Construct as a unity editor extension.

I like construct, I really do. But a number of limitations force me to only use it for prototyping.

For the "real" game, I use unity. I've dappled with playmaker, and Uscript, as well as Antares universe, but find them too cumbersome and end up simply writing code anyway.

All those packages cost $50-$100 and are quite popular. Scirra should make one. Just a thought.

Oh yeah, include it with the subscription...

Hard to build a business that's so reliant on another business and who can pull the rug out from you at any time.

Add to that the fact while Unity has its strengths, it's not perfect either, and has a much higher level of complexity than Construct. I don't think it makes much sense to pin everything we do to that.

Unity is an awesome tool, but it has a really steep learning curve.

I teach game design to kids (age 12-16) and C2 is our first stop in the development process as it's elegant and has a gentle learning curve. Unity is our final destination, and a decent portion of the students don't make it there (which is fine as they can make their projects in C2 as it's all about differentiated learning).

Would not want the two linked.

I think he was going for a value added service Scirra could offer, like how well the Construct event system could handle things versus the other editors.

By no means should you drop one for the other, that would be silly.

Also pretty sure the plates too full to attempt it anyway.

C3 is reliant on Chrome, isn't it? Chromium is open source, but Chrome is not - just ask Mr Google. C3 is reliant on the product of another business, so the precedent has already been set by design...

C3 is reliant on Chrome, isn't it? Chromium is open source, but Chrome is not - just ask Mr Google. C3 is reliant on the product of another business, so the precedent has already been set by design...

Nope. Check out the Firefox beta.

Hard to build a business that's so reliant on another business and who can pull the rug out from you at any time.

Great point, so when is NodeJS/Node-Webkit getting replaced with a Scirra-made exporter?

> Hard to build a business that's so reliant on another business and who can pull the rug out from you at any time.

>

Great point, so when is NodeJS/Node-Webkit getting replaced with a Scirra-made exporter?

Might as well be a Steam exporter amirite?

.....Oh wait, that's another third party.

Well, a standalone Construct 3 is in the works ( I hope still the case ) , so ultimately not reliant on anything.

Well, a standalone Construct 3 is in the works ( I hope still the case ) , so ultimately not reliant on anything.

That's the editor, not the runtime.

That said, I guess it'd be kinda neat if the free version of Construct 3 was the "Player" for apps too, so then it's an all-in-one EXE/etc that you can distribute to people. eg: if it detects a game project already in the folder, the EXE switches function to a game only, unless the developer has specifically chosen to allow someone to edit their game (then at start it asks if you want to PLAY or EDIT game).

newt Well sure they pretty much have their own Arcade so a desktop version of that would be nice and a Steam plugin? Yes please!

But seriously a wrapper to native is actually much more useful than just on Steam. It's something Scirra should have had better control over for a long time now/before starting work on C3.

There's a world of difference between relying on open-source projects and free software that implements standardised technology with open specifications, and transforming our business in to a UI skin for another closed-source game engine which doesn't care about us at all. If it really came to it, we can and would take over maintenance of any open-source project that we heavily depend on, or switch to another, but that seems pretty unlikely to happen.

FWIW, just one example of the downsides - last I saw Unity's web export was extremely heavyweight, with tens of megabytes of overhead and often 30sec+ to start up on a high-end desktop, and they didn't actually try to support mobile web (at least initially) because the experience was too rough. Compare that to our lightweight engine which can download and start up quickly and run well on pretty much any mobile device now, even when wrapped as a native app. But this kind of thing doesn't seem to stop people from thinking everything would be better if we did that. Honestly, it's actually crazy.

[quote:mbw24xgp] transforming our business in to a UI skin for another closed-source game engine

I don't think that's what the original poster meant. I am sure he thought code could be added to construct to make it work with Unity, the way Playmaker works. The rest of Construct would stay the same and would have nothing to do with Unity. Now whether the amount of work involved would be worth it, that's another matter.

Now whether the amount of work involved would be worth it, that's another matter.

Also sort of a reply to Ashley: It is if you want console and desktop export, and technically also mobile export since why would you use HTML5 on mobile when you can just export real Android and iOS apps??

As for "A closed source game engine which doesn't care about us at all", I think there's three major issues with that way of thinking:

1. Chrome/FireFox/whatever is for all intents and purposes a web browser, the ability to render interactive content is something they're improving (SLOWLY) due to HTML5 + WebGL being included in the web standards, but game engines inside HTML5 are not their main focus, and for anyone following the Chrome jank issue they can see that it's been going on for years. We have been lucky with some fixes so far, but I don't think we can assume that anyone on their end really specifically cares about making C2/C3/our exported games work in their browsers. Ashley has been doing a great job at pushing for fixes and I appreciate that, I love Construct and I wouldn't argue if I didn't care about its future.

2. If Unity was a tiny obscure company I'd mind the closed-source part, but when is Scirra going to get their hands dirty in the source code of these open source browsers and make their own player app that's optimized just for Construct games? That's what I'd need to see to believe that a company which hires hundreds of employees to make a game engine is going to be beaten by a small middleware company with a much smaller customer base.

3. Also still considering Unity being a dedicated GAME ENGINE, and that's how they make money, I think it's silly to say they don't care about people being able to make games in their engine. In fact, they've shown more willingness to adapt and change for what their users want than I've seen in a lot of the "more personal and friendly" game engine companies that often attract indie devs by advertising there's no code required (when everything is really just logic, and if an indie had the time to learn they could probably script in LUA or JavaScript without much issue).

Sure, they might make drastic changes that require re-making the plugin, but since C3 so far is just a re-skin of the C2 runtime what's the problem with making new editor interfaces every few years and re-selling? Might as well make it a yearly subscription eh! (and I'd actually pay for it, for real, because Unity is not designed for 2D and it still feels like an add-on, plus events are just nice and I'd feel much more comfortable using them if they exported to some C#/.NET bytecode underneath )