Construct 3 Talk (Disadvantages / Native Export)

I know Ashley you been getting this Subject all the time but you have to read this

1- My Story with Construct 3

I’m graphic designer who love creating Art and graphic Stuff in 2017 I decide to start my journey in creating App & 2d games

After a lot of searching in google I find that to develop a game you need to know programing languages

Like C# / java or C++ I was disappointed because nothing scared me the most like seeing an open notepad or visual studio full of code.

To me coding is something frustrating and I can’t do but after a long day I read an article about construct 2 and how easy to use it to make your games

To me construct was my hero

So I start creating simple App & Books in my free time but I stop for one year because of my work since I’m working as full time graphic designer

In 2019 I buy Construct 3 to start make good games professionally at this time problems starts

2 – Construct 3 Disadvantages:

Let start with the first think (SPLASH SCREEN & LOADER LAYOUT) I mean guys seriously it 2020 and Construct 3 doesn’t have any editable Splash?

You will probably say there is a tutorial about how to change Loader Layout I’m sorry again but this just poor ugly solution

Next Issue is (ORIENTATION)

There only 3 option (Any – Fixed Portrait – Fixed Landscape) but what we really need is 2 more option

(Any – Fixed Portrait – Fixed Landscape / Routable Portrait – Routable Landscape)

Next Issue (MULTYPLAYER)

Designing and developing my game take 4 month of learning

1 month only to understand the multiplayer I suffer to know how to create a platform multiplayer game

The Multiplayer documentation really hard to understand even the included templates not helping

For example I was looking to find a template that help me create a fight between to 2 Players like STREET FIGHTER game with Characters selecting option but I find myself Looking into a ( chat Room and Pong examples )

More documentation and examples will be helpful for us

Next Issue (MONITISATION)

The painful one after I lunch my first game I get a limitation from Admob for no reason even I read their policy 100 times and I couldn’t find any reason but the more sad is ( MOBILE ADVERT ) Doesn’t support mediation and Construct 3 do not provide any alternative like Iron Source mediation

So I find that we have to pay Extra 200$ for 3rd Party plugins whish equal 2 years of Construct 3

Also the threat of getting stuck with non-updated plugins and what really make you sad more is author engines they have Free Official plugins for example Unity

I think all the big Studios they create game to make money from them and all the publishers work with mediation

I know Unity is big famous company and we can’t compare it to scirra but I will talk about on my next issue

Next Issue (GAME PERFOMANCE)

I read every article about optimization and even after that I get a game Full of Lag and some devices not even open and that get me bad reviews on my game but the strange think is : in my test devices the game work good in remote preview and Somme players play the game smoothly and they give me 5 stars

After a long Research again I find the Cause is chromium GPU drivers problems and that prove that HTML5 Technology is not good and mature for publishing Mobile games because of the Wrap Browser even Ashley write a lot of articles seeing the opposite but I still believe if a use a Native engine probably something like that won’t happen at least you will have Stable game

I believe that the point where people switch engine

Now let talk about solutions

We need a NATIVE EXPORT for mobile I know that Ashley you love HTML5 and I read your articles talking about luck of resources and how hard to deal with bugs also the point of no difference but deep down you know that Native is way better in terms of stability and performance

We all in Construct community can donate money to scirra to hire the best developers to help you to make that true in exchange for some free Months of the New construct Native Export

There No shame of having HTML5 AND NATIVE in one engine we really want scirra to grow

And about Monetization Plugins i think with native export it will be easy to make them since they already exist ( for both android and Ios)

In your article you give a example by HTML vs Flash

But to me I will give you the example of Nokia and windows phone and you already know the rest of the story

In the end I’m just simple guys who love construct 3 and scirra and want them to grow step out from their comfort zone

Thank you Scirra Team for all the work you done

Yep, this again... I think the thing most people don't understand is that native exports could actually make all of these problems worse. It would also involve such a colossal amount of work that it risks ruining the entire company. We've only come this far because web technology allows us to re-use virtually all our code across every platform.

To just really quickly run through some of your points:

Custom loading screens: loader layouts already let you show a layout as the loading screen, allowing for completely custom display. (Native engine is irrelevant here)

Orientation: it's not clear why this is necessary? (Native engine makes no difference to this)

Multiplayer: networking is a super complicated area and is basically an expert level feature. I was quite uneasy implementing it in the first place because of this - it's a huge jump to go from non-programming blocks to things like lag compensation in a real-time online multiplayer game. Even though Construct takes care of loads of details for you, you still have to deal with some fundamental complications like synchronization. I'm not sure what we could do to fundamentally fix this. (Native engine makes no difference to this)

Monetisation: I know this is important, but it's a huge amount of work and requires constant maintenance to cover things like ads and IAP, and a regular source of awful bugs that are really, really hard to fix. We're a small team with limited resources. If we added any more services, I can imagine us quickly spending 100% of our time just maintaining them and dealing with all the problems. So our approach is to cover some basic options and leave other services - of which there are dozens and dozens - to third party developers. (Native engine would not solve this either, since it's to do with maintenance and workload)

Performance: GPU drivers are native technology! So if driver problems cause poor performance, a native engine won't fix that either. In fact browsers have done a ton of work to avoid performance pitfalls and crashes in GPU drivers. Last I saw for example ANGLE (used by several browsers) had workarounds for hundreds of driver problems. If we make a native engine, we will have to re-do all that work ourselves, or face all the performance pitfalls, crashes and glitches. So I genuinely think a native engine would make this worse, not better. I often read about native developers having a total nightmare over this, so I think web technology is a good choice and this aspect of it is underrated.

It's easy to think of native code as being a magical solution that makes everything better. But in many cases it's either irrelevant, or could actually make things worse. There was a better case for it if you go back 5+ years, but now I think there is very little reason at all for it - especially with technologies like WebGPU on the horizon that have a decent chance of actually overtaking native technologies in some respects.

Thank you Ashley for your reply I hope the WEBGPU solve this issues in the future but now let forget about the native and focus on the disadvantages

(LOADER LAYOUT AND SPLASH SCREEN)

1- The problem is everyone know that first loader layout belong to construct and you can easily identify the games who made by construct because of this loader layout

2- The ugliness I’m graphic guy and to me the good looking is something important my problem is (I can’t change the font of the percentage Text or the color & style of the loading bar to match the style of my game )

3- Again showing Custom loading screen after a ugly loader is poor solution

The right solution is to have combination between Splash screen and loader

The professional solution to me is First a Show a Splash screen for 3 sec and then the loader show up above I believe the is a cordova plugin who could help to make that true

(ORIENTATION)

Some Smart phones they have speaker in bad places so when they try to click on buttons they cover the speaker with their hands and the lack of changing the rotation to fix the problem make them frustrating

The best example of that is PUBG (if you play pubg you will notice that you can switch orientation in landscape mode)

(MULTIPLAYER)

I really respect what you do for multiplayer I know it hard to deal with it if you can just add more Simple examples to help us cover the basics of the multiplayer

- Examples of how to choose different platform characters

- Examples of ( platform Fight games like Street Fighter )

To me the most thinks help to learn Construct fast and easily is the examples that you provides guys and of course the examples that made by the community

(MONETISATION)

At least could you make MOBILE ADVERT support mediation?

And for iron source I already send them an email about adding official plugin for construct3 and this their response

I feel like their email is just saying NO but in gentle way lol

Ashley I don’t mind paying little more for construct 3 to provide this solution for us and with extra money you can recruit one more developer to take care of ads and IAP

I believe this how scirra will grow more

Thank you again for you time Ashley

One more last question did you try to make the same game with different technology HTML5 and Native and try to compare them?

I think that way you can gather more DATA about the truth of native export

LOADER LAYOUT AND SPLASH SCREEN

Have you tried to:

1) set "Nothing" on "Loader Style"

2) make a Loader Layout with only the splash-screen image and a linked event sheet

3) use "On loader layout complete" as only event in the linked event sheet with a "Go to next layout" as action

Or, i'm pretty sure that the Loader can be configured via CSS...

Hello!

pinellos set "Nothing" on "Loader Style" will make player think that the game is stuck or crush

people always want thinks to work fast they don't have to much patience

For the CSS i didn't find any tutorial explain how to do it + i'm non programmer probably i will suffer before figure out how to do that

Thank you For your help

newt Thank you for the reply to explain my idea more follow with me this steps

Let say you click on the your Game

1- First the Splash screen Show UP for 3 sec (if you remember in INTEL XDK you can add your splash screen that mean the splash screen is something really possible )

2- Now after the 3 sec the preloader show up but instead of showing up in new black layout

it will show up above the splash screen ( and the user can change the preloder style : Small icon or percentage text or maybe loading bar )

this some exemples

3- there no need to have loader layout because the splash screen and Preloader did more professionaly good job than loader layout

pinellos set "Nothing" on "Loader Style" will make player think that the game is stuck or crush

people always want thinks to work fast they don't have to much patience

For the CSS i didn't find any tutorial explain how to do it + i'm non programmer probably i will suffer before figure out how to do that

Thank you For your help

if the loader layout is only made by 1 img and 1 event, the load time is almost 0,0, then the final effect is:

1) tap on the app icon by user

2) 0.1 sec blak screen

3) Loader layout, you can put all the loading bar/circle/pie u want...

4) the game is loading under yout loader layout and...

5) on load finished, start the game

pinellos thanks for reply

to me the idea of having black empty screen is not solid solution if you see top game in google play or app store no one of them use black screen or percentage text they use a professional splash screen that represent their logo studios or their logo publisher

i still believe that construct 3 should reach that level of professionality too

I'm not really someone to talk about most of the subjects here, but one of them is really important, which is adaptative orientation.

There are many games today that adapt to landscape and portrait and most of my web development projects had to have solutions for this problem, but currently Construct is unable to properly care for this need. It would be incredible if it did.

I suggest you put it into construct3.ideas.aha.io/ideas, sometimes it feels really hopeless having to resort to this page, but I guess it's better than nothing. Best of luck!

I don't understand how having full control of creating your own loading screen by letting a layout be a loading screen is not better than making a whole new system to customize a loading screen o.O

dupuqub i just add them

construct3.ideas.aha.io/ideas/C3-I-1450

construct3.ideas.aha.io/ideas/C3-I-1451

We need your support guys voting this suggestions

Thanks

Rory Thank you this exactly what i mean by poor solution is just like solving problem with author problem

I don't understand how having full control of creating your own loading screen by letting a layout be a loading screen is not better than making a whole new system to customize a loading screen o.O

I believe the point made here is that this is a non-issue since we can already build a layout to be the loading screen. I think I agree with Rory, a layout is a powerful tool already, and making another tool that covers the same problems is probably counter-productive.

dupuqub Thank you for your point but i'm not totally agree with you cause you read the documentation one of the limit is

and this is exactly what happen to me the preloader show up even i'm using the custom LOADER LAYOUT in my game