Construct 2 - most wanted

Now that's the Nifflas I remember from the MMF2 forums.

I guess I must have missed your dark days over there.

I fought with GF/MMF2 for a couple of years.

Because of a corrupt save file which went back through a lot of my backups without me noticing, I actually had to start Smiley Fruit Machine from scratch, using the corrupt load to write down by hand most of the code so that I could then program it all again into MMF2.

I think it came to about 50 A4 pages, and at times I wondered why I bothered with GF/MMF2.

It was worth it in the end, and was a good earner for me.

When I found Construct about 11 months ago, it was in pretty good shape then IMO, and I think the latest couple of updates are very close to the finished article.

There's still some important things to fix, and some not so important, but I think they're getting there.

I'd recommend giving Construct some serious time to try out some proof-of-concept demos.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Be sure to back up though.

Krush.

Well, I've just tested it for a few minutes, but the event editor seems packed with stuff I've always felt I've needed, it probably more than compensates for that thing, so I guess an apoligy from me is in order. But anyway, I better not bring this topic further into the swamp of off-topicness.

I recently mentioned Construct on the MMF2 forums but it got censored, lol.

I'd say 0-based. I'm not even testing Construct before either all mathematics and computer software are made 1-based, or Construct is adjusted to how reality actually work.

4 mod 4 is 0, not 1. Sin, cos and tan centers around zero. A variable defaults to zero (don't tell me variables are also 1 by default in Construct). The value that is returned in place of "aaw, that's unset" is also zero, unless a NULL value is supported. The range of an unsigned byte is 0-255, not 1-256. The top-left position of a screen and object is 0,0, not 1,1. You move an object 0 pixels to not move it anywhere. In every situation when negative numbers are used, it's a pain to have 1 in the middle. I'm just going to be too annoyed over dealing with this that I'd rather stick to what I use now where things are randomly 0 and 1 based (because at least some features are 0-based).

Basically all those things you mentioned are zero-based in Construct. I think the only things where the 1-base shows are loops and arrays, where the loopindex of the first one is 1, not 0 (though if you run a for loop from 0 to 255, the first loopindex will be 0).

So yeah, if you don't regularly use arrays, pretty much the only time you need to remember the 1-base is with not-for loops. A minor annoyance, really. But an annoyance none the less.

Actually, I got to point out that I was aware the things I mention are zero based even in construct because they have to be. What I meant is that since all those things are zero based, it's very inconvenient if other things you might want to link those things together with are 1-based, such as array indexes, tokenized string indexes, object indexes, animation frames, loops, and so on. There's bound to be a lot of -1 and +1 adjustments involved. In MMF2, I heavily rely on arrays and loops, so I think the same is bound to happen with Construct.

Again though, if Construct proves to be good enough in other aspects (and I got to say I'm impressed by many things in it), I can definitely live with that, and the fact that a range can be specified when looping to begin at zero, I'm realizing it's a much smaller problem than I first thought.

Being 1 based isn't nearly as big a deal as it's being made out to be, Lua is 1 based and it's a fantastic language. The real problem is the inconsistency.

lol, I would like...

A way of exporting bone animations.

Onion skinning in the bone animator.

And a built in T-Rex simulator.

[quote:xs3v3iqn]And a built in T-Rex simulator

Wut?

Any way yeah bones exporter sounds nice.

My two cents... some steps towards object orientation:

Ability to make user defined methods for objects

For example: There could be a "private" event sheet for every object, or you could make one. In that event sheet you could make functions like "ShootPlasma". In the event sheet of the level, you could then see "ShootPlasma" as an action of the object, like any other inbuilt actions like "Destroy". This would greatly help with encapsulation and benefit large projects with lot of developers!

"Object reference" as an inbuilt data type

More comprehensive set of inbuilt data types

A list type, for example.

Multiplatform runtime, and preferably edittime too! Mac OS X is pretty popular nowadays! Okay, it's already said quite a lot of times...

Improvements for object selection

Something like families or attributes, but with ability to be changed runtime; something like adding "tags" to object instances, and selecting instances with tags.

Also: a way to distinguish between two instances of the same class in an event! Read this:

"Layout" as an edittime AND runtime exportable/inportable dataformat (based on XML)

This would lessen the need for implementing own level loading and saving routines and make large projects more modular! There shouldn't be a need for user-made levels and game dev made levels to be fundamentally different.

-Some sort of function like "ScanScreen"

-Emulators for Mac OS X and Linux.

-Built-in support for MMO's and multiplayer

-iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Nexus One (?) support?

-License creator

-A better graphics editor (Like in the style of Adobe Illustrator).

-The numbe one thing I want changed in construct (be it for a current or future version) is the possibility to download a "no-install" version (or at least one that doesn't download dependencies or stuff) so that it could be run in a PC with no administrator privileges.

-More 3D stuff, I don't know what exacly but the possibility to create 2D games that would behave like standard 2d scrollers would be very cool

Id love to see apple product support.

Meaning-having the games created and be able to work on various apple products such as iTouch/Phone/Pad. That's be incredible. App designers have specific programs/softwares for there work, but if scirra was able to provide app designing support - that'd be awsome.

Better Python scripting integration and help/tooltip.

Just my 2c.

Offtopic:

-iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Nexus One (?) support?

Nexus One is an Android phone, it's not different. (It is damn good though)

For the most part, anything that works on an iPhone will work on an iTouch (unless it uses camera[1] or GPS).

[1] New iTouch 4 has a camera (two actually).

Just 2 additions. Not sure if these have been mentioned but just in case:

• Option for no or 1 bit alpha channel. This would help save VRAM especially for HD games.

• Better bone editor - wishlist