Should I purchase Construct 2, if so why?

• First and foremost, I love Construct 2 and I highly recommend the free edition program to others.

I am new to the forum, but have been using Construct 2, MMF 2, and Unity for quite some time now.

Like many others, I have been contemplating on purchasing Construct 2 for quite some time now.

I certainly do appreciate the work that has gone into the development of the engine and the work that has gone into the engine to produce the most optimal level of user friendly developing.

I normally do not like creating posts but I need to come to a conclusion since this decision cost money.

The issue I have that is causing me to think before I buy is the current state of performance of HTML5 and its future.

The following is what I have read about the advantages that I like of utilizing HTML5:

• No approval needed for admission
• Cross-Platform
• Automatically updates

Please inform if the above list is incorrect.

Construct 2 came out sometime ago, after X amount of years of using Construct 2 are veterans of the program.... Angry. Not with Construct 2 of course but with the state of HTML5 of not where they thought it would have been currently?

Today, I finally upgraded to iOS 6.0.1, I have been waiting for an update to come out after iOS 6, since I perceived that there would be bugs in the first build and like wise I have encountered many bugs so far with this updated version as well. This demonstrates the work that Steve gave to Apple's stability.

I played a HTML5 game, developed on Construct 2, on my iPhone 4 iOS 5 using Safari and it was playing on an average of 2 FPS. After I upgraded to iOS 6 the game was playing with an average of 7 FPS.

After I ran this test, I thought to myself, how am I going to monetize my games if I purchase Construct 2?

I have to be blunt and honest, I am getting a bit anxious reading on forums, "Sometime in the future HTML5 will be the boss/powerhouse/king/etc." How many months/years do we have to state this?

An analogy to that is, "Sometime in the future Armageddon is coming, so be prepared."

What is this an episode of Doomsday Preppers?

How long have developers been waiting? I am aware that HTML5 is great on computer browsers but a great majority of patrons play their games on mobile devices and tablets, in the not to far past, presently, and for the sake of argument, the near and distant future as well. So how much longer should developers wait to have HTML5 working at a stable rate on mobile and tablets?

A question that I has dominated my mind on this subject is how long till I can monetize on HTML5 and since Construct 2 is currently limited to HTML5, how long till I can monetize on the investment purchase of Construct 2?

HTML5 seems to be very difficult, if not impossible to monetize with. Comes back to the question, why should I purchase a program that produces an end result that is not practical in the market of mobile and tablets(currently). Is it even possible to produce some sort of income on the web browser with HTML5 (I am aware of Kongregate, Chrome Store, etc., but if you look at the play-counts of HTML5 games, they are low and some have been up for quite some time)? Most comments on HTML5 games revolves around how old the graphics look and "If I want to play HTML5, I'll just play my SNES." In my opinion, graphics is the lowest piece of the totem poll.

If graphics were important, then Minecraft would be the worst game in history.

Why should someone purchase something that produces a tangible or intangible asset, but that asset cannot be used or used to its optimum level? Why purchase a four seat car, four door car, if the rear doors don't open? The end result is that the purchaser of the vehicle bought a 2 passenger car.

Do not get me wrong, I do support Construct 2 and I have also clicked Yes for Greenlight, maybe Steam will be the answer or one of the answers for HTML5.

I am not only after the money, I enjoy the program, but to step into purchasing (moving from a hobby to developing for sale) has transformed this hobby relationship to a business relationship.

We only have a certain amount of hours throughout the day and if I am developing, I would be motivated if there was a good possibility that I could generate revenue from my long hours of developing. Hours developing hobby OR hours developing possible revenue.

Are there any developers that have at least generated revenue from Construct 2?

Remember, I do love Construct 2, but that alone is insufficient for my overall decision.

Is Gamesalad the answer? Is MMF 2 the answer? These are the thoughts that are going through my mind as well and I am assuming, once again, many others as well.

To the great Construct 2 community, please tell me and others that are thinking the same as I am (which I assume are many), why should I move from free user to purchase user of Construct 2, keeping in mind the current state of mobile/tablet performance w/HTML5 and the presumption of slow progression future of HTML5 (mimicking the progression of HTML5 in the past) and the lack of distribution (revenue) for HTML5 games?

You might be interested in this recent blog post where we noted on some hardware setups our HTML5 engine could actually beat the performance of our old native engine:

https://www.scirra.com/blog/102/html5-games-faster-than-native

So I don't think there is any problem with HTML5 being fundamentally limited in performance - it's just whether the quality of the implementation allows it to reach its full potential.

Your framerate on Safari iOS 6 sounds unusually low - perhaps you could share your .capx so we can take a look? Our Space Blaster demo game can average 45 FPS and rarely drops below 30 FPS on both an iPad 2 and 3, even using retina mode.

A good way to monetise HTML5 games at the moment is to contact game publishers and sell your game to them for their use. Sites like MarketJS are helping make this happen. For larger games you could also consider using the Javascript SDK to plug in your own payment system for IAP in the browser.

The game in question is Space Blaster Demo.

I have conducted 5 tests on two (2) different iPhone 4.

I have restarted the phones, closed all apps, plugged phones in while playing and closed all sub window browsers. I have tried to control all the variables as I could to ensure that the phone is not the issue (or is it?).

Average speed on game start up = 23 FPS

Average speed while playing    = 9 FPS

I have read that post prior to creating this post, thank you for sharing. Sadly, after I had run the tests performance was slow, so the post doesn't hold to much validity to me (at the present time). Unless, my tests were ill-conceived and should be ran again with other controls.

Here's a great article on monetizing html5 games.

photonstorm.com/archives/3045/insert-coin-to-continue-the-html5-game-sponsorship-market

Hey Hye,

I remember being in a similar position to you when I first stumbled across C2 some time ago. You have many options - and only so much time. You want to make the right investment, I can understand that.

Its obvious that you really only care about mobile development right now (I was the same when I first started as well). But I think you should broaden your scope a little bit.

Your analogy with armageddon is kind of right, it is coming.. (but what is actually coming is the opposite of armageddon lol). I can tell you that after using this program everyday for over a year - I am not angry! Infact Ashley and Tom constantly remind me that I have made the right decision with every new release.

One thing that confused me was that you presume that html5 progress is/will be slow. In reality its moving faster than most people presumed. I am extremely happy with the performance of our games in Chrome, its pretty much perfect. All we have to do now is wait for the other tech to catch up - which it will, there isnt many who dispute this either.

So if you want to start getting serious right now - what should you do in the meantime? Get on board and start building up your portfolio. It is highly unlikely that you will strike it big on your first game. Nothing you do in C2 will be a waste of time, when we hit the golden age of html5 being commonly supported, suddenly every project that you created for other platforms might be viable for mobiles now.

I could go on, but C2 is (in my opinion) the safest choice for a long term strategy if you are serious about the business side of things.

"Is MMF 2 the answer?"

No. It's a pain to work with serious projects in MMF2, especially if you've tasted the excellence of Construct 1/2. Imagine going back to Windows 3 after using Windows 7, Ashley basically improved every aspect of MMF2. Many of the MMF2 veterans all moved on, or are desperately waiting for MMF3 to come out (because Construct 2's HTML5 focus is offputting to some).

"Is MMF 2 the answer?"

No. It's a pain to work with serious projects in MMF2, especially if you've tasted the excellence of Construct 1/2. Imagine going back to Windows 3 after using Windows 7, Ashley basically improved every aspect of MMF2. Many of the MMF2 veterans all moved on, or are desperately waiting for MMF3 to come out (because Construct 2's HTML5 focus is offputting to some).

Ha-Ha, I completely forgot about the non-existent MMF3.

Here's a great article on monetizing html5 games.

http://www.photonstorm.com/archives/3045/insert-coin-to-continue-the-html5-game-sponsorship-market

Wow, great find and right on the points that I was trying to discover.

Thanks.

GenkiGenga,

Your ending statement resonated the most with me because I am focusing on the business side of the developing, since I have been developing as a hobby for quite a long time now.

Thanks for your response!