML 5, and no true destination for the games apart from the internet."

It's dandy that "other people" are doing things to fake your game export, but some of it needs to find its way into the DNA of Construct 2 for any of it to be considered practical. We can theorize all day long that the right combo of the right plug-ins will achieve any publishing goal you're after, but eh... one day this needs to be a big priority for the dev team. The game development environment is amazing, but "What are you supposed to do if you're trying to make a buck?"

The common reply across these forums are "Have you checked out X's video? Have a look." or "X makes Y, it says right there on the label that it can do Z" and... BAM. You, as the game developer, who may have bought a full license and spent thousands in art assets, are left holding the bag... asked to gamble with incomplete export plug-ins and tools that'll pretty much shoot your project through the skull on a whim.

At the end of the day Construct 2 is an HTML 5 game development environment. That is what it does. If HTML 5 does not meet the requirements of your game, then there is really nothing Construct 2 can do about that. Any export options are going to be wrappers that wrap an HTML5/JavaScript game. It does not make native apps, it wraps HTML 5 in a native app wrapper, but it is still HTML 5 underneath. Some wrappers may accelerate it more, but at that point you are looking at the developers of those wrappers.

Construct is run by a 2 man team. Most of the teams working on these third party wrappers are bigger than that. The developers of those wrappers also tend to make plugins for Construct 2 and other engines as well. Construct has a published SDK that can be used to create plugins. It benefits the wrapper developers more to develop plugins to work with each of the game creation frameworks than it does for the game creation tool developers to try and figure out how all the wrappers work and then try to integrate them all into their tools. It is also much more efficient as focusing on making sure all the platform and wrappers can be directly integrated would take up the majority of their time and no new features or optimizations would happen to the core product. What makes more sense, having the folks who write the wrappers and know how they work make the plugins, or having the folks who don't work on the wrappers every day work on integrating them?

At the end of the day the question is does HTML 5 support everything you need currently for your game to work the way you want it to? If not, Construct 2 can't change that for you. Not trying to sound critical here, but your expressed concerns are based on the current reality of HTML 5 game development. Internet standards is a term very loosely used by the browser and platform vendors, and vary wildly from one to the next. Third party wrappers like CocoonJS, AppMobi, PhoneGap, et... are looking to level the playing field, but the are still early and constantly being improved. You may also notice in these forums that many of the teams that develop these wrappers also support construct 2 and are actively working on plugins for it. The wrappers weren't created because of a lack of features in Construct 2, they are created because of a lack of uniformity and standards across the HTML5 landscape in general.

Any how, sorry for the long winded rant, I haven't had my coffee yet...

Critical? Nah. I've dealt with some ---- working in the movie biz, nothing said here's getting under my skin. It's all information, and that's what we're here to squeeze out.

The only thing I can say in response is, "If the Construct 2 workflow is the most appealing, easily understood part of the game creation software, why restrict it to HTML 5, a standard that is 'emerging' at best?" If someone could take Construct 2 and apply the workflow to manage something "standard" for game development, say, a C# language, they should! Whole other beast, complete with all its own caveats and catches, but there would be the bonus that someone with true C# knowledge could "open up the code" and tweak it to get things running as they should. The way things are, the creative side of things are now "restricted" by the options available -today- for wrapping it up and, well, completing the game.

Wether or not they have the -experience- to produce their own wrappers, it's obviously something that Construct 2 needs or else NOBODY would be trying to make them. You go down the checklist of things that come with the license, and well, it doesn't mention in cute curly font that most of your target platforms are "partially supported, and by third parties not by us. Don't blame us if your game doesn't work as you design it." That's a real, REAL hard pill to swallow for anyone... and may be one of the big reasons why we're not seeing many success stories coming from it. You can't blame the workflow, I think it's genius... you can't blame the game developers, the stuff they put in screenshots and talk about doing is great... but none of it means anything if your audience is so limited. IE: The ideal browser, CPU hardware, a developer using the proper wrapper with ITS "free trial" limitations after purchasing a full version game development utility, and so on.

People are getting their games to the finish line, using the recommended "solutions", and discovering unforseen problems that are "Out of Scirra's hands, and out of their own hands". Unwanted splash screens, inconsistent performance even after optimizing their game to run in HTML 5 on hardware LESS powerful than their target platforms, etc. There are probably MANY great games made in Construct 2 that'll never see the light of day due to these complications.

If the two-man team is getting tired of answering the same questions over and over again about exporting to Android, Ouya, PC and so on, then it's something that they should spend serious time pondering a true solution for, even if it's a question of going to Kickstarter to raise the funds to hire a third man, fourth man, fifth man whose sole purpose in life is to make these unknowns a "fix". You think about all the people out there gearing up that are keeping their wallets pinched tight until they read, somewhere in the forum, somewhere on the website, "Now export to Android/PC/Ouya/Whatever with no additional third party software! Fully supported!".

Priceless, dude. It'll take Construct 2 out of the toy bin and put it on the top shelf. Why WOULDN'T they consider it?

> We developed Mortar Melon with a target resolution of 1600x1000. It's a bit less than 1080p but we're using the same resolution on mobile, tablet and desktop devices, with no loss of performance.

Very nice. Would you care to specify what mobile and tablet devices you are testing with? I'm not finding it on Google Play w/ my phone.

We've got it running on Windows 8, Surface and Windows Phone all perfectly. We've done preliminary tests on iOS 4S+ and same gen iPads with perfect results. I've heard Android is a bit hit and miss, but current-gen devices shouldn't be a problem based on the great iPhone performance.

Oh, PC, Mac and Linux also works perfectly out the box.

Based on my experience with other game engines, Construct 2 is superior for 2D cross-platform support. We've built a game using C# and XNA and are now forking out ?6000 to port for Android and iOS. Never again.

The only thing I can say in response is, "If the Construct 2 workflow is the most appealing, easily understood part of the game creation software, why restrict it to HTML 5, a standard that is 'emerging' at best?"

Html5 is platform-independent. It's beautiful. Sure the html5 revision is still emergent but this is html we're talking about here. It's not like it's gonna just crawl into a hole and die in a couple of years.

Fact is, I haven't spent the money to know one way or the other about the "Export to PC" functionality apart from hearing that there's now a Node App Web Kit or some such hocus pocus that's included with Construct 2 now. I've read on the forum that results with it vary. Some people have issues with sound playing, some people have issues with the fonts not rendering properly (requiring them to create sprite-based assets for many things), and crazy framerate variations from 5fps - 60fps for next to no logical explaination other than "It seems Construct 2 has no native export options apart from HTML 5, and no true destination for the games apart from the internet."

The PC and Mac export option with Node-webkit seems to work without any issues. No licensing caveats, no need for faffing about with a separate install and exes behave as native applications. I haven't tried the other exporting options so can't say anything about them. But C2 is perfectly usable as-is for more than browser games.

thehen and ErikT: Gorgeous responses, very meat and potatoes. I'd love to hear more about your stories with Construct 2... big fans of the Node-webkit? Being able to target PC and MAC alone would make this whole thing worth it. I love 2D, my team's gearing up for 2D, but it's all based on success stories like yours before we decide "THIS is the way to go".

Please share links to your Game Development blogs, journals, or just post a few stories here (good and bad alike, best to know everything). The world must know of your heroism!

Lovelocke64 One thing I should also point you to is that Construct Classic allows for PC game creation with DirectX, etc... as well and is free, though it is no longer being developed, it is still available as well. You lose the HTML5 cross platform capabilities, but if you want a straight .exe that may be an option as well.

I am currently digging through the field of wrappers, etc... myself in my quest to publish my games across Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS, Android, Nook and Facebook. So I am going through much of the same. My approach and workflow currently is going something like this:

Build the core game

Save a version for each platform I wish to target.

Go into each version and make adjustments as needed.

Currently I am focusing on Windows 8 and Windows Phone as they are two of the fastest growing markets currently. But once I have everything done and working on those, it will be a matter of seeign where the Android and iOS exporters are at that point.

BluePhaze There's no need to build separate versions of the game. That would be impossible to maintain long-term.

We separate platform specific logic into different event sheets.

thehen So you leave the windows 8 object, and all the others in there even when you start building for windows phone, iOS, etc..?

What do you have to do differently per platform thehen for your eventsheets? I've only experience with computers atm, but might still be interesting to know.