Bob Thulfram's Forum Posts

  • Do you know about Adobe Animate CC? It has all the tools of Flash, but exports to HTML5. If you already know Flash, this might be the best thing for you.

    http://www.adobe.com/mena_en/products/animate.html

    and

    https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/welcome-adobe-animate-cc-a-new-era-for-flash-professional/

    $20/month, but if you like time-line-based animation, Animate is for you. It still exports Flash, but operating systems and browsers don't like it much. You can use ActionScript 3.0 but not lower. And as people here will tell you, HTML5 runs everywhere, Flash runs fewer places every year.

    Hmmm $20/month. That's $240/year, less than half the price of Construct 3.

  • I hadn't thought of that. I bought it with your coupon code.

    I was thinking that your coupons were going to run out fast and I wanted everyone on the forum to get your great class. Sorry for not thinking of all the angles. You'll just have to do more classes.

    So, everyone get the class from the creator and use those $10 special prices on other stuff.

    I worked several years with a Romanian. He is an excellent C/C++ coder as well as an electronic musician. And hang glides for fun! So your accent sounds normal to me.

  • HTML5 Forever!

    !. Both mobile and desktop devices are getting faster every year. More memory, faster processors, better GPU.

    2. Browsers are getting faster, especially using JavaScript, but internally lots of speed tweaks.

    3. HTML5 specs don't change once they have been agreed upon.

    4. The field is narrowing. Chrome, Edge, Safari. But the largest percentage are using Chrome and will only increase.

    After spending two years trying to keep up with yearly changes on iOS, Android, and Unity, I've given up on them. The mood of those engines seems to be break things and run away fast.

    So learn Construct 3 and let Ashley worry about changes in the exported platforms!

    And after a few weeks playing with Construct 3, I can say that most of it operates the same way except that:

    1. You can now do your coding on PC, Mac, Android, and Chromebooks. Use the cloud and you can code on a different machine every day.

    2. Most of the mechanics seem the same. The only thing I'm noticing so far is that we can now use booleans, which are nice.

    3. I'm noticing lots of little things that make stuff easier. Lots of little tweaks.

    So pay your money. $100 a year isn't trivial, but GameMaker 2 will cost you $1050 for the same value. That's ten years of Construct 3. Or as a wise man once said, 3 > 2. I enjoy GameMaker, but you wind up needing to use their GML code for a lot of things. I love Construct 3 because I don't have to code. I spent many years coding in Assembly, C/C++, Java, Swift, C#, and JavaScript, and I'd rather not.

  • I forgot to add that Udemy has lots of sales for courses all the time. One trick I've noticed is that sometimes sales are only on Udemy as read through a browser, sometimes only through the Android/iOS app, and sometimes only if you're not logged in and they think you are a new user. Right now the course is on sale for "new students" for $10. If you are not logged in, start signing up for the course. You'll get the temporary "new student" coupon. Then log in to pay for the course and attach it to your account. Almost every course I've bought has been $10 because they have such great discounts.

    Yes, I do know that this means less money in Mihai Morosanu's pocket, but my observation is that many of the customers of Construct 3 can barely afford the cost of the product, let alone a class that costs more than the product. Fortunately for Mihai, most of the world isn't reading this post and may happily buy his course. The course right now has 33 students but I hope many more will sign up at whatever price they can afford. I'm retired, so every penny I can save, I need to!

  • HTML5 is a standard that is supported by all the major browser manufacturers. It is not going away and HTML6 doesn't seem to be on any horizon.

    Construct 3 is actively supporting any new significant parts of HTML5 (WebGL, etc.) and provides a great way to keep up with changing technology. Over the past few years I've been working with HTML5, Android, and iOS programming, and HTML5 is easier to work with because it is a standard. Android and iOS can change at their owners whim; for example, Android is in the process of changing support for Java to Kotlin, and iOS has already changing support from ObjectiveC to Swift.

    HTML5 is also becoming more effective on mobile because mobile is getting faster and more efficient. A lot of people don't pay attention to changes and they still may think HTML5 is slow. But it isn't on more modern mobile devices. Construct 3 and HTML5 are providing a way to truly "write once and run anywhere".

    PS: I'm really in love with the way that Construct 3 will run in a browser. This makes it so easy to move from computer to computer and from OS to OS. Especially easy because you can save your files to Google Drive (or Dropbox or OneDrive). Chromebooks are a snap. You can get into the game-making business with a $200 Chromebook.

  • Udemy is also having a $10 sale for the next 5 hours. If the coupons run out, and you act fast tonight, you can get this course for $10. I'm on Pacific time and it is 6:00pm Friday. I think the course is definitely $10 and I've signed up for it already. After the sale and coupons are over, the price goes up to $145.

    By the way, the course now has been updated and the code and art are available. The course has 108 lectures and a total of 7 hours, which is a lot! The game covers how to make a Flappy Bird clone, a platformer, and a match-3 games. And even has 6 lectures devoted to exporting to Android!

    I can recommend this course and I feel he'll update the course as Construct 3 changes (after all, Construct 3 is still in beta).

    I like this course especially because I want to learn what the changes are between Construct 2 and Construct 3.

  • But that UWP support from Construct 3 might be a problem if the only browser engine on Windows requires Edge and forbids Chrome or NW.js.

    For that matter, how does Construct 3 (or 2) work on Mac or iOS since Apple only allows Safari under any browser's hood; e.g. when you run Chrome the engine underneath is Safari?

  • Try Construct 3

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  • Good point.

    By the way, I just read that Microsoft is bringing out a new version of Windows that is meant to be a competitor to Chromebooks. This new version, Microsoft WIndows S, will not allow any apps that don't come from the app store, and in addition, will not allow native Chrome.

    How will this affect Construct 3. Will they allow NW.js?

    This looks very similar to what Apple does now, which is that when you install Chrome on a Mac, you're really installing a Chrome shell and the underlying technology is ... ugh ... Safari. And so I'm assuming that if Google decides to provide a "Chrome" browser, it will really run Edge under the hood.

    So how bad is Edge these days?

    I thought browsers were getting closer together. Now they're looking like they're getting farther apart, so we'll have just three options: Safari on Mac, Edge on Windows, and ... uh ... Chrome on Chromebooks. Oh, and whatever you want on Linux.. Android does allow everything, but iOS is just as restrictive as Mac.

    HTML5 is universal, except when it isn't.

  • [quote:33zqiicq]Platforms like BB10, Tizen and Ubuntu Phone are pretty much completely dead by now, as far as I can tell.

    Yup, those are pretty dead! What about the Ubuntu store for desktops?

    Chromebook sales are going through the roof!

    Makes me curious about Facebook apps. Will that work and monetize?

    I am so eager to see Construct 3 be a success! Why?

    * HTML5 under the hood

    * Genius game-making UX

    * Smart, serious, professional community

    * Most bang-for-your-buck price

  • Wait a week or two?

    I realize that I don't have a ship date for Construct 3 ... the closest I've found is "summer". Oh, wait, summer is a-commin' in, Cookoo! It is mid-May and Summer is ... June?

    I want Construct 3 and I've never been patient. I'm more than thrilled to upgrade for a year at half-price, so take my money, Ashley!

    My main export desires are (in order):

    * Android

    * Amazon

    * iOS

    * Chromebook

    * Mac

    * Tizen

    * Windows

    * Ubuntu

    * Windows Phone

  • Construct 2 has a way to export games to the Amazon and Chrome App stores. Is this ability in Construct 3 now? Both seem like they might be possible soon because Amazon had (and still may have but I can't tell) an HTML5 app program and Chromebook still does.

    Has anyone successfully built and exported a game to the Amazon App Store?

    Has anyone successfully built and exported a game to the Chromebook App Store?

    And for that matter, what about Android? Does Construct 3 export to Android? Has anyone done it? And furthermore is the Intel XDK still working? I hear good things about the new Cocoon export to Android. What about iOS?

    I have some projects I want to build in C3. Can I do it for Amazon, Chromebook, Android, and iOS. I'm especially intrigued with the idea I could build on a Chromebook and export to Android, now that Chromebooks run Android apps!!!

    Sorry for all the questions, but I'm coming back to Construct 3 and making it my main machine primarily because Construct 3 will run on anything that runs Chrome. I love Chromebooks and want to make that my main machine.

  • I'm seeing some interest in a MIDI API lurking around Google. I'll let you know when I find out more.

  • I haven't tried this lately but I want to go through his book again. It may be that things changed in a later release of Construct 2. You could try the author, who seems like a good guy in general.

  • [quote:1uakhcu8]Has anything changed for AUDIO since your last blog post, almost a year ago?

    Nope. Pre-Windows 7 you need to encode your own AAC. I don't think the Windows built-in encoder is still very good, so you might want to encode your own AAC anyway if audio quality is important.

    Good to know. If I encode my own AAC (and OGG), I'm good to go! THANK YOU!

  • I wrote about this in my blog for Firefox OS using HTML5. You can read it here if you want to see the underlying native HTML5 code. http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2013/12/device-orientation-game-programming.html.

    The technical term is device orientation.

    Unfortunately, the sad answer is:

    1. Not all device manufacturers support this.

    2. Not all browsers support this.

    I wanted to go further with this but there isn't enough support yet. Sorry!