Should my friends and I use Construct 1 or 2?

A couple of my friends and I recently decided we want to make a fangame as a starter project for game development and than look toward making more original, commercial games in the future. I'm leaning more toward the idea of using Construct Classic where as one of my friends leans toward using Construct 2. Biggest issue one of my friends has with Construct Classic that it uses DirectX. She has had a lot of issues with DirectX in the past, hates Microsoft, and how limiting DirectX is for developing outside of Windows. Biggest issue I have with Construct 2 is that it's currently based around HTML5. We both love OpenGL and are looking forward to the fact Construct 2 will allow us to use it in the future, but how long will it be before that's an option?

I'm concerned Construct 2 is currently incapable of making the type of games I want to make where as Construct Classic has proved to really impress me. I haven't seen a single game programmed in HTML5 that impresses me and it looks mostly like an improved version of Flash. Is Construct 2 currently capable of making games like

and

? Also, there's a concern about bugs. Generally betas can be pretty buggy but there's also the concern of Construct Classic being buggy since it's no longer being maintained by the original team and future updates are handled by the community. Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated.

Hi WAC..welcome to the forums. Your question is similar to what has been asked before on pros cons of either tool.

It really depends on if you want to make a complete game NOW. If you want that use Construct Classic. If not, then I would still say use Construct Classic. What you learn will port over well to the event system for Construct 2.

On bugs...I think the consensus is that you can make a big/complex game with Construct Classic just fine. It just takes some skill to work around the bugs. When I get more free time I may pick up fixing bugs, but right now I'm more looking at Plugin dev and game building. But still there are several here that will continue to support Classic in some way. On DirectX I'd say she should just get over it or you have an easy choice to use Construct 2 now.

Finally, I think HTML5 is the wave of the future as well and will just grow more and more powerful as time goes by. For example the game Far7 is freaking awesome and doesn't look like a flash game:

https://gaming.mozillalabs.com/games/133/far-7

So Construct 2 when finished is going to be pretty darn awesome.

Happy Constructing!!

Scidave, this is a very nice example of HTML5 game indeed !

HTML5 is still a young technology, and will keep growing. What lacks the most, as of now, is projects with some maturity, to really display the potential of HTML5 and C2.

I would add to scidave's point that bugs in C2 are handled even quicker than CC's as Ashley is actively coding and scruting the forum, especially the bugs report section.

The more peoples (teams) use C2 now and actively report bugs, the more robust and stable Construct2 will be. And the more reports, the sooner the software improves and is validated as stable.

I would add to scidave's point that bugs in C2 are handled even quicker than CC's as Ashley is actively coding and scruting the forum, especially the bugs report section.

This is a good point about bugs...if you have a bug with CC (especially something complex) odds are it wont be fixed or will be fixed very late. If you start working with C2 your bugs will probably be fixed by the next build.

On final point is that CC is pretty much limited to teams w/ 1 developer. You can get by with another but collaboration is difficult (can't copy and paste easily from .cap to .cap unless you use Python ). C2 will eventually support easy collaboration for teams of developers.

Eventually we want to support WebGL in C2 (there's a lot of other stuff to do first though, so it probably won't be soon). WebGL will allow browser games to equal Classic in terms of graphics: shaders, 3D, the works - and it will run everywhere! Everywhere, except on Internet Explorer, which shows no sign of supporting WebGL, probably simply because it's a threat to DirectX. For IE, you'll still be able to use a canvas fallback.

It's a tricky thing to advise, but in the long term (say, 1 year) C2 should be a better option - you should then have all the graphical effects, and all the platforms (except IE, with Canvas fallback). On the other hand, it could be longer, and in the meanwhile Classic is working OK. So it depends how long you're willing to wait.

Hypothetically, let's say it's a couple years from now, and my friends and I created a game we're quite proud of. Do you think Steam would consider selling WebGL games and would WebGL games be able to launch like a normal exe files? While I'm not that impressed with HTML5, I am very impressed something like this is capable of being on the web. However, something generally programmed for the web might work worse than something designed for DirectX or OpenGL. If that WebGL experiment, for example, was run in a standard EXE as opposed to a web browser, I assume it would run better. How much more is OpenGL limited in performance than WebGL when it comes to efficiency? While my computer totally kicks ass, neither of the my friends who I want to work on projects with have very good computers. I don't want to use WebGL if it functions worse on their computers and other people's computers than OpenGL for identical graphics.

Do you think Steam would consider selling WebGL games and would WebGL games be able to launch like a normal exe files?

I've no idea - best to ask someone at Steam.

ow much more is OpenGL limited in performance than WebGL when it comes to efficiency?

Modern browsers compile Javascript to machine code, and both OpenGL and WebGL run on the graphics card so are equally fast there. So the graphical rendering shouldn't be any slower, but the game logic might be a bit slower. However, in a couple of years it will likely be in the region where it's about 2x slower than C++ - for most games, that's fast enough. Remember you only need to hit 60fps to get a perfectly smooth running game - any framerates above that are wasted CPU. So if your DirectX game can run at 120fps uncapped, it's likely it will be able to run just fine in WebGL in future.

> Do you think Steam would consider selling WebGL games and would WebGL games be able to launch like a normal exe files?

I've no idea - best to ask someone at Steam.

What about my question of WebGL games running in exe files? >_>

> How much more is OpenGL limited in performance than WebGL when it comes to efficiency?

Modern browsers compile Javascript to machine code, and both OpenGL and WebGL run on the graphics card so are equally fast there. So the graphical rendering shouldn't be any slower, but the game logic might be a bit slower. However, in a couple of years it will likely be in the region where it's about 2x slower than C++ - for most games, that's fast enough. Remember you only need to hit 60fps to get a perfectly smooth running game - any framerates above that are wasted CPU. So if your DirectX game can run at 120fps uncapped, it's likely it will be able to run just fine in WebGL in future.

Hypothetically, let's say a game made with Construct 2 in two years is identical to a game made with Construct Classic. On a sh*tty computer where neither game plays 100% ideal, would they perform about the same or would the game using Construct 2 play either significantly or a bit worse?

What about my question of WebGL games running in exe files? >_>

WebGL isn't designed to be run into an exe file.

It is an extending javascript library from Google that's interpreted in their own browser Chrome. (WebGL definition on wikipedia)

So unless your exe is a javascript-interpreting browser, there won't be WebGL in it.

For your other question, in two years, browsers interpreting HTML5 will have evolved, maybe HTML6 will even be around.

DirectX9.c won't have changed though.

So it is hard today, to give even an estimated benchmark of what will and won't run in two years.

What about my question of WebGL games running in exe files? >_>

Oops, I'm trying to read too quickly again. WebGL could run in an exe file, but it would be better if we made a proper OpenGL exe runtime. We plan to, but we've got a lot to do first.

On a sh*tty computer where neither game plays 100% ideal, would they perform about the same or would the game using Construct 2 play either significantly or a bit worse?

It's a bit complicated: if the performance is bottlenecked by rendering (it can't keep up with drawing), they'll run the same, since they're doing the same thing on the graphics card. If it's bottlenecked by logic (the CPU stuff), then it could run half as fast in C2. However, in my experience, 2D games tend to have fairly simple logic, and spend far longer on rendering. So I would say it's likely that 2D games will run the same in both WebGL and as an EXE.

In an estimate, how long until a proper OpenGL exe runtime is likely to be made for Construct 2?

Genuinely no idea. It depends how things go with HTML5, the editor, WebGL and other big projects that need to come first. Probably at least a year away?

Well, it'll actually just be two people (including myself) working on this project, but for the other person I'm working with, she agreed on us using Construct Classic. Thanks for the help. I'll be doing the programming and she'll be doing the artwork.