How are people using F2P and IAP with Construct 2

I'm new to this engine and many of the options for exporting sound cool, but leave me feeling uncertain about how folks are really doing things.

I'm just wrapping my head around how to take what i do in Construct and bring it to various devices. I've published using GameSalad to iOS, Android and Windows 8

I'm stoked to report that I was able to build at least an adhoc game for windows 8 which was really great, but now i'm looking a

One of the weaknesses of GameSalad is that Android and Windows 8 are either paid apps or must be 100% free.

I'm a big fan of cross platform games to help maximize efforts and offer products that are broad reaching. Is there an ideal platform / approach to reach Android, Windows 8, Facebook and Web for In App Purchasing? I realize iOS has it's own system, is this also full accessible (game center, IAP, etc) ?

Sorry for such a big question, I'm just excited to dig into this platform more, I just want to be sure I understand "best practices" as soon as possible, or someone to be frank about what weaknesses the platform might have so I can realistically assess the pros and cons of migrating from GameSalad.

I feel like I'm outgrowing GameSalad for numerous reasons. Thank you in advance for your insight.

Sincerely,

Caleb

There's no built in system to deal with app purchases, micro payments etc. Thats both good, and bad as you have to come up with those solutions yourself.

Like wise there's no quick solution to deal with it across all platforms, however Appmobi, Cocoonjs, and Clayio have a few possibilities via the cloud.

I haven't worked much with cocoonjs or appmobi--I'm just not heavily interested in app stores for phones. But I've had a really good time working with clay.io thus far. They have a really nice API (plus a construct 2 plugin) that can handle leaderboards, achievements, and in-app purchases. Not to mention cloud saves.

I have a freemium game I'm prototyping, and it seems most suited to just run in a browser. I've had very favorable performance tests on ipad2 and iphone4s, so it should run alright anywhere. And, really, it can only get better. I haven't tested performance on any android devices yet, so I can't vouch for them. But clay.io fits all of my needs: for the player to be able to pick up and continue anywhere, in-app purchases (good stuff! Don't be greedy!), leaderboards, and achievements so people can share with friends.

So if you're heading towards standalone apps from the AppStore or Google Play, it might not be the route to go. But for in-browser games, they're doing it best as far a I can tell.

Appmobi brought us a new update with inapp transactions , check the official update post for more info ... (This was posted from my tablet , so couldn't't write a lot ... )

Thanks for the mentions C-7 and newt!

To anyone reading, if you have any questions about Clay.io, feel free to post them to our forum, or shoot me an email: austinyde@clay.io. Here's the official page for our Construct 2 plugin.

Ok , I'm now on my PC , so here's the Link

Cheers ...

Thanks for the good leads and insight! Yea honestly I can see a web approach (that runs well for mobile being great and i'm a big fan of cloud saving because anymore its hard to get into a game too much for mobile when you know someday you will get the data deleted and lose your progress.. especially for more involved games.

I'll check into those options for sure. I really do like the browser approach. C-7 are you able to detect what browser they are on? obviously making a game for ipad and iphone 4s would seem to require some customization. How does that work?

Its nice that there are some options, but a shame there isn't something more unified, but this is a bigger problem in general not just Construct 2

are any of these options compatible with windows 8 / windows 8 phone?

Thanks!

Caleb

This is a great thread. I am very curious about this as well.

My preferred model is League of Legends- the game is free and everything that you pay for is something that you can get for free... as long as you're patient, or if you don't mind not having unlimited access to it. For instance, you can play as any of the characters, provided they're one of the several available that particular week. If you're patient enough, you can eventually earn enough points to unlock that character and have access to it all the time. Alternately, you can just pay five bucks for it and be done with it. Sadly, you can't unlock any of their alternate costumes- each one I suppose is a little less than five bucks as well.

At any rate, it's one of the ways you can ride the line of being a developer with a community conscience and a person who is not living on the street. Computers and development time require at least a little nourishment in the way of financials. And we gotta eat, too.

part12studios I don't know how to differentiate between phone and tablet browsers (and my games haven't needed it yet), but you can definitely differentiate between desktop and mobile with the "is on mobile" condition (and then right-click to invert it for the opposite). I have certain icons relevant to touch screens only appear on mobile, along with mobile-specific messages, some optimizations and graphical downgrades, and a resolution change. The only problem you'll run into is that not everyone has a phone/tablet with as nice of an html5 renderer as said devices. Luckily, that problem should/will go away in the future, but for now you have to be careful because the browser won't work quite as well as an app and most phone users won't understand why.

C-7 ok thanks for clarifying. My though is trying to be able to distinguish between a tablet screen 7-10" for example and a phone size screen 3-4"ish screens which obviously make a huge difference in terms of UI design.

In a perfect world I would like to be able to detect screen size and offer UI that reflects the screen its displaying

So one small bump, does anyone know if any of these solutions would work with Windows 8 / Windows 8 phone? i'm interested in this platform (among the others), but would like to know that a in app purchases are possible on this platform before I go all in.

It sounds like there might be some options, but i just feel so inexperienced with these various turnkey solutions that I hate to make assumptions this early in the game

Thanks!

Caleb

A little bit lost on how the IAP for Construct 2 actually work. If I wanted to make an ADHOC for my game and test Constructs new IAP system, how would I know if it is 100% working? I see no place to put the shared secret key... or is that the Item group ID? If anyone has registered a successful transaction, it would be a great tutorial. Really need some help regarding this.

Thanks

BAnyBudde

Anyone?