No Programming Required!???

I've been doing tutorials and reading tons of "how to's", and this "No Programming Required! You can now make advanced games without writing a line of code. Construct 2 does the hard work so you don't have to" is serious b.s..

Never programmed before, but want to make actual games that are more than just a flappy game?

Better know how programming works!

Otherwise, start taking classes.

I have wasted so much time trying to make things with Construct. Each project getting to a point of playable, but always needing more. Of course, trying to make anything substantive in this, even simple retro games, takes TONS of programming that you'll have to LEARN here.

I've been doing tutorials and reading tons of "how to's", and this "No Programming Required! You can now make advanced games without writing a line of code. Construct 2 does the hard work so you don't have to" is serious b.s..

Never programmed before, but want to make actual games that are more than just a flappy game?

Better know how programming works!

Otherwise, start taking classes.

I have wasted so much time trying to make things with Construct. Each project getting to a point of playable, but always needing more. Of course, trying to make anything substantive in this, even simple retro games, takes TONS of programming that you'll have to LEARN here.

Never take any advertising slogan completely seriously.

Look, basically you're right. Most of the concepts and thinking are identical to "traditional" programming, where you type code. It cannot really be done otherwise. Computers need explicit instructions, you can't just tell it to "put that bird here and animate it when the user clicked".

Everything is relative. Even just a few years ago to be able to create some of the simpler type of games would have taken a lot more knowledge and effort. You certainly can create complex games without programming using C2 but its always going to help if you learn some level of programming as you go along.

That can't be a bad thing

I just can't even find tutorials or instructions on some simple, basic things. And the tutorials I do often find are half-finished.

My idea was to have something that allowed me to do basic movements, attacks, and some simple enemy a.i., which I would use to bring to life my animation and music.

Having spent a bit of time doing tutorials, and believing that I'd be able to "figure it out as I go", I went back to making assets. A LOT of time making assets.

Now I return, having feeling I have wasted a huge chunk of my time, and frankly life, and I just feel like this "easy to make games" engine has exploded in my face.

I'll just try to make simple, probably horrible, games with what I have. But what I aimed for was high.

And now I am feeling awful.

It's funny because I told my son (who wants to be a programmer) the other day, that many games I used to play some 25 years ago, were written in assembly. I showed him a listing cause he wouldn't believe me and he laughed so hard

Be thankful that software like Construct 2 exists and you can move things in a screen with so little effort!

The "No programming required" part is indeed a bit misleading. It's still programming, but in a visual and effortless way.

A good practice is to initially focus on the logic part of the engine and use generic assets as placeholders. You will eventually "make things work" and then you can move on with the art part.

"No Programming Required", Ok! but what would be good to know?

Youtube/Google these things!:

• What is Object Oriented programming (OOP)? - Learn to program using objects, how their have properties and how they can do things and interact.
• What are javascript data types. - As a minimum, you must know what are strings, arrays & ints
• Javascript/C2 syntax - Know things like strings are in "quotes" and to join multiple strings together in javascript "+" is used, but in C2 "&" is used.

• Also go through the C2 templates that are bundled with C2
• And a javascript 30 minute crash course could be useful too

You look like you've been around the C2 community for a while, so if you know these very basics, that's great, but hopefully the list picked up something you might of missed.

Does this advice help? I have no idea, all i know is that I had a programming background of only a couple of years and because of that I picked up C2 pretty fast. Good luck.

you want things to work good? make advanced stuff? better use some math + physics , apply to events and such = gg wp

Ashley has always stated that his intention was not to create a 'cookie cutter' type of game engine. You can find many posts by him stating as such.

e.g.

[quote:1oxteerr]We're always trying to hit a balance between making it easy to get results, but avoiding cookie-cutter engine features. Sometimes people are looking for a built-in feature to implement a large portion of their game logic, but that's not our intent. For any logic specific to your own game, there is no substitute for events. I don't think it should be viewed as a failure of the product if you have to use events, that's actually part of the design.

(https://www.scirra.com/forum/my-3-about-c2-and-c3_p980037?#p980037).

This is why many find that creating simple - and some not so simple - games do indeed require very little in the way of programming, but the higher one tries to reach, the more technical skill is generally required. This is the same in everything, not just game creation.

The main benefit with C2 is that there are some incredibly helpful users who offer help freely. Just try not to get too frustated, and don't be afraid to keep asking for help.

You still have to learn the logic, otherwise you get the cookie cutter type zenox98 mentioned.

What C2 does is remove the barriers of syntax.

Basically keeps you from learning the entirety of the language, while giving you a library to speak that language.

I've been doing tutorials and reading tons of "how to's", and this "No Programming Required! You can now make advanced games without writing a line of code. Construct 2 does the hard work so you don't have to" is serious b.s..

Never programmed before, but want to make actual games that are more than just a flappy game?

Better know how programming works!

Otherwise, start taking classes.

I have wasted so much time trying to make things with Construct. Each project getting to a point of playable, but always needing more. Of course, trying to make anything substantive in this, even simple retro games, takes TONS of programming that you'll have to LEARN here.

I think its pretty accurate when Scirra state that no programming is required. But for people that have never programmed before as you write you haven't, might be confused by this statement, because someone that have programmed before wouldn't confuse the requirement for logic with that of typing code.

Because how would you make decisions?

Lets say a bullet hits an enemy and what if you have different types of bullets and enemies, and each of them are affected differently depending on the type of bullet they are hit by. So regardless of which type of program you are using, whether its uses a more traditional programming approach or one like C2 or maybe something that is 100% point or click, the logic of selecting the correct bullets and enemies and make things happen the way you want it to, is still there.

In my opinion what C2 does and does well is to move the focus from writing tons of code with all the syntaxes that's comes along with it and shift the focus from this toward the logic part.

So instead of spending time trying to program how to load a video file into your game, you simply say "I want the program to play my intro through a video, so I can add a video object which can handle this for me". which is done through a few clicks and you don't have to worry what is going on behind the scene.

The problem comes between finding a balance of what this video object should be capable of and not, because the more stuff you add to it, the more advanced it will also become, but not adding these features can limit its functionality, which on the other hand can be just as frustrating for advanced users.

So to use C2 and be good at it, I think you need to be good at logic thinking and to be able to do basic math, but that is no different from any other programming language out there.

There's certainly no traditional programming required, as in typing in scripts that are run through a compiler or interpreter. That is what "no programming required" is intended to mean. However in the very general sense of programming being a sequence of instructions for a computer, events probably do qualify as that. But they're so different to the traditional approach that I think it's a fair statement.

Sometimes people come to the product expecting there to be built-in features exactly covering the specific requirements of their own game, or tutorials covering the same. There are so many different kinds of things you can make that it is nearly impossible to cover everything anyone could ever want. So we cover the basic general-purpose features, and you build the rest yourself. You still have to think about how to put it together, but IMO that makes it a more interesting product, because it's not a stamp-out-slightly-modified-versions-of-some-templates tool, it lets you build genuinely original stuff.

zenox98, newt and Ashley are right. Maybe "No programming <code> required" could be less confusing.

But truth be told I found some tutorial games which are very playable and addictive without a single event, only

behaviors. And some more complex ones with maybe less than 10 conditions.

In C++ and other languages, unless you use a specific library, you'd have to write tons of code for moving a square inside

a black window. The event editor abstract this complexity although it may be considered programming.

You are naive to think that you would not have to think like a programmer in order to make videogames. Having a critical thinking mind to make games is vital. You have to think out of the box, bend your mind in order to create what is in your head.

If you think it's too hard to create your imagination, then give up. If you wanna think hard, work hard, and create games, you have the ability to do so.

Construct 2 gives the developer a easy way to organize their thoughts with the visual programming aspect. It holds your hand and guides you, the more you get into game development, the more you can get out of it.

Also, you have a problem with learning? You quite literally just said: "takes TONS of programming that you'll have to LEARN here." Learning is a great thing,

I think most of what I wanted to say is already said...

But I see Construct 2 coding as game logic coding... not as real coding... because I don't need to know any of the technical names...

(Which is much easier then coding a game legit)

The way I look at "No programming required" is that you don't have to learn a programming language to use Construct 2. The best advice I got when I started was to start small and make very simple projects at first to get familiar with construct 2. There are tons of good tutorials out there on youtube and some really great ones on udemy.com if you want to invest in it. Tutorials has been my main source of knowledge since I'm a very visual learner.