Welcome to the Construct 2 public preview

Is WebGL something that could just be implemented by a third party like Flash or Shockwave?

There is supposedly an activex plugin which embeds Chrome. The whole thing. If Chrome begins supporting WebGL out of the box (does it yet, I'm not sure) then this could be a way of tricking IE users into being able to use WebGL.

Sorry but from what I've been reading about C2 annoyed me (I am not sure if I understood it right to begin with) I see it will switch to OpenGL, now I don't know what are the major differences in OpenGL and DirectX other then OGL has multi-platform support but does this mean it won't have as much power as DX games? no cool eye candy graphics, cool lighting and nextgen-esque power? sorry to ask such stupid question but I want to know the major differences between the 2 and what are they capable of (I do not pretend full 3D support to be implemented for C2 tough as it's majorly a 2D game maker program and I have nothing against that) it doesn't bother me much that Construct 2 will be OGL tough, what bothers me alot is below.

Since it will be HTML5 does this mean export to .exe will no longer be supported and even excluded for Construct 2? I hope the export to windows .exe will be made in one point for C2, free or not but if standalone .exe's are to be completely excluded for C2 I will stick with C1 or maybe go back to Game Maker altogether if C1 will no longer be supported.

Honestly to me the unnavaliability to export standalone .exe's is a huge letdown and here I am hoping in the future it will be available in a certain point, I understand this is a preview version and has many features missing but I do hope C2 will not have such features completely thrown in the dark til they will be forgotten.

If you read all of this, then you will see that that is not the case:

C2 is still so early in development that almost all features are missing. Export to other things than HTML5 will come down the road, either developed by Scirra, or by others.

I thought the export things can only be implemented by the creators of Construct (Ashley) and only the plug-ins can be created by everyone, I am aware it's early in development hence I am using C1 and C2 will be superior to C1 with all those export options that will be available, so far no game creation kit other then Construct 2 that will allow you to export for Linux and Mac.

I do have high hopes for C2 still.

I'm not expecting everyone to be happy, but thanks for putting forwards your views everyone.

In short, the open letter addresses the Construct 1.0 issue. To put it very briefly, it can largely be put down to technical issues: we could release "1.0", and due to its poor architecture, it would still be unstable, so we decided the term "1.0" would be misleading. With our greater experience C2 is much better designed, so the same reason should not prevent the "1.0 of C2". And 0.x is such a mess, improving it from where it is would be more effort than starting from scratch.

Also, the 'desktop runtime' would be OpenGL powered, and can probably hit Mac and Windows in one go if it's coded right. Anyone can make an exporter through the open exporter SDK, so there's a valid risk somebody might make a free one, but it takes a lot of in-depth knowledge of Construct and the event system algorithms to make a successful exporter. That puts the Scirra team at a big advantage over everyone else.

OpenGL can do everything the old 0.x runtime did - shaders and all. When a desktop runtime is in the works, there's no reason to believe it'll be any less powerful than the 0.x runtime. In fact, if we're making money from it, we can spend even more time on it and make it even more powerful! That also depends on the pay-what-you-want system and other factors, though.

Glad to read that hopefully atleast the windows standalone exporter would be free but it wouldn't hurt me if it's commercial/pay-to-have exporter anyway.

Ashley, I don't know if you saw my post at the bottom of the page a few pages back-- what are the licensing terms on the code in the Construct 2 svn on SourceForge? (Please forgive me if this is addressed somewhere else already.)

I'm rather impressed with C2 so far and can see it should have massive potential when more of the old features are implemented.

I'm just going to dive straight in with a question though - with the move away from DX, how feasible is it that someone may be able to develop and XNA exporter? Is it a complete impossibility?

what are the licensing terms on the code in the Construct 2 svn on SourceForge?

The editor is GPL, and the exporters are BSD. They're different because GPL forces derivative works to also be open source, but not so with BSD, so third party developers can copy code from the HTML5 exporter for their own exporters and still sell their work.

with the move away from DX, how feasible is it that someone may be able to develop and XNA exporter? Is it a complete impossibility?

An XNA exporter is perfectly possible. The exporter SDK allows for any exporter to be made regardless of the technology. The editor uses OpenGL, but that is isolated from the exporters - it has no effect on writing XNA or DirectX exporters. The engine keeps them apart so you're not forced in to using anything in an exporter or designing things a particular way - you can do what you want. Hence they are "modular" (entirely separate modules).

Sounding better all the time. Hope you can make C2 into a fulltime job after uni. That would bring a lot of confidence to the community if you can get donations or selling exporters. Happy to pay customer here.

Excellent, I'm glad to see how far you're taking that modular approach.

An XNA exporter would have massive potential to not only develop a lot of interest but hopefully give a lot more designers a chance to develop and publish via the XBLIG channel. Fingers crossed somebody gets to work on it! Although to be honest, the more export options available the better. For those of us not particularly versed in the science of programming there is still hope for effectively prototyping our ideas and now even developing those ideas into full software.

Anyway, great work and best of luck with the continuation of the project!

> what are the licensing terms on the code in the Construct 2 svn on SourceForge?

>

The editor is GPL, and the exporters are BSD. They're different because GPL forces derivative works to also be open source, but not so with BSD, so third party developers can copy code from the HTML5 exporter for their own exporters and still sell their work.

Ashley, thanks. I ask because I am looking at the Construct 3 code and wondering about the feasibility of a Qt port (that is, I was considering attempting this myself at some point in the future) so that the IDE could run on Linux/Mac. This is possible so long as the license is compatible with GPL 2 or 3, so if you're using GPL to begin with then it is. Do you think any of the IDE code could be preserved in switching to Qt or is it all too bound to MFC?

Also: the split GPL/BSD licensing you describe makes a lot of sense-- it does seem though like this would possibly prevent, for example, copying OpenGL rendering code out of the IDE and into a hypothetical exe exporter? (I realize this may actually be desirable from your perspective if you are still interested in selling the exe exporter yourself.)

Another small thing. A note in one of the files mentions GPL 3-- will it be GPL 3 only, then, or will GPL 2 be also available? I ask because GPL 3 is severely more restrictive than GPL 3 in unusual and ambiguous ways. This can make people less comfortable with working with GPL 3 only code (I know one person who works at a major software company and is banned from even installing GPL 3 software on his work computer unless it has been cleared by the legal department, because they interpret GPL 3 unlike GPL 2 as placing some license restrictions on users of the product under certain contrived circumstances and the company wants to guarantee a random employee will not open them to liability) and can also prevent people from mixing GPL 2 and 3 code if the licensor of the GPL 2 code did not think to include the "or future versions of the GPL" clause.

While an XNA exporter might be possible, wouldn't it also require the support of Microsoft? You would think that they would require some sort of rigorous testing to make sure that any official Construct-XNA exporter wouldn't be buggy or insecure (i.e. insuring that it doesn't have the capability of injecting malicious code into your 360 and such). An "unofficial" exporter for homebrew stuff would be easy enough, but getting their consent to allow games made with C2 to be sold on their XBLIG channel would be quite a task, I'd imagine.

I don't really know how any of that stuff works though so... yeah.

I don't know much about the details either, but IG maker can export to XB. From their website:

"Completed games can be exported in non-Windows formats. One format available is the XNA Game Studio format for play on XBox 360 systems. Now games can be shared with even more players! A variety of screen resolutions are available to better suit the output format.

*You must be a member of the XNA Creators Club to enable play of games made using this tool on Xbox 360 systems."

Ashley, thanks. I ask because I am looking at the Construct 3 code and wondering about the feasibility of a Qt port ... do you think any of the IDE code could be preserved in switching to Qt or is it all too bound to MFC?

It's pretty tightly bound up in MFC. You could recycle some parts, like the renderer and project model, but anything to do with UI will probably be tied up in MFC. It'd be tricky, but don't underestimate having all the algorithms and design sorted out - that should make it a fair bit easier than just going from scratch from the file format.

[quote:4bgcvlai]Also: the split GPL/BSD licensing you describe makes a lot of sense-- it does seem though like this would possibly prevent, for example, copying OpenGL rendering code out of the IDE and into a hypothetical exe exporter?

Each source file has a license pasted at the top - and the renderer code is intentionally licensed BSD as well, for this purpose.

[quote:4bgcvlai]Another small thing. A note in one of the files mentions GPL 3-- will it be GPL 3 only, then, or will GPL 2 be also available?

I'm not actually clear on the difference between GPL 2 and 3 - if someone can describe exactly why GPL 3 would be a bad thing for Construct 2, I can re-license it to GPL 2.