Construct Classic vs Construct 2 for Beginners

Hi there everyone. I'm quite new to game design, so my knowledge is pretty limited at this point. I think Construct is definitely the best option for someone as green as me, but I'd like to know which one would be best for an absolute beginner. I've looked around the forums and the site a bit, and I apologize because I have seen this topic addressed, but never specifically for absolute beginners.

I can tell that CC is a lot more mature at this point with a lot more features, especially with the fact that R2 was released very recently. I also find its ability to make .exe files makes it incredibly attractive to me as that would probably be the format I'd want for a game. Granted, I don't know much about HTML5, I just know I'm more comfortable with the former. There are also a slew of tutorials to be found about CC.

That being said, it's clear that Construct 2 is Scirra's main project now, and I can tell it gets updated very frequently. I know at some point it will no doubt surpass CC in functionality, it's only a matter of time. The available tutorials are all pretty handy as well, though, again, due to its newness they are slightly limited. But I know that over time, it's a possibility that I'll be hindered if I don't go with C2.

So, bearing all that in mind, what's a good place to start? I've seen arguments for both end, but I'd like to reach a bit of a consensus, I suppose. Not just for me, but for others who might want to look up this topic.

I appreciate any responses.

As you said, CC has more functionality than C2, and therefore (as far as I know) can do more than C2. However, also as you said, C2 will eventually become far more advanced than CC.

Personally, I'd learn a bit with CC as a beginner, as both have similar styles, and then move to C2. I'm sure others have a better opinion than me.

Thanks for your two cents. I'm hoping other people are going to respond too. I'd like a nice sample of opinions.

Though I suppose in the end, it doesn't particularly matter too much either way as long as I don't embark on a huge project in one only to want to switch halfway.

Yea- basically, the way I see it, go for CC if you want something more complete and is designed for Direct X, or go for C2 if you want something in healthy development, in higher quality and eventually will be able to do a lot more. You'll also be helping the developers by purchasing it, if you choose to do so.

Choose CC for now. In the future maybe I will have different opinion but for the moment CC is the best and it's totally free.

I'm a great fan of CC.

But from a beginner's view I'm not so sure, if it is the right tool to start with. It is full of issues that need workarounds. And as a beginner you can't be aware of them. C2 on the other hand is actively developed. Even if there are issues, they get fixed very fast.

It's cool to have 1000 Sprites on the screen, with bump and height maps, while running with stable 60 fps. But it is a long way until you get those results. Not because CC is complicated (it isn't), just because of the issues. With C2 you might have to limit yourself (say, 100 instead of 1000 Sprites and no bump or height maps), but you can be sure (or almost sure) that C2 does what you expect in every situation.

In the end, it may all come down to two questions:

1) Do I want to create a DirectX9 supported .exe with pixel shader, or do I want to comfortably create a browser game, with access to channels of distribution like Kongregate and the like?

2) Do I have the energy to work around issues, or do I prefer active developers frequently fixing bugs?

The real highlight of CC is the stackable shader effect pipeline, which extends the graphical capabilities beyond belief, and (obviously) far surpasses the C2 renderer. CC is good to start with due to the fact that it's OSS and packed with features while the evaluation version of C2 is rather limited.

Many of the available CC tutorials are fairly outdated if not straight up obsolete. Despite this the CC wiki still holds a good amount of useful information. Knowledge on CC translates to C2 swiftly so you have little to lose if you try a bit of both.

edit: fixed typo

tulamide : Do you mentioned some of this workarounds that CC needs? I read some of the other threads and this issues are mentioned but I never get to find what they are specifically.

It's a tad hard to point fingers at the issues since personally I'm too used to working with CC and its quirks, really. One that instantly comes to mind though are some annoying event sheet editor problems, like drag'n'dropping of events being a surgical operation or issues related to selecting events and such.

I've also ran into some shaders that need minor fixing by hand, like changing the defined pixel shader version. Some plugins are buggy too and have been for years. There's a lot of this kind of things on the bug tracker.

Generally some things don't work like you'd expect them to but like I mentioned you'll get used to them.

It's a tad hard to point fingers at the issues since personally I'm too used to working with CC and its quirks, really. One that instantly comes to mind though are some annoying event sheet editor problems, like drag'n'dropping of events being a surgical operation or issues related to selecting events and such.

I've also ran into some shaders that need minor fixing by hand, like changing the defined pixel shader version. Some plugins are buggy too and have been for years. There's a lot of this kind of things on the bug tracker.

Generally some things don't work like you'd expect them to but like I mentioned you'll get used to them.This! <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

C2 is getting pretty good and has a lot of features already now, I prefer the editor over CC one, as long as you don't mind making your sprites in a different image application. But it's biggest let down at the moment is HTML5 performance is pretty terrible if you want to make a big action game with with lots of sprites. I'm just hoping that the exe wrapper and HTML5 in general will magically get significantly better performance in the future.

I'd stick with CC. I personally don't care for web gaming at all. Although, I do wish CC had more support. Eventually, I feel that CC with become deprecated software or the TGF2 of Clickteam.

I still strongly believe that CC flew under the radar for a far too large a demography. Its capabilities are simply outstanding in comparison to other much more popular solutions like GM or anything Clickteam has ever even dreamed of releasing. It definitely doesn't pale in comparison even though its development has been bumpy at best for the last few years.

But times do change even though I'll echo what Azu said about web gaming, I have little interest in that.

thirded, Scirra falling into the HTML5 trap was my biggest disappointment in years

thirded, Scirra falling into the HTML5 trap was my biggest disappointment in years

Even for me HTML is a lose. For playing this game you must have pretty good internet connection and not everyone have ie connection. Also I just don't get where is the point of making games for browsers. This are just aplications not real games. <img src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0" align="middle" />