Professional Developer - First Impressions of C2

Hey there, today is my first day owning a Construct 2 license. I work as a Unity Developer full time currently (my heart belongs to Unreal Engine 4 though), and I decided to try out Construct 2 for some personal projects aimed at the web.

I've only been using Construct 2 for a day so far, and there are a few annoyances that I'd like to ask about. Please enlighten me if I've made any silly oversights.

1. I noticed that I can't use Ctrl+Delete or Ctrl+Backspace to delete words in comments. I cannot stop myself from doing that, and a little bit of me dies every time it doesn't work, as it works when writing expressions.

2. When adding a number to field, why does an error occur when I type a float .5, instead of 0.5? Why doesn't it just automatically tack on the 0 in front of it?

3. If I make a spelling error in an expression while typing the beginning of an object or variable name, I have to delete the whole name, and then delete and retype the period in order to get the list to come back up. I wish it would just come back as soon as it detects a valid name, as soon as I fix the spelling error.

4. I wish there was a zoom out scalar in the Tilemap window. My tiles are high resolution, and I can only see like three or four at a time because they are displayed at full resolution. I do not want to have to expand that window to a huge size, or take up space on my other monitors. Currently there is a right click menu for zooming in. I would wish this to be ctrl+scroll for consistency with the layout editor, and also support zooming out.

I'm sure there are a few more I'm forgetting at the moment, but that's all for now.

All that being said, I love the engine! It's extremely fast to build with, and I love the debugging tools. Not everything is as easy or intuitive as I would like, especially coming from a programming background, but overall I really enjoy using the event system. A few quality of life improvements and I'll be a happy camper.

Thanks,

Jeff

I don't have access to C2 at the moment, but...

4. I thought there was. At least you can scale the tiles up for sure. I'd assume it can go the other way.

5. I could be remembering wrong but I thought if you right clicked the animation name then preview was one of the options.

6. If you closed the image editor and you didn't want that change, you can use undo to revert it.

I don't have access to C2 at the moment, but...

4. I thought there was. At least you can scale the tiles up for sure. I'd assume it can go the other way.

5. I could be remembering wrong but I thought if you right clicked the animation name then preview was one of the options.

6. If you closed the image editor and you didn't want that change, you can use undo to revert it.

Hey, thanks for the response.

#4 - You can only zoom in with right click, not zoom out. I would wish this to be ctrl+scroll for consistency, and to go both directions.

#5 - You are correct, I overlooked that. Thanks!

#6 - This does work, although it seems strange to me that actions in the image editor are applied to the global history. Thanks!

I will remove those points from my original post.

Thanks,

Jeff

Valhallen

#1 I've never noticed, but I agree the binds should be consistent.

#2 is interesting, because properties fill in the 0 automatically.

#3 is a perpetual bugaboo for me. It should absolutely work the way you describe.

#4 would be nice.

A little background on why the editor lags a bit behind the engine:

Going on the few hints Ashley has dropped about Construct, 3, the primary goal is going to be an interface overhaul. There are a lot of minor -- and some major -- inconveniences with the IDE that have gone unsolved for a very long time, with the basic answer being that the code is very tedious to work with, and even minor changes can be problematic.

The next version -- see -- aims to fix this by moving to an easier to maintain, cross-platform solution, and making it possible to extend the interface with custom elements thru an Editor SDK.

TiAm

When I first started using Construct 2, I could immediately see the potential, and how it was hindered by the antiquated interface. I wasn't aware that Construct 3 was in development, but I'm glad that the main goal is fluidity and being extensible. I'm also glad that to see that it is backwards compatible and hopefully my license will transfer. Good looks! I can see that Construct is headed in a great direction.

Is there any idea of a timeframe for the alpha/beta? I'm hoping 2015.

Thanks,

Jeff

1. you can still use ctr+shift+left arrow/right arrow to shift the selection over entire words

1. you can still use ctr+shift+left arrow/right arrow to shift the selection over entire words

Hey thanks, I did notice that this still works -- I use it in tandem with ctrl+shift+end/home and I've been deleting by selecting first. It's part of the reason I find it annoying that I can't just delete in the same way.

Thanks,

Jeff