Concerns from a "Serious" developer

lamar

> 1) You feel you were advertised the exporters instead of support of being able to publish to the platforms for Construct 2.

>

Just because it was advertised that it would work with the platform

*(with third party exporters)

doesn't mean they have to fully 100% support and make sure each platform's exporter works flawlessly with all features provided by Construct.

In fact Scirra has worked together with many of the wrapper projects to improve the project so Construct games can work even better in the environment but for each console the wrapper devs have to recreate the wheel and that needs a lot of time/skill/money. (Which is why it's good MS is doing their Xbox browser support stuff)

People didn't dev for Linux and Mac due to lack of support and we'd have a more stagnant dev environment if not for Valve and other companies throwing their weight into OpenGL/Vulkan to destroy the reliance on DirectX, but with consoles instead of just 1 environment (Linux/Unix-likes) you get multiple proprietary environments with not as wide of range of operating system/coding environment support.

I bet Scirra probably has some interesting stories trying to work with Nintendo if they were not under a NDA.

---

Now I do agree that there was a lack of support in regards to the exporters in terms of documentation that lead to additional confusions, as well as hopes that the parties making the wrappers would improve them more than they were.

As we see with Construct 3's cloud based service they're obviously getting an automated flow working to compile them for mobile, but I doubt the majority of the technology involved is Scirra proprietary. This means that it's possible for them to document majority of the process and then share with everyone so people can follow the steps and go through the process with their exported project.

No. If they're advertising platform support, that means the features of those platforms should work. Period.

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.

This has worked against us in the past. The multiplayer feature was massively voted for, but from the data we look at, very few people actually use it. So the hype effect is a big distorting factor in polls. I don't regret it, it was a super interesting project to work on, but it's something to bear in mind, and is the main reason I have avoided polls since then.

Having said that, we do have a feature-voting system planned anyway but I am going to strongly caveat it with warnings that "votes are not a guarantee of implementation", for exactly the reason we had with multiplayer. Also I can easily imagine things like 3D becoming #1 voted features, and there are a wide range of reasons why we're holding off on that.

[quote:13k6dztx]Giving roadmaps that are clear

We have some more blogs coming up about our future plans. Again though roadmaps can come with downsides, if you don't carefully explain that they are not guarantees, just projects under consideration/in early development. However I do also appreciate that it would be good for us to do something along these lines still, again with caveats about what the precise development status is.

[quote:13k6dztx]Construct does indeed publish to the platforms that are named but it really isn't clear about the extent of each platform's capabilities.

Generally, it's as good as the browser engine is. Still I do appreciate prospective customers want to know what will and won't work. I think a lot of products have this problem where they support N platforms but X features only work across Y platforms, and can end up with pretty complicated support matrices. HTML5 is generally a good way to smooth over those gaps, but it's true that we probably ought to do more to highlight possibly problematic platforms which have several missing tickboxes. One problem though is it's really hard to have public messaging around that when you've signed an NDA...

[quote:13k6dztx]But the biggest thing is exporters and getting the projects out to the masses.

Yes, lots on the way here, as announced.

No. If they're advertising platform support, that means the features of those platforms should work. Period.

There's a difference between making them responsible for the wrapper itself and making them responsible for supporting the export process into the wrapper.

The ecosystem has improved greatly since the start of Construct 2 but not every platform is equal.

> 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

+1 this.

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?

— can we get response please because it looks to me like you asked what we wanted and then brushed it aside not listening and instead you want to tell us all the wonderful things you have planned for C3.

> 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.

>

This has worked against us in the past. The multiplayer feature was massively voted for, but from the data we look at, very few people actually use it. So the hype effect is a big distorting factor in polls. I don't regret it, it was a super interesting project to work on, but it's something to bear in mind, and is the main reason I have avoided polls since then.

Having said that, we do have a feature-voting system planned anyway but I am going to strongly caveat it with warnings that "votes are not a guarantee of implementation", for exactly the reason we had with multiplayer. Also I can easily imagine things like 3D becoming #1 voted features, and there are a wide range of reasons why we're holding off on that.

While I didn't use the multiplayer plugin much it is a very interesting thing to play around with. I would say my only complaint is that you can't connect directly to another player without the signalling server. (Last I tried, unless it's been updated)

Glad to hear you're planning for a rating/voting system for suggestions. I have some unique ones that Tom might be interested in even if they're low priority

(IPFS, Ethereum)

[quote:10ppf3a2]Construct does indeed publish to the platforms that are named but it really isn't clear about the extent of each platform's capabilities.

Generally, it's as good as the browser engine is. Still I do appreciate prospective customers want to know what will and won't work. I think a lot of products have this problem where they support N platforms but X features only work across Y platforms, and can end up with pretty complicated support matrices. HTML5 is generally a good way to smooth over those gaps, but it's true that we probably ought to do more to highlight possibly problematic platforms which have several missing tickboxes. One problem though is it's really hard to have public messaging around that when you've signed an NDA...

[quote:10ppf3a2]But the biggest thing is exporters and getting the projects out to the masses.

Yes, lots on the way here, as announced.

Can't wait to hear the details. With your bigger staff and the major legwork on Construct 3 done I hope you can tackle the documentation issues with ease.

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.

It's not just Chrome based, as Firefox will be compatible in the near future.

This issue of yours is two different issues

1) browser based

2) subscription

What's wrong with it being Browser Based? What technical issues are there that you are concerned about? You haven't answered that other than "But chrome updates" which is has an easy solution.

Is there c2 plugin support for in c3? i mainly ask because if there isn't then yes, a export package of some kind or even access to the cloud exporters (or whatever is going on with c3) could be extended to c2 devs who have projects that rely on plugins. I know all of my c2 games do.

Ashley about the voting system. I do remember that people voted for multiplayer support. So I do understand the hesitation to implement something like that again. But honestly, once the exporters are solid then the rest is just bonus features. Regardless of whether or not people are using the features, if they're paying a subscription and getting what they asked for, then that's fine, right?

> 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.

>

It's not just Chrome based, as Firefox will be compatible in the near future.

This issue of yours is two different issues

1) browser based

2) subscription

What's wrong with it being Browser Based? What technical issues are there that you are concerned about? You haven't answered that other than "But chrome updates" which is has an easy solution.

I have asked Ashley to respond directly to my post.

I would ask that you not respond to me until I have heard a response directly from Ashley to my question.

Ashley is there any technical limitations not allowing us to use the C3 build service for C2 projects. In an ideal world you would just upload your c2 export in zip file and building with the c3 build service. Until C3 matured and most major plugins has become available to c3.

I have to agree that Scirra is all about the waiting, wait for this feature, wait for this announcment, i've been patiently waiting for C3 and got C2 in a browser, now have to wait again for it to become something more, only now you have to pay to wait.

Also does the build service extend to desktop support or is it simply mobile? I can't remember desktop support being addressed since C3 was announced.

I have asked Ashley to respond directly to my post.

You seem to be more of a cheerleader trying to run interference so I would ask that you not respond to me until I have heard a response directly from Ashley to my question.

You reposted the same post and keep saying the same things without addressing any questions when others are asking you to clarify things due to you being ambiguous.

What is wrong with it being browser based?

Is there c2 plugin support for in c3? i mainly ask because if there isn't then yes, a export package of some kind or even access to the cloud exporters (or whatever is going on with c3) could be extended to c2 devs who have projects that rely on plugins. I know all of my c2 games do.

With some minor tweaking they should work fine.

https://www.scirra.com/blog/193/addons-in-construct-3

[quote:9jmpqwxy]For addon developers

Construct 3's addon format is generally similar to Construct 2's. However third-party plugins and behaviors will need to have their editor script (edittime.js) rewritten in to a new format for Construct 3. This basically involves rewriting the action, condition and expression (ACE) tables in to a new format, and moving UI strings to a separate language file to facilitate translation. However the runtime script (runtime.js) should continue work unmodified. There are a small number of runtime features that have changed in Construct 3, but these are usually trivial to update. We'll provide documentation and assistance on the forum around this. We're aiming to have initial documentation on addons ready as early on during the public beta as possible so addon developers can get a head start on porting. Overall it ought to be a quick job to port Construct 2 plugins to Construct 3.

We're aware some third-party developers sell their addons and might not want them bundled with projects. We will provide a way for addons to opt-out of bundling so they stay in the editor only.

For the cloud exporters I assume it's just taking the HTML5 export and putting it through a wrapper, thus not requiring any special plugin code for that. If that's the case it also means they could document the process so you could roll your own with the same process they use.

https://www.scirra.com/blog/187/buildin ... onstruct-3

However, the blogpost however doesn't specifically state what sort of technology they're using for the cloud based mobile build process. Hopefully they'll have more information on how they're doing this in the future.

Ashley is there any technical limitations not allowing us to use the C3 build service for C2 projects. In an ideal world you would just upload your c2 export in zip file and building with the c3 build service. Until C3 matured and most major plugins has become available to c3.

That is their ideal to just import C2 into C3 without issue. With their official plugins/addons I would expect no issues, but for third party plugins/addons you would need for the plugin to be modified

Construct 2 and Construct 3 export to the same canvas engine and they even advertised taking C2 projects into C3

https://www.scirra.com/blog/191/saving- ... onstruct-3

[quote:9jmpqwxy]Importing Construct 2 projects

As promised, Construct 2 projects import to Construct 3 with high fidelity. Construct 3 has all the same features Construct 2 has, and we've written an importer to read the XML-based Construct 2 project format and load it in Construct 3. This is well-tested, as we've been able to import large, complex Construct 2 projects kindly donated by developers like Aurelien Regard (The Next Penelope) and Daniel West (Airscape). So you can rest assured your project will import correctly. (Note if you use third-party addons, you will need to install Construct 3 versions of the addons before importing.)

> I have asked Ashley to respond directly to my post.

>

> You seem to be more of a cheerleader trying to run interference so I would ask that you not respond to me until I have heard a response directly from Ashley to my question.

>

You reposted the same post and keep saying the same things without addressing any questions when others are asking you to clarify things due to you being ambiguous.

What is wrong with it being browser based?

Man, it's all well and good for him to respond to others but never the other way around. You're either running interference or cheerleading for the team. You'll be marked a lapdog soon if you keep it up. Never speak to he who must not be named.

Man, it's all well and good for him to respond to others but never the other way around. You're either running interference or cheerleading for the team. You'll be marked a lapdog soon if you keep it up. Never speak to he who must not be named.

Keep it polite - no personal attacks.

Is there c2 plugin support for in c3? i mainly ask because if there isn't then yes, a export package of some kind or even access to the cloud exporters (or whatever is going on with c3) could be extended to c2 devs who have projects that rely on plugins. I know all of my c2 games do.

Ashley about the voting system. I do remember that people voted for multiplayer support. So I do understand the hesitation to implement something like that again. But honestly, once the exporters are solid then the rest is just bonus features. Regardless of whether or not people are using the features, if they're paying a subscription and getting what they asked for, then that's fine, right?

+1

I wanna add swell that the comparing multiplayer to exporters is totally different things in my opinion and has no comparison, exporters with decent performance is somethings that every single developer will use, and you will have to publish some were when you finish the game, as opposite of multiplayer that it may or may not implemented by everyone.

So yes it should be the first priority and worth spends the time in, once you have the most awesome engine and good exporters, everything else comes secondary people they wouldn't care that much for behaviors or things missing.