Stencyl released!

I havent had a chance to try this yet but i must say i'm very impressed with the look of it's user interface, and the website design too.

Their "eventing" seems a little long winded compared to constructs.

I don't get it as well, it's been years in the making going on about their java engine then all of a sudden then decide to use flixel, and the "revolutionary" way to program games thats been hush hush for so long turns out to be scratch blocks?

Still competition is usually good news for us users

I think Construct will have to be something "extra" special to compete against a free product of this quality.

Stencyl was among my first finds when I began to look for game-creation programs a while back (it was still in development). I'm interested to see what they've finally come out with.

Super buggy so far. Will try it out again later once it figures out that my internet connection is, in fact, working. -w-;;

Yeah I've been trying lo load a sample game page for about two minutes now

I want to see what it can doooooo

Strange that they just up and decided to use Flixel though. I wonder what brought that on. Oh, and the puzzle-blocks event system thing has been common knowledge for a while now

looks pretty cool actually. I just hope it's powerful enough to make cool stuff.

No Coding Required

Snap blocks together. Kid tested. MIT approved.

Our drag-and-drop gameplay designer builds off the wildly successful MIT Scratch project. We extend Scratch's simple block-snapping interface with new functionality and hundreds of ready-to-use blocks. Power users can create their own blocks to use and share with others.

For the programmers out there, we offer a powerful "code mode" interface (complete with code completion) for writing behaviors via our ActionScript 3 API. (You can also use an external editor of your choosing.) AS3 code is a first-class citizen; it interacts seamlessly with "Design Mode" behaviors and can even be embedded inside them!

<img src="http://static.stencyl.com/site/overview-section2-title.jpg">

I'm very curious about it. The eventing looks almost identical to construct to me, aside from the graphics.

I can't get to their site...

I can't get to their site...

Stencyl

Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. We're working on increasing our capacity. Hold tight!

From their twitter

Finally got the sample game to load, took the page about four minutes. I've spent the last forty-five minutes playing the Blinding Force demo game. And... it was really good! A very solid platformer with good controls. I had a couple framerate issues here and there that messed up my jumps, but then again I get framerate issues on other games in Firefox as well.

Really though I'm pretty impressed. Good job, Stencyl

I am curious as to how their speed compares to C2html5.

There, I got it downloaded now. Gonna give it a go and see if it's good.

First impression is that it's pretty slick.

I don't know what they've changed in this release version from previous ones. I tested it for some time before release as private beta tester and i can say :

1 - Their GUI is awesome. But can be slow at times

3 - The event blocks system looks good , but requires more clicks than Constructs. The advantage is that it can be more intuitive for novices and event kids (or maybe not), but not necessarily easier.

4 - The overall runtime speed was kinda poor on previous versions, don't know how it is now . I have a feeling HTML5 tends to be faster but i'm not sure.

5 - It uses Box2d to handle everything. This is good sometimes but may become a problem if one wants a customized control over collisions.

5 - On the versions i tested you could define collision geometry as polygons but only by inputting direct values of point coordinates, terrible . I'll check if this has changed.

6 - Parallax was much less intuitive and cumbersome to do than Construct . Again, i'll check this.

7 - Overall : Biggest advantages over construct : Integrated support for Community share over tutorials , assets, games , game hosting etc, publising on major portals etc.

And : Support for editing code directly.

And of course : Their site is very well done.

Wow, at last Looks like a well thought out toolkit. Congrats to them for finally launching.

I'm very curious about it. The eventing looks almost identical to construct to me, aside from the graphics.

I think it's completely different actually - the Scratch block system has no concept of selected object lists as far as I know, which is how the Construct event system fundamentally works.

Kiyoshi - looks like they fixed some of the problems you noted - for example, it looks like you can draw collision polygons (although there's still a giant list of co-ordinates in the UI - no idea why that'd ever be useful).

My main criticism, from my incredibly biased position of writing a competing dev tool , is that it's mixing the Scratch event block system, which was originally designed for children, with a full blown code editor to program your game. Who are they targeting exactly - kids or programmers? I'm not sure if this is a strength or a weakness, but Game Maker is technically an event/coding hybrid, and in the end one of them "won" (most people consider it a scripting tool). I wonder what Stencyl's thoughts are on how the hybrid thing will work out.

Construct Classic has python scripting, but it's been rightly criticised as an afterthought - Construct (1 and 2) have always been almost entirely about their event systems.

Still, I'm impressed how many people they've got on the website even after being publicly inactive for so long! Looks like they're doing well.

Has anyone tried it in comparison to Gamesalad? I don't have a Mac.

Well after testing it, i must say i'm still more comfortable and productive with Construct That scratch block system can quickly become annoying and messed up imo

> I'm very curious about it. The eventing looks almost identical to construct to me, aside from the graphics.

>

I think it's completely different actually - the Scratch block system has no concept of selected object lists as far as I know, which is how the Construct event system fundamentally works.

seems like a different way to do something similar:

<img src="http://static.stencyl.com/help/images/KillCollidingActors.png">

I tried GameSalad a few months ago. I found it awful. Their eventing system is unintuitive and laboursome, and i wasn't able to finish a simple test game because it just kept crashing. I uninstalled it and wont be going back.

I'm running Stencyl on an imac a it looks /works great so far. Nice to have a game dev kit i can finally use without having to bootcamp up windows.