What would make Construct 2 different from others?

Is it fair for you to ask Ash to work part time on it, so you can avoid paying the price of the license?

No, not fair...

But I would prefer the old Construct situation over the new one.

I understand the new one (I read the post from Ashley), but this topic presented 2 options and I wanted to express my opinion.

Is it fair for you to ask Ash to work part time on it, so you can avoid paying the price of the license?

I don't think the price of a license is an issue for the majority of people.

It's hardly going to break the bank is it.

But I'm not convinced that the old Construct method worked that well.

In my time here, there are major bugs that where never fixed, despite requests, many posts from people asking very relevant questions that went unanswered even though other posts around them were answered, devs disappearing for long periods of time, some forever, and then the project ending abruptly so that the new version can be worked on (if it wasn't for people like RojoHound, Lucid, and 1 or 2 others, Construct 0.x wouldn't have been anywhere near what it is now).

I've already made my opinion on the absence of an .exe exporter in Construct 2, so I won't go over old ground, but my main concern with Construct 2 is that for a paid product, the above behaviour wouldn't be acceptable.

Krush.

Hi Krush,

You are absolutely correct, the reason casual support requests went unanswered was simply because there were too many of them to manage for a few devs who were doing it as a fun project. I would like to point out though that there are a few people on this forum that have made significant efforts in providing community support which of course everyone is extremely grateful for.

Everything else really comes down to the negative effects of running something as a free project. There was no obligation for anyone to fix bugs/add new features/respond to support requests.

Construct 2 is undergoing an overhaul, and I'm working on the new website and one of my main focuses is to make all the information a lot more accessible, provide good quality support for paying customers, have a much more organised and easy to search online manual/tutorial/articles, and lots more. I'm going to be putting significant efforts into making all these a reality. It really is going to be a much more accessible product, and hopefully the resources supporting it will blossom quickly.

I completely agree that the above behaviour wont be acceptable for a commercial product. One thing I love when buying things online, more than anything else is receiving fast and good quality support both from official channels and the community. This is what I am going to be working towards.

Tom

For me, the only important thing is to have the best tool for game-creation possible. I've been counting on C1 being put aside for C2 for a long time, but i thought it would take ages to mature. C2 being a full time project is the best thing that could have happened if you ask me. I've seen the rate at wich C1 developed (when the code was still in ok shape) so with full time work and some obligation to deliver, C2 will probably be everything we've ever dreamed of.

"What would make Construct 2 different from others?" is a question i don't really understand. Have you even used C1? Have you read anything of what's planned for C2? You should know what these guys are capable of at this point.

Tom. Are you integrating a better development-community as well? Construct users reall need a better creative environment. A better way for devlogs and such would be good. Ask around on the forums, there's probably many good ideas.

[quote:qzr8qbcs]Construct 2 is undergoing an overhaul, and I'm working on the new website and one of my main focuses is to make all the information a lot more accessible, provide good quality support for paying customers, have a much more organised and easy to search online manual/tutorial/articles, and lots more. I'm going to be putting significant efforts into making all these a reality. It really is going to be a much more accessible product, and hopefully the resources supporting it will blossom quickly.

Hmmm....an interactive Html5 wiki?

Is it fair for you to ask Ash to work part time on it, so you can avoid paying the price of the license?

Just taking the hook...

I really don't mind paying for construct. What bugs me is that it's no longer going to be an opensource software. I was willing to contribute with all my designer abilities to make a great game-maker. And that's the greatest point of opensource that construct is starting to loose.

I was designing a new interface for construct 2 (since c2 was just an idea) and not just in appearance but in functionality and usability too.

<img src="http://www.prr-art.com/things/c2-interface.jpg">

Now my efforts are all in vain, and I'm being pushed into looking at another opensource software simmilar to construct that I can contribute to.

As I follow the Blender community, every day I got more and more impressed at how well it work, and I really wish construct community could be the same way.

Some people have said that construct could never be like Blender because there's not so much people that contribute to it like in other opensource softwares. What I think was the main problem with C0.x, was that not much people know that construct existed in the first place. Most of the people that I know, started using construct because of some randomly friends' indication. My point is, C0.x not worked as an opensource because there was no proper marketing. There were some initiatives to make some exposing, but those never took off. I strongly believe that fixing those problems would bring a lot more contributors.

In my opinion, the closed-source exporters proposal with donations could work with proper marketing, and is the best presented model so far as it benefits from the opensource advantages.

In resume: no problem at all in paying, but please, please put some effort into thinking some models' alternatives to keep the editor opensource, as I think this is the best way to make a great game-maker, and also make construct stand out from competition. It will be a big lost otherwise.

*sorry if I'm being too off-topic

My 2 cents to the off-topicness: Blender's counter-intuitive interface is a bit too steep of an obstacle for me to climb. Couldn't even make a simple geometric object without having to follow an exhaustive manual.

Anyway, it is a shame - that interface looks neat. But did you know that Construct 0.x is still open source? Even if it is not actively developed anymore, it is being patched up by contributors.

Tom,

One thing I would suggest (along with the new website) is some sort of tutorials. These could be in written or in video form. I know that when I look for new software, I appreciate some set of tutorials that at least give me a feel of how the software works.

To everyone who does not like construct 2 being a paid for product. Of course it is a shame that it could not be open source, but personally I see it like this, if the devs can work on it full time then the program will be developed much quicker. And the price that they are asking for is little more than most of us spends on a computer game. I fully take the point about programs like blender, but dont forget that that started off as a closed source project that went open source. I wonder if blender would have got to the stage that made it worth while developing by the open source devs, if it started as an open source project. Game editor is a 2d example of something starting of as closed source going opensource.

the closed-source exporters proposal with donations could work

We have already thought about options like this in detail. Writing an exporter is a tiny fraction of the amount of work that goes in to the editor, so we'd be doing a monumental amount of work on the editor, only to sell exporters which are highly vulnerable to duplication by other open source projects or even third party commercial developers, so I really doubt that'd work at all in the long term.

We plan for the exporters to be open-source though - this should make it very easy for open-source devs to improve the runtime, or write an exporter for a platform of their choice (e.g. Linux), without impacting us. So parts of C2 will still be open source!

We plan for the exporters to be open-source though - this should make it very easy for open-source devs to improve the runtime, or write an exporter for a platform of their choice (e.g. Linux), without impacting us. So parts of C2 will still be open source!

Yeah, but that also means that anything that will be expanded open-sourcewise will be bounded and limited by the architecture and features that the developers choose to implement, and any request of support for new ideas will depend on their will. This defeats most of the benefits of open-source and limit alot the possibilities to introduce new ideas to reach the goal of making a game-maker that really stands out.

But as I am seeing you already have your minds well defined, so exposing my arguments will probably be pointless. Thanks for the attention anyway.

(off)@Mipey - Blender's interface may seem a bit strange to some, but believe me, after you get it going you'll be impressed at how fast you can perform your work, and after using it you will lack most of it's concepts in other apps. Luckly they improved alot the new 2.5 interface for newcomers while still maintaining the main features.

I think it's in everyone's best interest Construct do really well financially.

If the devs could work fulltime, after 2.0, who knows where construct could go? perhaps a new type of sdk could be made to alter the edittime. In time, they can expand and experiment.

But for now, I think giving away all of the program code is a very bad idea. They need to put all their eggs in one basket, so it makes sense to err on the side of caution. Let's just give it time. Let it get off the ground, then we can worry about expanding the extensibility. In my opinion, keeping in the spirit of open source is not worth the risk of possibly missing the opportunity to make Construct 2 a fulltime job, for either the developers or the community.

What disappoints me the most about this is that I know that there is almost no chance of Construct 2 editor having a Linux version. MMF2, GM8, and Construct 2 don't really have much to differentiate themselves in my mind. I was hoping that the Construct 2 rewrite would make it possible for someone to port the whole thing over the Linux, not just create an exporter or something like that.

But now, it just isn't possible. They aren't using Qt4 or any other cross platform libraries (afaik) in the editor, so porting will be very hard. And since this is no longer an open source project, and there's a huge focus on trying to compete with MMF2 and GM8, there's no way I see that Construct 2 will work towards differentiating itself in the manner I hoped it would. Instead, it'll probably work on trying to incorporate the features of MMF2 and GM8 to a level that people will find satisfactory, without losing the unique event-based system Construct 0.9x had. Probably, with that aim in mind, we may see a Mac OS X port years down the line, but there'll never be a Linux port...

To me, what makes C2 different to something like GM, is that I don't have to know how to script to make a game. (And this time it's true, not just a smart tagline). For many people moving on to pure programming feels like second nature, but it doesn't so someone like me, and in that case construct is wonderful so far. So yes, I definitely see a difference.

To be honest a Linux editor would be unlikely even if we were open source - we're still using MFC which is a Windows-only UI library due to our experience with it, and it's a huge amount of work (100,000 lines of code or more). It is unlikely open source projects would start to port such a large application when it is still very much niche - there were no attempts with Construct 0.x, and that's been downloaded over a quarter of a million times. Also, you should try to appreciate that we're a very small operation (2-3 people) and we just can't afford to double or triple our workload for the sake of 1% of the market. If we were huge and profitable, we might consider it. But we're not, so we have to target the biggest return-on-investment, which is probably Windows.

A linux port isn't impossible: the project file format is open XML, and is pretty easy to understand. Nothing's stopping an open source project from starting to produce a linux editor that loads and saves projects in the same format. However, I doubt you'll see one, because there are no open source developers interested in doing that. So it's not impossible, but we can't afford to do it right now, and being closed source or commercial has not really affected the situation either.