Construct 2 vs Normal Game Programming?

I did a test today. I wanted to see how well C2 stacked up against "normal" game programming, in terms of ease of use and speed of development.

I decided to do this test because I was following along in a game programming book for beginners, and an exercise was to make a very simple Breakout clone.

The language I was comparing against C2 was Blitz Plus (B+), which is an older but still very good language. It's a high-level language (C/BASIC hybrid) which is designed specifically to make games. So, it tends to be easier to use and requires fewer lines of code to do things than a lower level language like C++.

First, I tried using B+. The goal was to make a simple text version of Breakout. I was basically just following along and copying the code from the book (which sped up the process). It took me over an hour, and I ended up writing over 200 lines of code. And I couldn't get it to work. There were errors at compile time (B+'s IDE doesn't have syntax highlighting), and I couldn't figure them out. The source code was on a CD, and that did function correctly, but the game itself was still buggy. There were times when the ball randomly sped up, making it hard to hit, and sometimes it would just bounce up and down or left to right in a straight line, effectively causing the game to crash.

A little frustrating, but still satisfying to get that work done.

Next, I tried C2. I followed the first 2 video tutorials from "Cloning the Classics: Breakout" (it was all I needed).

I kid you not, I was done in about 10 minutes (not counting the time it took to watch the tutorials). The game ran on the first try and worked exactly as it should (no bugs), and it looked better too (graphics!).

Oh, and it only took 3 lines of code to write, if you can count the events as "writing code".

I'm blown away by how easy and fast it was to make a game using C2. I'm definitely going to be using it for future game dev.

Don't get me wrong though; I still think B+ is a great language. But when it comes to making game dev easy and fast, there just doesn't seem to be a better tool than C2 (for 2D online games at least).

So to Tom and Ashley: Thank you so much for making this amazing tool. I can't wait to start getting serious with making games with it. :D

Thanks for the feedback! Great to hear. Glad to know Construct 2 is doing what it's supposed to :)

who cares about languages if we have construct2? before construct2 i tried to learn any language and i really couldn't they are really hard , also the breakout clone from prof.Stemkoski is one from the best tutorial i ever see in construct2 i don't think someone followed it and has a bug except the limit of powers because he didn't mention it on the tutorial...

i hope every developer to stop learning all these language if they are going to use it for 2d games ^^ learn them for something else making programs,3d stuffs,websites...blablabla..

I'm just curious about C2, is written by C++ or C#?

I think is written by http://www.scirra.com/people

other think probably is wath using for make

I'm just curious about C2, is written by C++ or C#?

It's written in C++ as far as i know. I guess Ashley preferred to use C++ since he's already proficient with it. I myself, would use C# without thinking, much *better* to code apps in general, even games.

Joannesalfa

I read somewhere that Construct itself is made with C++

What I really love about Construct 2 is the plugin system.

With the plugins/behaviors you can really do a lot of custom stuff that wouldn't be possible otherwise and it works right out of the box!

I used to work a lot with Virtools.

There you could work with scripts if you wanted something custom made. But the scripts where "locked" to use only Virtools own libs and DLL files, which means you had a lot of limits.

They also had a option to create plugins, which let you use 3rd party libs to create something custom with, but you needed to buy a Virtools server program so these plugins could be downloaded and used in their player. Which was expensive and not so effective, since the plugins only worked on windows computers. And you needed your own server.

I am also a C++ fan and I have worked C++ many years.

And when it comes to develop a game in 2D, you can do as much with Construct 2 as you can with C++. But you don't need to write garbage collectors and factories in Construct, which saves time and effort.

So in terms of Construct vs another program language, you can basically do as much with Construct as you can do with any other language, but you do it a lot faster, and you automatically get cross platform functionality without changing any code or having to build different versions!

Construct 2 is indeed written in C++, mainly because that's where our experience lies (Classic was also C++).