Happy with C3 - Subbed and looking forward to the future

Hi everyone, I've been a lurker on these forums for quite a while, never really posting much. But today after interacting with Scirra on twitter I thought I'd share my experience on why I'm really happy with C3 (and subbed for a license as soon as it was available.)

So, over the past 8 years I've messed with lots of game software. Gamemaker, Unity, MMFD, Torque, and a few other tools. Never really got anywhere with it. I found out about Construct Classic quite a while ago and ended up with a C2 license a couple years back. Even though I was absolutely useless at messing with it it became one of my favorite tools.

My problem was I never finished projects with it. Never, since buying it in the first place, did I publish a C2 project. And I regret those wasted years of improperly using the software.

When I first heard about the two big changes coming to C3 earlier this year I was extremely skeptical, and thought, this is probably the end of Construct for me. I just thought I'd move on to something else, like GMS 2. However when the jam was revealed, and the chance to test C3 fully (I never used it earlier in the beta, I didn't want to be chained by the limits) I thought I'd give it a second chance.

And I'm glad I did.

I took part in the C3 Jam, and posted my first ever public game last week. What had seemed like huge weaknesses with C3 (being browser based) became a huge boon in a new mobile development setup I was using - doing a lot of switching between computers. My only problems with the engine were a few annoying bugs, which I'm sure are probably fixed or mostly fixed by now.

My thoughts on C3 had been going downhill until I got to take part in the jam, and got to experience serious use of the tool.

The way Scirra allowed us to make our games public and free to do what we wanted with was also a huge benefit. I got to spend a few days rapidly updating my game as people found bugs of varying degree. It was a fun challenge that I'd never had a chance to experience before. And I hope I get to do that again soon.

So I think people shouldn't be quick to dismiss a tool like this. I already found good use for some of the new features exclusively in C3.

I know some people don't like the subscription model, but did you see the amount of content Scirra released for C2 for even the earliest adopters to get for no extra gain. It must be much healthier for the company to know that if they continue to release valuable updates that their users will continue to support them.

And then even getting to the price of subscription. For a personal user it works out at about €7.50 a month. That's about the price of 4 cheapish coffee's where I live, maybe even cheaper. It's not in any means an expensive piece of software, in fact I believe unity pro costs more than C3 does over a year, every single month. And 2 months of Adobe CC will cost you more than a year of C3. And that's before you even mention the educational discounts.

The 1st year discount for previous licensed C2 users made the deal even better.

What I believe is that Scirra have earned my trust to have myself and hopefully many others as customers this year - and if they continue to do as good a job as they did with C2 I will be sticking around longer than that year.

So all in all I'm proud to support C3 - the first software I ever published a complete game in

Thanks for the post, we really appreciate it! And thrilled to hear you're completing games Where can we play it?

Well said —! I fully share your feelings and your game is fun.

C3 has a bright future ahead of it, so yes, let us be positive about it!

Thanks very much for the responses. My game is on Newgrounds, Itch.io, Gamejolt and last but not least the Scirra Arcade, it is called "You have 3 lives" I'm not gonna link it here because this isn't the place to do that.

Speaking more about C3 one of my favorite things so far is the export functionality in C3, I'm not sure why but it just seems so much more simple to use than C2. And it's really fast. When people were reporting bugs in my game when I got home I'd fix them ASAP and then render and upload a new build within a couple of minutes.

The filesizes are amazing when it comes to HTML5 Games also. I wasn't too impressed with the results when I was rendering out Node.Webkit builds for a friend, (I've slow internet) but when it came to uploading a game to the HTML5 sites, I ended up with a 6 megabyte file which included all the music, graphics, and spoken audio for the cutscenes, as well as the rest of the game.

Maybe this was all here while I was using C2, but when I was a C2 user that export functionality for some reason seemed really intimidating. After having done it finally in C3 it feels like something I can do again quite easily.

And I certainly agree with the bright future part, Construct has been a tool that interested me since it's classic days. I'm really interested to see how version 3 works out in the long run. Really looking forward to it launching fully out of beta. And I hope the updates keep up . Though I understand most likely not so fast as during the jam.

I hope you receive more positive feedback from your users following the jam, it was one of the best experiences of my life so far (After having being trying to make a game since I was about 13, I'm now 21). So thanks Scirra and Newgrounds for facilitating that.

Congratulations on completing your game! Your core mechanic was pretty hilarious.

I'm with you - C3 is a great product. I was a bit let down at first that there weren't more flashy features announced for C3, but after working on my game over the last few weeks I've realized that all the smaller enhancements in C3 add up to a big increase in productivity (even taking into account the time spent writing up bug reports ). I'm looking forward to C3 stabilizing enough for Scirra to push ahead with some of the bigger features, but it in the meantime it's already a fantastic tool that I am happy to pay for.