before more exporters..

i personally believe that the exporter for the Nintendo is a good step forward on the right direction.

why the right direction?

although i understand that only a few people will ever use it because of the high cost, it does give the option to a small company to produce something in a true gaming environment with known hardware ,controller and capabilities and of course the fact that 100% who bought the console are potential buyers.

my biggest concern right now with mobiles is exactly this problem. hundreds variations of speed ,screen ,input,size etc.

although i am not a programmer i believe that creating an exporter for fixed hardware with a lifespan of over 7 years is easier to achieve than mobile operating systems that change every few months.

so if i was head of scirra what i would do?

push for all next gen consoles exporting capabilities so i would give my "serious" customers a fighting chance to make some money in a highly profitable environment with no designing challenges. if it works on your dev kit it works on all consoles!and as a company it would be relevantly easy since the big boys provide everything to make it happen.

then i would focus on a single mobile exporter.either android or ios. not both of them.

one step at a time and when everything is perfect i would move on to the next one.

i love the fact that the average joe can create something and upload it to the app store and brag about it to his friends and family and is really a wonderfully thing.

but right now if someone wants to really invest his time,talent and budget with c2 he will have a hard time to make any money and there are so many ways that his game will not perform well(i am talking about mobile).

that's why consoles are a good way to go with an official mobile exporter later on that it will include all the bells and whistles of that particular platform.

I also like the Nintendo / big consoles thing, but according to Scirra's small manpower it's not a good Choice to work on that.

It's like.. hey we make a new muffler and spend a half year on construction only to make it fit on 2 ferraris, even our customers all drive Fiat.... but hey a ferrari muffler looks cool and makes a lot of attention with it's sound...doesn't matter we could have spent the time increasing Fiat mufflers to be less fuell consumpting...

Beaverlicious

i lost you there with the car example :)

what i am trying to say is that it is better to have one perfect exporter at a time than 10, that half work.

Well, I am still pretty new around here - but I am amazed at how fast updates come out, and how quickly C2 is improving.

Sure, there is room for improvement. And the entire industry is evolving at a mind boggling pace. But C2 is already more than good enough to make awesome games! If we aren't successful as developers. we have no one to blame but ourselves!

That being said, I am really looking forward to some of those requests being added too... :)

We will get to everything eventually, the only question is the order we do them in. When deciding the order we have to weigh in a lot of factors, and it's not as simple as it might seem. For example I think a big part of the appeal of Wii U support is proving Construct 2 is a professional, console-grade middleware tool. This could do a lot to shift the perception of "it's just a toy" that we see still see and presumably lose sales from. Not to mention that if you want to publish to Wii U it's a pretty big deal! And everyone who uses Construct 2 is after something different, so even when we do add major new features there will be some people who would have preferred something else. Not much we can do about that. Hopefully multiplayer - which is in the works and should be awesome! - is a big feature that everyone will appreciate.

Don't get hung up on speech recognition, it probably took about an hour in total. Chrome was adding support, and we added a few actions and conditions to expose it to the user media object because it's kind of cool. It's not like we slaved over it for weeks and put off other features because of it.

The real problem is I think our userbase has grown to the point where as a small team we simply can't keep up with what we get asked for. For a long time now we've been getting new feature requests, suggestions and ideas faster than we can actually implement them, not even including our own internal ideas and plans. This is kind of a nice problem for us to have, but we still need to solve it, and we need to do that by growing the team. We've been looking in to hiring for a while now, but it's difficult and involves many new problems and logistical challenges. I am very keen to expand this year. Until then, we're doing our best and will keep the approximately weekly updates coming.

Ashley

Thanks for the response. I hope you didnt take this post as a dig at what you're doing. Only you (Scirra) know whats right to do and when to do it.

I have run a couple of companies myself and i know generally you cant run them as a committee. Everyone wants something different.

C2 is an amazing achievement and i have to say i havent had as much fun on my PC for years, so thanks for that. Its nice to hear youre looking to expand too. That will be good for everyone <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Ashley

Adding Wii U support is part of the reason I bought my license, so there is the proof that it will bring in more revenue right there. I think developing game for a dedicated gaming device is much nicer than a smartphone or tablet.

I am very grateful for what the team at Scirra has been able to do and I haven't come across the issue of not being able to produce the type of game that I wanted.

-Mike

Ashley

For me it is quite obvious the way you should proceed. From a business standpoint with Nintendo if something does not change soon ,they will end up a software company like Sega .they are very still attached to the old Japanese ways of running a company. Secrecy. something that used to hold true back in the days where everything moved slower ,but now this is just not the case. on the other hand the fact that they have an almost nonexistent library of games and almost no third party support creates good opportunities for indie developers since their customers are simply thirsty for games.

eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret-developers-wii-u-the-inside-story

As I asked in another post and you answered , what would be like to work with them?

Now one knows. Yet..

You safest bet would be to go with Sony and Microsoft. Powerful machines that will run html NOW the way its meant to be, huge user base ,online stores that actually work and at least with Microsoft (I don't know how Sony works) you can strike some sort of deal with them that would be beneficial for both your customers and you .

Think about it for a second.

You have created something that allows people to create games in a fraction of the time it takes to do the same by other means and you can't do anything with the finished product.in mobiles it might work(performance wise) it might not. And even if it does there is no standardized way for controls, in app purchases, ads etc. if you create a good game you can only hope steam will publish it, otherwise you can't sell it anywhere.

Now imagine your new ad.

Construct 2 .create games for xbox one wiiu and ps4 with no programming.

Full support for their controllers, in app purchases ,online gaming and their motion sensing technology.

You would sell licenses for 1000$!

Read your customer comments in the forums .I bought construct for mobile games and it is not working on my phone, it is slow it is this it is that...

With the other way if it works on your dev kit it works.period.

No excuses no nothing.and when you make yourself a name as a "serious" tool you move on to mobile.

so what is a professional game dev software?? my take would be something reliable and you can just focus on game developing and not worrying the effort you put into developing may not work at the end, or your game have to wait for technology to catch up, it should just work!

when you look at those 'professional' dev program, they all offer such reliability, even if theres bug come up from time to time, you have the confidence that it will be fixed soon that you can just keep working on what you do.

my experience with C2 is lacking that reliability, its not C2's fault, but its the approach they choose to take, which is rely on third party exporter, you never know when those third party would stop working for you, and when it'll be fixed or ever, because its out of C2's control.

during & after my first game dev, i constantly searching for a more reliable tool for my 2nd game, i stuck with C2 because the ease of use, and my lack of programming knowledge. but with serious game dev team, they must have a programmer, so they don't need to take the risk of working on C2.

a good example of similar software, i dont like to name competitors, ashly should know an osx centered 'vegetable' named game tool thats also aimed for non programmers, they have better documentations, their own exporter, knowing everything worked in the software will just work as it should. they grow from ios only slowly to almost every exports C2 supports, their community, quality of game also grows steadily, feature wise C2 is far ahead, but its useless when some features doesnt work on certain platform, it only cause more confusion for developer.

my suggestion for scirra is to grow the team, go back to all your features, make sure they will work on all platforms, and export to all platforms easily.

starting on my 2nd game on C2, still have faith in C2 team, they are so talented, and i hope they will take the right direction for future C2!

I've been here long enough to see the waves of concern, and how it focuses on a weakness until the weakness changes, and people get concerned too much time is spent on it.

When I bought my license sound was a major hold up. If sound keeps improving as much as it did the past 20 months, we should be able to write apps to re-dub Surround sound movies on Iphone with synthesized celebrity voices in a couple years.

Another complaint was lack of exporters. That's what's it like riding this wave. Build a stable of games, and as these doors open, you will be ready.

I want would like a way to put video to make cutscenes :(

I agree with the original post. I think C2 can export to enough platforms now, and it would better to improve some of the functionality.

One thing that bothers me about C2 is the Ribbon at the top of the screen with the Home/View/Events tabs. A lot of the shortcuts in "view" can be moved to Preferences and then Home and View can be combined. Then you have only 2 tabs in the Ribbon and depending on what you are working on, Layouts or Events, the ribbon can change tabs automatically. It doesn't make a lot of sense to be in Layout view with the events tab showing in the Ribbon and have everything greyed out.

Damn, I'd totally send in a CV to apply for a job, but I lack the required skill. I know my way around C2 very well and have used it excessively and also have interest in software development (as well as games design), and am also located nearby Twickenham, but my Javascript knowledge is little to non-existant. Not to mention I don't know C#/ASP.net or C++ (Though it looks fairly straight-forward to understand, just looks menacing because of all the vague words and { } brackets sprinkled everywhere).

Ashley

In your case, I would try to hire rojoHOUND. The MVP of the Community :-P

Beaverlicious

lol,I agree. If I had to choose anyone in the comunity it would be R0j0hound. :D