Sad people?

I decided to change the post heading, not worth upsetting anybody.

Just came across this:

http://prototypegames.wordpress.com/tools/construct/#comment-3

"Construct is an awesome tool. But the community forum is filled with overly sarcastic know-it-all douchebags. They seem to think that the very idea of having a REAL structured instruction manual is crazy, when the opposite is actually the case. If the community wasn?t filled with such douchebaggery and assholeness, and the creator of Construct would pull his head out of his ass and write a manual so people could actually learn the proper way to use the damn program instead of wading through thousands of pages for an answer? then and only then could Construct be taken seriously. Until then, it?s nothing more than a nice project put together by some guys and their douchebags friends and everybody on the outside of that circle is looked at as a nuisance."

What an idiot?

Ha, you're digging up a post which is a year old. No point fussing over it.

I wrote that comment and I stand by every word

That man needs prozak!

I think the criticism that Construct has never had high quality supporting documentation is probably a fair one, and is being worked on behind the scenes.

I must admit that it's not that easy to roll into Construct as a new guy. But there are tons of examples available on this forum that helped me enormous. Over the years, I've learned how to learn from examples, I guess some people just don't know how to do that yet..

But I don't agree on the community. No matter how simple or hard my questions are sometimes, I always get an answer within a day (sometimes within the hour!). This is one of the main reasons I chose for Construct..!

Hard to write documentation for a developing product. Just ask Deadeye how his tutorial is doing.

I find his comments on the community perplexing. Compared to other forums/communities, this one has always had a much more pleasant and helpful tone than most. Not to say that there haven't been disagreements, just look at the C2 forum XD. But even then I've found it to be more abrasive honesty than rudeness.

The documentation argument does have some merit (that it is incomplete, not the rude things he says). Though as Mipey said, hard to make good documentation for a program that is in development. But even then, it seems the guy didn't look very hard for the documentation. Even incomplete the wiki was/is probably the best tool for a beginner together with the ghost shooter tutorial.

There is a very substantial number of non english speaking users too, some who can barely string a complete sentence in english, but are asking for help in complex areas of design which requires complex answers.

You offer a solution that isn't quite what they wanted, and they get angry, you pass over the thread and they feel abandoned, it is a tough situation without any real solution.

Either way, I am glad that Tom is putting some solid thought into these things for the new website, I certainly can't wait to see that aspect of Scirras development.

Basically help documents are needed for software like this and the minute you make a program commercial along with bug fixes it becomes a must do thing.

The community here is great (well mostly) but on some indie dev forums i have seen a lot of elitism by construct users. Basically they will jump into threads about other game making programs with totally off topic comments in the style of "That program is rubbish, you should use construct instead" which really doesn't help promote a good image for the community here.

Also a lot of comments i read will be un-informed things about features where they say that the other program does not have 3d, coding options or effects etc when usually these apps do have those. That comment is a bit over the top though but i think the point behind it (documentation is needed) is right however this community is great and very helpful but i can see why some people off-site might have a negative opinion.

As for help docs though it seems like these are on the way which is great news, i hope this will apply for C1 also.

I wrote that comment and I stand by every word

the you should use construct argument is kinda valid, it's a great program and i dropped MMF2 and game maker for it, because it's worlds above, spreading the word doesn't make you an elitist at all. Considering construct is free, i don't see how it could be elitist, it's not like you have to be privileged to use it, and in fact, out of all the 2d game making programs its the only fully featured free one, that doesn't try to make you credit it in anyway.

The community here is one of the best around, nobody will get angry unless you're genuinely being stubborn and a troll, all polite posts are answered politely. i don't think I've ever even seen a post go by with no replies.

there've been a few people who posted at one time or another who did something like post "no response yet?!?!" 80 times in the first 5 minutes after their initial post, or wrote dissertations over and over about how construct should adopt nonprogramming terminology like calling variables "memory thingies" repeatedly until it became a frustration battle, and I can easily imagine one of the few unhappy check in check out users being bitter enough to say those awful things. also, I can easily imagine some of us coming off as elitist when genuinely singing the praises of construct and contrasting it with lesser software, but to someone who didn't understand how clearly superior construct was in whatever respects, it would just sound like elitist fanboyism. as a matter of fact, that last sentence sounded pretty elitist...good thing i only frequent this messageboard. also, there are a few users here who have their little troll sides, whether they do it for fun, because they're drunk, or because they are actually part-troll - and on foreign soil they may have gotten carried away. when construct 2 is released, we'll be able to get all this straightened out, because every one on every game making board will join this one.

I can easily imagine some of us coming off as elitist when genuinely singing the praises of construct and contrasting it with lesser software, but to someone who didn't understand how clearly superior construct was in whatever respects, it would just sound like elitist fanboyism. as a matter of fact, that last sentence sounded pretty elitist...

The reply's back at my post have a bit of that elitism vibe i was talking about but there is no need for anyone to try and convince me that construct is a great app because if i didn't agree with that i wouldn't even be posting on this forum. I like other game making software like GM also but i do agree with a lot of what you guys have said.

All i was trying to say in my previous post is that is how most other people would see it reading that type of thing, when people post that type of fixed opinion that something is better it doesn't mean other people will agree, this is true for many things in life also. That quote sort of sums it all up though

Ok this whole my app's better than your's is getting ridiculous.Construct Classic is good but certainly not the ultimate app out there.I could go on and on at how great games maker 8.1 is because it can blah blah......An Indie Gamer should not have to worry about what app he is using to create games.

Was there ever a Construct game that won an IGF award??.How many Finished games are there created with Construct??.We should not argue over such pity things.Rather spend more time creating and finishing games than argue over elite apps.

As they say the proof is in the pudding.So create games that showcase how good Construct really is.Demo's and Examples does not show an apps true potential.So start making complete games that shows what Construct can do.