First of all I would like to say that I think that Construct 2 is pretty damn awesome from what I've played with it so far! It's very intuitive and it makes the process of making games very fun!
I am thinking of buying Construct 2 but I have some questions (I apologize if they were previously answered in a forum thread or a news comment, I unfortunately couldn't find the information I was looking for):
a) will Construct 2 be supported after Construct 3 is released? Technically I know that Construct 3 is released and Construct 2 is obviously still being updated, but I don't exactly follow the technology about wrappers for JavaScript, but from what I understand some get deprecated (this was done for Cocoon.io, I believe), and I would like to know if I can use Construct 2 to export games, even if support would be dropped for it. Sorry if this seems like a stupid question.
b) this is a mini rant: from what I could find, performance sometimes can be troubling for games (mobile games in particular). The thing is, I don't really trust most users with their expectations and with the scoping of their projects. For instance, I once saw that someone was having huge framerate issues, but the problem was that he was emitting thousands of particles every second, which of course would slow down almost any engine (not trying to be mean to that user, I know that we're all learning here, sorry that I singled you out).
On this performance subject I admit that I am having some reservations. The thing is that I know too well how some software/ game developers want to seem hardcore and brag that they learn other engines (now the craze is with Godot, you're especially cool if you work in Godot -- not saying it isn't a great engine) or that they believe that every single thing should be coded in C++. I saw that some users threw around a test about jankiness and another user was comparing freaking DOOM with a game engine. I think that's downright unfair and to be frank disingenous and mean, considering DOOM is a single game that was optimized by a horde of engineers, arguably one the best hordes in the business (iD Software, come on!), and while I believe that the engineers that made Construct 2 are especially talented, you can't really beat ONE game that was optimized to perfection versus a game engine. I don't understand how the developers/ people who work at Scirra can have so much patience with some of the accusations some people throw at the engine, but damn if they don't deserve a medal.
When I was looking at Unity people kept saying that it's kind of overkill for smallish 2D games, Gamemaker Studio also is reported to having issues when porting to mobile and HTML5... I'm no expert, but is it safe to say that it's a matter of skill and imagination when it comes to performance? I just saw that Environmental Station Alpha was done in Multimedia Fusion, not even Clickteam Fusion 2.5, and it's an amazing game! Construct 2 also has great games built with it, and the ones on the Showcase page are especially impressive!
The question I am asking, as I am stuck in an analysis paralysis loop, can I reliably make Construct 2 games for browser games and mobiles, maybe desktop, too, without having huge problems with performance?
Sorry if my questions seem stupid, I'm not that knowledgeable in game engines, I tried Unity but that seemed kind of too much for the type of 2D games I want to make and I think that Construct 2 fits better for my skills.
Thanks in advance!
A couple things:
a) C2 is being sold with software-breaking bugs. This is discussed elsewhere on the forum, feel free to take a look.
b) C2 has a lot of performance issues, on desktop and elsewhere, when you try to do anything visually complex or expect things to behave the same way every time (for example, issues with jump predictability using the platform behavior in C2, that Scirra has said they will not backport fixes for from C3). This is not a developer or hardware limitation, regardless of earlier comments in this thread - it's the way C2 handles rendering, which is very inefficient, and little improved in C3 at this time. Promises of a new runtime can't be counted upon for commercial releases, especially when the switch from C2 to C3 has been so fraught with issues from a user perspective and has alienated many experienced users. It's why most of the more successful developers have moved on to other engines, and why some of those developers have ported their games originally made in C2 to other engines, including at least one of the games listed on the Showcase page.
Do you mean new DOOM or old DOOM? Because old DOOM's engine (and it was developed as an engine, not just for a single game) was developed mostly by a single software engineer, and new DOOM's engine was developed by only a handful of software engineers - probably a smaller team than you think, considering its complexity, but they were smart on how they built upon previous existing tech. It's a perfect example of what's possible when a game engine is designed to be easily ported to a large variety of platforms as a native application by extremely skilled developers. C2/C3 can't be wrapped as a "native" app, not sure how anyone thought that was true, so that's something to keep in mind should you be interested in porting to widely popular platforms like XBox One where performance can be, to put it politely, somewhat disappointing (not to mention the lack of required features to do a release outside of the XB1 indie program, and even then IDjuj@XBox requirements have yet to be addressed).
It's not your imagination that there are some issues with HTML5 performance, regardless of engine. There are, however, less issues with HTML5 using certain development tools over others. Phaser is a good example of a high-performance HTML5 engine geared towards the kind of quality and features that developers expect an HTML5 game engine - or, really, any modern game engine - to have.
Unity has done a lot these last few years to improve their 2D toolset. I wouldn't recommend ruling it out as an option. Unlike some other subscription-based engines, they are very good at justifying their subscription cost.
If you're looking to do 2D games on mostly desktop, C2 is probably okay if you keep things very simple graphically (C3 is still a mess in its current state and not worth the cost - it's early beta at best). Mobile performance is iffy for anything past very, very simple games, and the same is true for web-based games. Generally speaking I'd suggest using it ONLY for prototypes and porting to a more capable/feature-full engine for a commercial release or for very, very simple games.