Concerns from a "Serious" developer

The amount of angst is quite noticeable, and I'm sure they will pay attention to it, but the direction they've chosen, while somewhat niche, is more than sustainable.

It's not about what it can't do, it's about what it does do, and they've overcome one roadblock to getting the billions of people on the internet to try it with a single button.

The things they have to worry about now are the worth, and the retention.

To be honest I'm not seeing the value yet, but it's very early still.

Once its established, and running well, then you can start asking for things, that's where the retention comes in.

Asking for things that are exceptionally convoluted now is just pointless.

Unfortunately the debates are unfruitful. Whatever side of the fence you're on, vote with your wallet.

I still think it's hilarious that I can't log in to the browser app. Always says unable to yada yada. I even cleared my cache several times since day 1, created a new password on the forum to use, and it still won't let me log in. "Serious" developers want to log in, amirite?

All I'm going to say is yes construct has a workflow that I and many others love. I posted this thread to show that you can make great content. But the biggest concern for those of us who do complete a project is "what now?"

Can you put it on Android? iOS? Steam? Consoles? The short answer is yes. But we now know it's way too reliant on other services and support. So regardless of how great it is to work in Construct, you have to wonder if it's worth it in the end when there are now various documented cases where a project is completed and the devs are left frustrated to the point of porting through other engines.

We all want to see Construct succeed but we'd like to be able to succeed as well.

Each person has their reasons for being here. I'm simply sharing my story.

And if i didn't care, i wouldn't have said anything and just moved on

I still think it's hilarious that I can't log in to the browser app. Always says unable to yada yada. I even cleared my cache several times since day 1, created a new password on the forum to use, and it still won't let me log in. "Serious" developers want to log in, amirite?

Not aware of any issues here, submit a bug report if you're having trouble.

Benefit of logging in via editor is it can unlock all your features if you're a licensed customer without having to fiddle with c2license.txt files. >50% of our support emails are spent with issues on the license file itself which we're hoping to significantly reduce by making the whole process easier.

All I'm going to say is yes construct has a workflow that I and many others love. I posted this thread to show that you can make great content. But the biggest concern for those of us who do complete a project is "what now?"

Can you put it on Android? iOS? Steam? Consoles? The short answer is yes. But we now know it's way too reliant on other services and support. So regardless of how great it is to work in Construct, you have to wonder if it's worth it in the end when there are now various documented cases where a project is completed and the devs are left frustrated to the point of porting through other engines.

We all want to see Construct succeed but we'd like to be able to succeed as well.

Each person has their reasons for being here. I'm simply sharing my story.

And if i didn't care, i wouldn't have said anything and just moved on

Thank you for sharing your story, we have all read it and we appreciate you taking the time out to post it.

Okay, wow, now a 17 page thread.

I'm not sure what anyone here thinks we should actually do. We've already announced things like our own mobile app build service and new IAP/ad plugins for C3, so that is on the way. We've got Xbox One support just around the corner. Mobile support from what I've seen is pretty solid with WKWebView and Android 5.0+, all supporting JIT-compiled JS and hardware-accelerated WebGL. Maybe we could tweak the way we advertise certain things. Maybe some people have bugs, or unoptimised cases, in which case please file reports, or send me .capxs to profile for performance improvements (as ever, I always ask, and either get sent nothing, or just projects with silly performance-destroying mistakes, hence my skepticism).

Do you want us to rebuild the C3 editor? I would go so far as to say that would probably ruin us, and waste a brilliant opportunity. Do you want us to build native engines? I've covered that in this blog with our rationale around that, which nobody ever really directly argues against, there's just vague accusations of how HTML5 is "poorly optimised" or something, which really is not the case given the potency of modern JIT compilers and the native-equivalent performance of WebGL.

So what have I missed? What do you think we should actually do differently that isn't something we've already covered? If I can't make sense of any specific complaints or clear suggestions on what to do, then I don't see why we shouldn't just carry on as we are - I think we already have a strong plan for the future.

The construct community has grown to the place where not everyone wants or needs the same things, which makes it hard for everyone. A good start would be releasing features. One of the frustrations that I've seen is that everything is always coming soon, just around the corner, in the pipeline etc.

The construct community has grown to the place where not everyone wants or needs the same things, which makes it hard for everyone. A good start would be releasing features. One of the frustrations that I've seen is that everything is always coming soon, just around the corner, in the pipeline etc.

But that's exactly what they are providing with the C3 platform.

A way to build more features faster.

The only downside I could think of is that right now it's just the basic platform. Given the amount and pace of updates to C2 I'm not worried that C3 will be way ahead in a couple of months.

Okay, wow, now a 17 page thread.

I'm not sure what anyone here thinks we should actually do. We've already announced things like our own mobile app build service and new IAP/ad plugins for C3, so that is on the way. We've got Xbox One support just around the corner. Mobile support from what I've seen is pretty solid with WKWebView and Android 5.0+, all supporting JIT-compiled JS and hardware-accelerated WebGL. Maybe we could tweak the way we advertise certain things. Maybe some people have bugs, or unoptimised cases, in which case please file reports, or send me .capxs to profile for performance improvements (as ever, I always ask, and either get sent nothing, or just projects with silly performance-destroying mistakes, hence my skepticism).

Do you want us to rebuild the C3 editor? I would go so far as to say that would probably ruin us, and waste a brilliant opportunity. Do you want us to build native engines? I've covered that in this blog with our rationale around that, which nobody ever really directly argues against, there's just vague accusations of how HTML5 is "poorly optimised" or something, which really is not the case given the potency of modern JIT compilers and the native-equivalent performance of WebGL.

So what have I missed? What do you think we should actually do differently that isn't something we've already covered? If I can't make sense of any specific complaints or clear suggestions on what to do, then I don't see why we shouldn't just carry on as we are - I think we already have a strong plan for the future.

Ashley after reading the many many comments on this and my thread I believe what people are asking for is this:

1- Go ahead with C3 as it may at least be useful to people using Mac and Unix even though most C2 users have said they do not want a Chrome browser based subscription engine.

2- Make an update or addon package of exporters and features for C2 that users have been asking for and fix the bugs you have been promising to fix for years. Put that new team of programmers to work on that along with C3.

We all understand Scirra has to make money and I believe you understand that if you lose your long time C2 users by not listening to us your chances of staying in business are pretty damn small.

So this is a reasonable request and you can charge your $99 for a great package of features and exporters for C2 and I will bet you will sell many more of those packages than you will C3 browser versions.

It also would prove you actually intend to honor your license and advertising that said those exporters would be included in C2 and would probably keep your base happy and maybe they would be interested in C3 later after you get all the bugs worked out.

It seems to me you would want those long time C2 users to hang around and support Scirra but reading through the comments on many threads they are dropping out and pretty disappointed in Scirra right now.

So what do you say?

Can we get a package of features and working exporters for the existing C2 engine at a reasonable price with no subscription Ashley?

submit a bug report if you're having trouble.

I already did when someone else posted it. Still can't log in. Don't worry about it though. I don't plan on using it much at all.

Okay, wow, now a 17 page thread.

I'm not sure what anyone here thinks we should actually do. We've already announced things like our own mobile app build service and new IAP/ad plugins for C3, so that is on the way. We've got Xbox One support just around the corner. Mobile support from what I've seen is pretty solid with WKWebView and Android 5.0+, all supporting JIT-compiled JS and hardware-accelerated WebGL. Maybe we could tweak the way we advertise certain things. Maybe some people have bugs, or unoptimised cases, in which case please file reports, or send me .capxs to profile for performance improvements (as ever, I always ask, and either get sent nothing, or just projects with silly performance-destroying mistakes, hence my skepticism).

Do you want us to rebuild the C3 editor? I would go so far as to say that would probably ruin us, and waste a brilliant opportunity. Do you want us to build native engines? I've covered that in this blog with our rationale around that, which nobody ever really directly argues against, there's just vague accusations of how HTML5 is "poorly optimised" or something, which really is not the case given the potency of modern JIT compilers and the native-equivalent performance of WebGL.

So what have I missed? What do you think we should actually do differently that isn't something we've already covered? If I can't make sense of any specific complaints or clear suggestions on what to do, then I don't see why we shouldn't just carry on as we are - I think we already have a strong plan for the future.

I'd like to mention that in less than 48 hours, this post generated 17 pages. Let's you see that you indeed have a passionate community (with various reasons for using construct). I would say that getting this community more involved would be a great start. Conducting direct polls and really having a way for supporters to give feedback. The forums are a good starting point but so many people don't use the forums so it's not always the best thing to use. I know I've lurked the forums for years and haven't really posted much outside of sharing my projects.

Giving roadmaps that are clear and also make sure the wording in your advertisement doesn't cause confusion or give people false hopes. Construct does indeed publish to the platforms that are named but it really isn't clear about the extent of each platform's capabilities. So build once, publish everywhere can seem very misleading to the consumer Scirra seems to market to (hobbyists, artists, designers, and overall non-coders who have no true knowledge of what's capable).

The browser IDE seems to be an issue for a lot. There are many posts regarding why. I personally don't see it as an issue as long as I can still make my games without compromise.

But the biggest thing is exporters and getting the projects out to the masses. Construct is used for a ton of reasons. Some people want to simply learn about game dev and make games to share with their friends. Some just want to fiddle around every now and then. And some want to create commercial games. Each group want and need particular things. For the most part, Construct has the game making portion of it nailed.

I have been waiting for Construct 3 and have been really putting in faith in what you and Tom says about the future of this technology. I'm not a programmer and I see this company as an entity that cares about creators such as myself who want to make games but don't necessarily care to learn coding.

I WANT to use construct 3. But I also want to be sure that what I create will be able to be published properly. The entirety of Construct 2 had me frustrated yet still around because of the ease of development. Maybe focus more on the post development stuff. I see that there are support options mentioned for Construct 3 but you have to understand that subscribing would be putting faith into what Scirra says again. It's a hard pill to swallow when a lot of the community has put faith for the past 5+ years.

Really show us what we're getting into with C3. Be more transparent with the future and upcoming features.

Thanks for taking the time to hear us out

Can we get a package of features and working exporters for the existing C2 engine at a reasonable price with no subscription Ashley?

Ahhh .......I get where you're going with that...... I wouldn't mind that either, as I will be stuck in a bit of a limbo for a while...

I'm in this situation now:

In order to move my project to completely to C3 I'm relying on several plugins, that needs to be ported to C3, before I can do that. I don't know when or if those plugins will ever become available for C3, so I'm pretty much counting on that I have to stick with C2, for a while longer, (at least for some of my c2 projects). Although... We still have the 3rd party wrappers, but it would be good if C2 had access to a better build service as well, at least until (those who wish) can completely move their projects to C3. I don't mind if that would be subscription based, or pay for a pack of X Number of build outputs (in case you can't provide a downloadable build pack for a one time pay)

>

> Can we get a package of features and working exporters for the existing C2 engine at a reasonable price with no subscription Ashley?

>

Ahhh .......I get where you're going with that...... I wouldn't mind that either, as I will be stuck in a bit of a limbo for a while...

I'm in this situation now:

In order to move my project to completely to C3 I'm relying on several plugins, that needs to be ported to C3, before I can do that. I don't know when or if those plugins will ever become available for C3, so I'm pretty much counting on that I have to stick with C2, for a while longer, (at least for some of my c2 projects). Although... We still have the 3rd party wrappers, but it would be good if C2 had access to a better build service as well, at least until (those who wish) can completely move their projects to C3. I don't mind if that would be subscription based, or pay for a pack of X Number of build outputs (in case you can't provide a downloadable build pack for a one time pay)

+1

Ashley Tom you guys have a great tool and from an educational point it's second to none!

You guys have always offered great support to education institutions with discounts and support with game jams! Browser based will make taking work to and from school simple and issues with version updates thing of the past.

My real request is the export modules, I'd like to see students continue with construct and develop games for wider market when ready, not feel the need to retrain or make what I taught them redundant from the engine side of things.