Thinking of coming to construct 2...

Hello!

So the last couple of months I've started programming, mostly in Python. The reason is that I, of course, want to learn programming. But I know that I eventually will start with game developing. I know this is possible to do in Python, via for example Pygame. But what I can read on the internet, using a game engine like construct 2 sounds a little bit more clever. But there are so many engines to choose from like Unity, Unreal Engine, Construct 2, and so on (check for more engines).

The "problem" is, I want to learn programming and when i read [quote:ddlkyjaq]You can now make advanced games without writing a line of code. Construct 2 does the hard work so you don't have to.

at Construct 2's website, I'm not really sure I've come to the right place. But then again I totally understand that Construct 2 does one a favor with these "built-in" functions so you don't have to "hard-code" them, and I dont wanna code "just because". But I still want to learn, so to speak.

A question about that to, since so many things seems to be already built in, is it hard to combine the game with "functions" outside the game? - let's say I want my potential players to create an account using a website, and that they will have to use the created account to login when they've started the game (.exe). Is this possible?

What about the graphics in Construct 2? Games come with different styles - from more realistic to more cartoonish, is it possible to get a decent unique style in C2? Or is it like you got 10 styles to choose from?

Why choose Construct 2 over engines?

I truly appreciate your answers!

Stork

You pretty much have to learn Javascript at some point. The plug-in sdk has you covered for all those worries.

Its a 2d engine, thats the only limitation.

With C2 you have building blocks called events which is really just based on simple logic that most people can follow regardless of coding experience.

The "hard work" is the process of the software changing these simple events into coding language so you don't have to write it out yourself (or understand it). This will allow beginners to make a lot of progress when compared to coding the game up the traditional way. Once you are familiar with how the events work you can pretty much do anything in the realm of 2d (very quickly at that!).

For player accounts and such you will need to do some work outside of C2 (but i think there is already tutorials available that show you how).

C2 lets you focus on creating a game rather than get stuck making code work.

It's difficult to make a game while you're learning to program because you'll get stuck trying to implement something at some point due to a lack of programming experience/skill- which could destroy your motivation to work on the game.

If you want to focus on simply making a game, then C2 is great.

That being said, it will still help you get familiar with how to design the logic behind the game, which will also apply when programming. So you'll have a good idea as to what is involved if you decide to program a game in the future.

C2 is in my opinion one of the best ways to learn programming, especially game programming. Working with events is exactly the same as working with code, just a lot more beginner friendly. Just because you're not writing lines of text doesn't mean you aren't programming.

As for graphics styles, anything 2D you should be able to do with ease. You'll only run into trouble if you want to use vector graphics - there's no native vector graphics support.

I chose construct, basically because I didn't want to "code", but as I'm working with constructs event sheet, I'm learing a lot of things. To answer your graphics style you can do pretty much what you want, it's all up to your artist, but realtime 3D graphics will be tricky but can be done with plugin as well. So far I didn't feel limited in construct, as the event sheet system is very flexible and there is a lot of ways to do things. You'll be amazed to see how fast you can actually make a working prototype.

Construct 2 is slick, because you can achieve a lot with minimal effort. Quick prototyping and putting together assets to make a working game or application.

So pros:

• effective, fast building
• runs on browsers, so your creations are easy to share

BUT it comes with limitations, that don't make it a prime candidate for game development for me:

• poor performance in many cases
• pretty much limited to 2d

It might be more worthwhile to get comfortable with a popular 3D-engine like Unity or UE4, if you want to try become part of a game developing team some time later. If you just wanna try to get some ideas of you working in a game, then C2 is a great choice imo.

When I first started in gamedev, C2 was the first engine I really worked with, I had no experience with game programming, so C2 seemed like the lowest barrier of entry. It was extremely easy to pick up and after a few weeks I was at the point where I could make any game I wanted, with the only limits being my imagination. You can go from knowing absolutely nothing to being able to put complex mechanics together very quickly in C2, the amount of learning resources between the documentation, tutorials section and other places around the web are massive, not to mention the forums here which are very active with very helpful mods and members.

I ended up working on a game in C2 for about 6 months, but ended up having to look for another engine because of performance problems that were unacceptable because of a publishing deal , this was nothing to do with C2, everything to do with web browsers, Chrome especially was broken, the problem was affecting all html5 engines at the time, the problem has since been fixed. Like you I wanted to learn game programming but had been using C2 and the event system and was like great now I have to go find another engine and start from zero, I know nothing about programming because I have been using the drag and drop event system in C2. I tried a bunch of different game engines, and the thought of even making a basic prototype in a real programming language seemed like a daunting if not impossible task at the time coming from a drag & drop engine, but after no time at all I got some basic prototypes working in GameMaker Studio using GML, Unity using C# and Gideros using Lua, plus a couple more engines/languages. I quickly learned that the C2 event system will teach you game logic, how to structure event/code, how things work together. I started realizing oh these events in C2, they are same as the code in any other language, they work the same way, these events, they are if statements, these are loops, these are functions, the create, update etc game states are all there in C2 and they work the same way in any language. So without even knowing it the logic and structuring of the events in C2 was helping me learn how any programming language works, I had no problem at all translating my C2 events into GML, C# or Lua code, it was just a matter of learning the syntax of a language.

I ended up working on a bunch of prototypes using Unity, released 2 native mobile games using GameMaker studio and made html5 versions of the those games using C2.(Because html5 games in a non html5 engine is a big headache.) So I can use Unity, GameMaker studio and a couple other game engines proficiently and I am now back to using C2 again as my main engine.

Why?

C2 is just overall easier to work with, the layout editor is great, there are constant updates with new features, you can prototype extremely fast, there are plugins to do just about anything, the community, there is 3d support now from the Q3d plugin, did I mention the layout editor?

Yes there are things that do take longer in C2 than a traditional engine, like writing

if x >= 10 {

Blow this thing up;

}

in a language is faster than clicking all those events in C2, but on the other hand one click for platform behavior and changing a few parameters vs a bunch of lines of code is nice.

To answer your other questions, the login things is possible by making your own plugin with the JS SDK or using ajax to connect to a server etc. Graphics have nothing to do with the engine, graphics are made in external programs in whatever style you want and imported in.

I started to use C2 when it was in early-adopter stage. Since then I tried Unity, GameMaker, Stencyl, but I always came back here. C2 is fast, easy to use, and it has many other positive things to make it a great engine. It has a few permormance issues, but it's not because of C2 would be a poorly written engine, but because the technology is based on. HTML5 performance is greatly affected by the current browsers (even, when you export your game to an .exe file, you wrap your HTML5 game with the Chromium browser). An other very usual cause of the performance issues is bad game design. Yes, it's easy to use, but it doesn't mean you can ingore the optimization of your game, and it's true with all engines. I personally yet to encounter any serious performance problem, but I value the opinion of others who already had.

As it was mentioned before me, C2's event system helps you learn programming. It doesn't help you to get to know an actual language (unless, you're developing a plugin with the SDK in JS), but it helps you with the logic that you can use with any language. The hard part of learning programming is getting to know the logic, developint your algorithmic skills. And C2 is great for that.

You can make almost anything with C2. I say almost, because it's not designed for 3D, but there's the Q3D plugin for that.

Some pros:

• Easy to use GUI
• Powerful event system for visually programming your game
• SDK for writing custom plugins
• Great and rich documentation
• Friendly community and developers
• Great licensing policy (you buy once, get all features, updates and platforms, and you can use your license offline as well)

Some cons:

• It's based on HTML5 and for some people it can be a problem.
• The editor is Windows only (C3 is going to change that in the future).
• No modularity and co-working in the engine (planned for C3).
• Designed for 2D (it also counts as a pro, but if you're looking for 3D, you either have to use the Q3D plugin as mentioned before, or you'll have to go with an other engine).
• Using wrappers for supporting different platforms (like the .exe wrapping example at the beginning of my post).

Overall, I'd highly recommend getting this engine. It's one of the best representatives of the new era of programming a software visually. It's easy and fun to work with and you'll get results pretty fast. You won't regret it. That's my opinion about it

LIke many others I will express similar positive sentiments. — the line you reference isn't "won't program" it's, "not write a line of code". Your still programming. Your stilling learning logic flow of programming. You still will program. However since you have access to a nice visual level system, nice method of visual programming. You will find learning to program for games much easier. I had a workshop to teach youth how to create a game. C2 was fantastic for this. They learned about game programming, and were able to put together a game in apx 8hrs of free time over a week.

Hello!

So the last couple of months I've started programming, mostly in Python. The reason is that I, of course, want to learn programming. But I know that I eventually will start with game developing. I know this is possible to do in Python, via for example Pygame. But what I can read on the internet, using a game engine like construct 2 sounds a little bit more clever. But there are so many engines to choose from like Unity, Unreal Engine, Construct 2, and so on (check for more engines).

The "problem" is, I want to learn programming and when i read [quote:28ldwe03]You can now make advanced games without writing a line of code. Construct 2 does the hard work so you don't have to.

at Construct 2's website, I'm not really sure I've come to the right place. But then again I totally understand that Construct 2 does one a favor with these "built-in" functions so you don't have to "hard-code" them, and I dont wanna code "just because". But I still want to learn, so to speak.

A question about that to, since so many things seems to be already built in, is it hard to combine the game with "functions" outside the game? - let's say I want my potential players to create an account using a website, and that they will have to use the created account to login when they've started the game (.exe). Is this possible?

What about the graphics in Construct 2? Games come with different styles - from more realistic to more cartoonish, is it possible to get a decent unique style in C2? Or is it like you got 10 styles to choose from?

Why choose Construct 2 over engines?

I truly appreciate your answers!

Stork

What I understand from what you are saying, is that its not only about making games, but a huge part is also programming. Then I would definitely not go with C2 or Gamemaker etc. because they are highly aimed towards people that are not really interested in programming, but that just want to make games not really caring how the end result is achieved. I have a background in programming (C,C++, C#, Java), but its a long time ago now and my interest in typing code etc have long vanished but the part of creating stuff is still there, so that makes C2 a great tool for me, its fast and easy to use and you get quick results. But C2 have its problems that is annoying and should you want to create you own plugins for it, you might run into problems that you can't solve because its part of C2 and the way that was designed. So even though you can make your own stuff and you would learn from it, I would definitely go with Unity or unreal for several reasons. Its 3D and 2D, its widely used in the industry and should you ever want to work with it, knowing these 2 programs well should make it fairly easy to land a job. Besides that at least for Unity you can learn C# (Think there are other languages as well, but cant remember them) at the same time, and its probably the same for the Unreal engine and also you learn how to work with 3D objects etc. And learning C#, will make it a lot easier to learn other language as well and you get a really good understanding of how a program is built, compared to if you are using C2, I would say. And if you know C# and the concepts of programming then C2 will be very easy to learn and you can always use that later on.

Best advice I can give you, go with one where you can learn C++, C# at the same time. And then of course get a book or whatever that teaches it, and so you get a good understanding of how to program in these languages, if you understand those, any other language is roughly the same and wont be that hard to learn.

You can program your own plugins/behaviors in js, so that would be good start to learn programming!