The amount of work required to make Animate a decent animation software is at least 20 times bigger than the amount of work required to make C3 the best engine to create commercial 2D games. (it’s already the best for prototyping, but there is a reason why there aren’t a lot of indie hits made with C3 on steam comparing to most other game engines so far)
We know there must be some kind of organization behind the scenes where Ashley would focus on gamedev Construct, while Diego would focus on Animate Features and especially fixing (again and again) bugs and UX of Timelines. They were big investments in developing this feature, great progress were made and it looks smart to kill two birds with one stone and monetize this. Also “every new feature would benefit both Animate and Regular Construct users”, right ?
Well, maybe not. It could mean the priority will go towards features that benefit both products, so most likely Timeline enhancements or audio-visual related stuff, while the biggest priority should go toward game-specific features that are currently lacking in the Construct engine :
For example right now games with a lot of Data are a nightmare to make.
UI, Dialogue System, Reassignable inputs are incredibly difficult to implement while they are needed in almost any serious project.
We don't have any Inheritance features which is quite unbelievable for a game engine. (most requested feature ever on old suggestion platform IIRC)
A lot of built-in plugins aren't unusable in production yet (Drawing Canvas self-erasing as soon as the player rescale their game windows, just to name one)
Here is a non-exhaustive list of important things that i think really need to be enhanced or added in Construct, trying to prioritize what seems to be the most important construct3-21h2.ideas.aha.io/ideas/C321H2-I-318
Sure Timeline improvements are nice to have for gamedev but it feels like it's not the priority at all, it’s only “nice to have”. I can think of dozens of full-indie games that don't require a single use of Timeline. And even if we're only talking about audio-visual enhancements, i would prefer things such as better particle system, better audio features and better pixel art support, more 3D features : each of those would be useful for at the very least a quarter of all games made in Construct. Also Timeline right now is a pretty bad UX, but I'm not even sure I would use it a lot even if all nice suggestions from the dedicated forum thread would be implemented. Maybe just for polishing some menu intro/transition but that's it. It won't help me at all to develop the games I'm struggling to make right now.
However those 3 years spent on developing Timeline aren't wasted : it also helped developing Hierarchies which is the best thing that happened since C3 started, it's already possible to achieve some useful stuff with Timeline if we really need it right now (sure with the pain of a bad ux) but why keep spending more devtime on this especially, instead of other high-potential and promising features that were pushed once and then dropped forever for example ? I would love it if such a talented dev as Diego, who is also responsible for those amazing Hierarchy features, QOL and animation editors improvement to name a few, could also work on high-priority and game-changer features as you’re such a “small team”.
As other people, I agree there is no sense to split the features in 2 products. None of us would pay 2 subscriptions, so the best would be to include everything in main Construct and have the second Animate-only cheaper option for those potential new users you’re targeting. (+ you always advertised the subscription model as a way to be able to grow, and update our beloved engine. So it would makes sense if we - early subscribers - can use the things where the money went)
But even then, I would be worried. It could be very confusing, maybe even repellent for new users who would try this new cheaper option first, and find out the showcased feature is actually bad UX and worse than any other Timeline they tried so far. And above all, there is just 2 dev working on the actual engine right now (Ashley and Diego), you’re always explaining us (with good reasons) why every single small-looking feature can actually be a huge amount of work, telling us you need to prioritize on most requested (and if possible easy-to-add features), that you’re a small team and so on…. It makes no sense.
Most of the time, I defend Construct’s point of view when there is debate as to how Construct is evolving. I admire Scirra’s amazing delivery rate, most of the time I appreciate the explanations you’re providing to the community and I found last months really exciting in terms of updates and new features. You seemed to take care of some users' suggestions lately. But here I just wish you would limit the damage of this decision as soon as possible and focus on making your engine viable for commercial/bigger projects instead. There is so much game-changer, absolutely essential things to add/fix in this engine while fixing the Timeline is just “nice-to-have” at best (as Tweens are already nice to work with for most common cases), or even useless for a lot of projects. Almost nobody is using it. It’s harsh but it’s the truth.
We all wish Construct could grow, multiplying its revenue and so on. But why not just spend 1-2 months to create a nice and fair Affiliate Program to let the network effect, content creators and community market Construct itself ? construct3-21h2.ideas.aha.io/ideas/C321H2-I-310 It would be a better match to the SAAS business model rather than splitting the product into 2 different solutions. It’s less risky and less expensive rather than committing to this and targeting a maybe non-existing customer base, trying to reach brand new users while the current community was built slowly during 10 years. The potential of gamedev Construct is still far from being reached and it looks like it's safer to build upon its strength.
In any case, thanks to all the team for all the love and the work put into the engine for so many years, for all the updates those past months and I wish you good luck for the upcoming months whatever your roadmap will be ! Much love.