C2 education package to be discontinued?

Hey, so I read somewhere that the C2 education package will be discontinued at some point to make way for C3, but I can't find a link to it.

As someone who has now taught with C2 for a couple of years, I'm hoping Scirra keep the C2 packages active. First, there is no way I can justify spending $1600 for a year's use of C3 when I was paying a 1/4 of that for C2.

Also, being in a government system, I've had no end of headaches when it comes to working with programs that work across the internet. C2 had the benefit that we could roll the software out across the network and then not have to worry about it trying to talk to servers somewhere across the world. Relying on something that is connection dependent would be a no-go for me as it's asking for trouble in a classroom (gave up on UE4 because the verification servers always got blocked).

Can someone clarify if C2 education is going to be discontinued or not.

Cheers

Hey, so I read somewhere that the C2 education package will be discontinued at some point to make way for C3, but I can't find a link to it.

As someone who has now taught with C2 for a couple of years, I'm hoping Scirra keep the C2 packages active. First, there is no way I can justify spending $1600 for a year's use of C3 when I was paying a 1/4 of that for C2.

Also, being in a government system, I've had no end of headaches when it comes to working with programs that work across the internet. C2 had the benefit that we could roll the software out across the network and then not have to worry about it trying to talk to servers somewhere across the world. Relying on something that is connection dependent would be a no-go for me as it's asking for trouble in a classroom (gave up on UE4 because the verification servers always got blocked).

Can someone clarify if C2 education is going to be discontinued or not.

Cheers

Probably best emailing , as it's not guaranteed that Tom or another Scirra Employee will notice your post here, especially if you haven't 'tagged' them.

Okay, I found this in the Construct 3 forum:

[quote:habi73us]The Construct 2 education license will be available through until the end of the 2018 academic year.

That sucks, as it basically means I will no longer be teaching with Scirra software after next year.

$1600 for a year sub is too much. I paid that for 30 licenses of GM:S Pro but that was a one-off payment which can be used year after year. I'm not sure who Scirra are aiming this at, but I can tell you now that a lot of government schools won't be able to afford this.

Would have loved to learn with C2 in my golden days. Its sad to read this.

LukeW Are you working on projects with your students that exceed the free edition's limits?

LukeW Are you working on projects with your students that exceed the free edition's limits?

yep.

I'm working in a Uni and using C3 to teach my first years, and I have no issues with it at all. The fact it works through a browser is a god send with regards to security (don't need to reauthenticate C2 all the time when it updates!) and it can, and does, work offline (although tends to crash a bit more at this beta stage). Plus updates are automatic, which is also great.

How many students are you using it with? It's ultra cheap for us using an education package for C3. Have you looked into the prices?

I need 26 licenses which is about $1600au per year. I'm now at the point that I need to decide whether to continue with Construct or to completely move to GMS2 which is about $990au per year for the same amount of licenses.

It's a shame, but at the end I can't justify that cost every 12 months for a program that gets used for a 10 week block. I'd be surprised if many schools would spend that much.

I honestly don't know what they were thinking increasing the sub price for schools by 4 times the amount of C2.

LukeW It might be worth dropping an email to

We're constantly reviewing our education pricing, and it's always worth hearing directly from educators - especially as budgets vary wildly across just an individual country, let alone the budget variations globally. But bear in mind Construct 3 does allow things like access codes, plus if you're only using the software for a 10-week block, there are monthly options available.

Send us an email with your specific requirements and I'm sure we can at least give you some advice, even if it turns out C3 isn't right for you.

To clarify:

• Construct 2 educational licenses will continue to be sold until academic year 2019/2020
• Past that period, existing subscribers are welcome to continue subscribing indefinitely
• Past that period, we will not be accepting new customers for C2 education

So as long as I don't cancel my sub I should be fine?

Sounds great!

I actually tried out GM2 this year with my class and the whole login process was a complete nightmare. Turned me off teaching GML completely.

Going open source may be a solution too? Godot Engine is a self-contained 40mb executable (no installation) for Windows, Mac, and Linux, is easy to learn, (much) more powerful than either Gamemaker or Construct, and completely free. No hidden costs, and there's even a "kids can code" YouTube channel to help the students along.

And it's a lot of fun to learn and use. For example, Godot has a built-in animate everything you want animation editor, which is super fun and liberating in your game creation process: even cut-out animated 2d characters may be constructed and animated right in Godot.

On top of all this, your students have access to the full version at home or anywhere, really.

I mean, your Construct 2 access and use is going to end at some point in the near future, and Godot seems to have all the advantages you want in a classroom environment: free, student accessible, no installation required, great support and community, a wealth of online tutorials and resources, 2d and 3d, native exporters, web export, animation timeline, simple to learn Python-based GD script (and Python is proven to be a perfect introductory language for young learners).

The only drawback would be the lack of visual programming - although Godot does have a visual programming option, it's not that great compared to Construct's event sheets. However, it seems plans and ideas are going around to fix this in the future. On the other hand, your students would be introduced to Python syntax, and learn "proper" programming, and Python is a very popular language nowadays - so you'd be teaching them a real-world language too.

Anyway, just throwing it out there. Schools have small budgets to work with as it is. You may have to wait for Godot 3.1 (out later this Summer) for lower-spec Opengl v2 support to be implemented again.

Wouldn't really say Godot hits the same audience as Construct, even though it's nice.

For an educator not wanting to upgrade and who is looking for Construct 2 style events, Scirra's past project Construct Classic is free and open source, and can technically run on Mac/Linux under Wine: appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php

Keeping people using Scirra products means they are ready to upgrade to Construct 3 if/when they can afford it.