Delenne's Forum Posts

  • Silly question, but how do I enter Edit mode? I have the sample Sciwarriors scene, and I want to scrub through the entire animation.

    Found it!

    Also: is there a graph editor?

  • It's been a while since I last tested C-Animate.

    Quick question: still no scrubbing of timelines?

  • > As a background, I produce animation for corporate training and educational purposes, lead a team of two people as a creative director for a fortune 500 company where we produce a lot of animation and freelance for more "fun" projects next to all that like i.e. a credited brief stint as an animator on an adult swim show.

    >

    > I've worked with After Effects, Flash (now Animate), Moho Pro and, my favorite, Toon Boom Harmony Premium.

    >

    > There is absolutely NO WAY that i would use Construct for animation over any of the above mentioned software packages, which have literally decades of development behind them and were very carefully catered for animators and suits all their needs.

    >

    > When it comes to producing HTML5 animation for the web, i'd either go with Animate CC, which i rarely use these days but it comes with our company wide CC subscription OR, would look into Rive.App, which was recommended to me by my colleagues and seems to be a really robust piece of software that is very similar to tools found in the above mentioned packages.

    >

    > I maybe used the Construct timeline once or twice in my projects since i found it to be extremely confusing and non-intuitive. If i have to think longer than 30 seconds about how a timeline works, there's really something wrong, sorry, but by now after using so many timelines, this is just something so standardized, that it should work in a more standardized way. Beside that, in my experience the timeline used to crash a lot. I don't know how it is these days, it might be better.

    >

    > Construct's animation features are just very clearly developed with neither a clear understanding of animation workflows nor any sort of input from professional animators and it shows. The interactivity might be nice but it's probably already a total overkill for most animators, who definitely won't spend the time learning the ins and outs of the event sheets. As intuitive as they are, they still need time to learn. Compared to something like Rive or all your usual prototyping tools like Figma or Invision, which can export HTML 5 and offer easy(er) to use interactivity features as well, it's really not all that intuitive as you might think.

    >

    > I just hope they didn't bite off more than they can chew and hope they really go in and look at whats out there and what the people they want to sell this to actually need. Which also brings me to this: WHO is this for exactly? WHAT animators? Motion Graphics people who work for video? Definitely won't use it, and one video export option with a file format that is highly compressed won't change that either (usually you animate either directly in the compositing software or export image sequences and then go to compositing or some ProRes or other video format with less noticable compression).

    >

    > Character animators, game animators, UI designers, etc. etc. there is really no clear indication, who they want to develop this for...

    This. It doesn't seem anyone who animates for a living was actually spoken to, and the way timeline animation works here and in C3 is the very definition of counterintuitive compared to every other piece of animation software I can think of.

    Seconded! I use or have used most animation apps in my career: Moho Pro, Toonboom, Krita, TV Paint, OpenToonz, After Effects, Spine, Flash/Animate, Blender/Max/C4D/Houdini, and others. And I use animation editors in game engines too.

    After noticing the blog entry announcing this product, I was curious and after trying it a out I would have to agree with the other animators here: it is counter-intuitive to use coming from other animation software.

    Personally I fumbled around for minutes before understanding the workflow, and I had to read the intro article to get up and running. But I got quickly fed up with animating stuff. It's not terrible, just... really awkward. It's easy to tell that this is a game engine dressed up like animation software. And not really pulling it off.

    I agree with the others here that it is VERY obvious no-one ever consulted with actual animators, and the developers sorta copied stuff from other animation editors. But without real understanding of animation workflows?

    For actual film/shorts animation work solid free alternatives exist: OpenToonz, for example. And that timeline is a joy to work with, comparable to commercial apps such as Animate, ToonBoom, and TV Paint. Those allow us to create/draw things too instead of relying on external assets only. And add various high-end effects! Not even mentioning nodal compositing in ToonBoom, OpenToonz or Blender.

    So I will not and cannot compare it with off-the-shelves animation software. This is in my opinion still too limited. Comparable to a toy and too clunky. Animators -even novices- would be better off avoiding it.

    Which leaves game engines and animation apps meant for web animations.

    Compare Tumult Hype, Soala Animate, or even Google Web Designer - much simpler and intuitive to animate in. And built from the ground up for the type of market that, I feel, the Construct team is trying to dig into.

    Or compare Godot. I like to animate stuff in Godot, because it feels similar to other animation software. It also has a proper graph editor, and properties are easily animated with the key icon, which is again similar to After Effects. The nodal scene architecture fits an animation paradigm better too. And there is support for FK/IK animated characters. And last but not least easier to preview animations which can be playing while editing other animations. In short, it is fun to animate in.

    If I may make a suggestion Ashley? Hire an experienced all-round animator and allow that person (and other animators) to inform your new animation product. Because in its current state I'd say you will not succeed. It's fine for a game engine animation editor (still clunky to work with though ;P ), and even if your new animation adventure fails, you'll still have a much improved animation editor in Construct.

    PS the animation software market is much more congested and competitive than the game engine market. Free industry level competitors are readily available like Blender and OpenToonz. Kiddies rely mostly on free options or hacked old versions of Flash.

  • I had these issues in the past in other game engines, and the solution is to 'extrude' the edge pixels.

    TexturePacker includes this option. It works really well, and removes the bleeding due to anti-aliasing issues caused by scaling up and down.

    Here is an example. Open in an image editor, and zoom in. Notice the double pixel border around each tile. Each tile is 32 by 32 pixels, and the extruded pixels prevent any bleeding from occurring.

    Not sure if this is the same option as Ashley mentioned earlier.

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  • I did keep in mind what Ashley said in mind, I responded to that.

    I've checked game dev comparison websites and such, and I can't find a comparable product to C3, one that ticks the three boxes that caused my concern when combined:

    • Is subscription based only
    • Is Web based only
    • Creates a file format that is designed to run in one application (yes its a zip file technically, no you cannot easily view or edit it by extracting it if C3 was closed, minus assets)

    If I could find some products comparable to the above, I would have checked their t&c's before being more worried in my replies.

    The closest comparable products to C3 to me are C2, CC, Gdevelop, GameMaker, clickteam fusion. But these don't tick the above 3 tick boxes I listed.

    I don't know why I'm battling how to spend my time and money, it's crazy, I've never had such an experience like this, I really thought you guys would empathise with the concept at least, even if you had to state a firm "No" to my request.

    If you feel that strongly about it, why not pick another game engine that makes you feel less anxious and insecure? No-one can foresee the future.

  • To fix this, open the enemy sprite and player sprite, switch to the collision polgon, and pick an animation frame that has a full rectangle collision polygon.

    Right-mouse click the view, and choose "Apply to whole animation". Do this for both sprites.

    Fixed.

  • Excellent progression and refinement of your visual style. Super interesting to follow this dev thread. You are taking it to the next level.

    Do the queen's eyes blink as well?

  • The Next Penelope

    This is an example of both success and failure for Construct (2).

    A success, because on Windows it worked fine, and the game itself received good reviews. I got it on Steam, and it is fun to play. It was critically reviewed as a fine example of old-school top-down racing. It also demonstrated how Construct 2 enable just one developer to develop a good commercially viable game all on his own.

    But a dismal failure for the developer due to the impossibility to publish it to WII U because Construct 2/3 has no native exporters.

    Several companies made the attempt, but they were all unsuccessful, and in the end the WII U release was cancelled.

    As Aurelien wrote in 2017:

    Is Penelope cancelled on WiiU?

    Sadly yes (not my decision, coming from the company who proposed to port the game and invested months and money in it).

    Even if the game is a very small one, being made using html5 and pushing it hard definitely makes it nearly impossible to port on consoles without recoding everything from scratch (= more expensive than the money a niche game like mine could ever bring back).

    That's the 3rd very capable company to throw in the towel after investing in this project ("3.5th" if you count my own attempt during the first year using the official Nintendo html5 framework).

    These news made me super s(/m)ad, but I know they're very good people and sincerely tried their best.

    From here, I since have done everything I could to find other solutions, even with the WiiU now being discontinued ( < hint: this doesn't help to find new partners). In my mind, the game was made for a Nintendo console from the beginning, so... well, you get the idea. It's not pleasant. I also would like to add how people at Nintendo Europe have been supportive and helpful with me. It sounds like PR bs? It's not. Having the feeling you're talking to (good) humans is very much appreciated, rare, and they rock at this. (Guys, if you're reading this at some point, me and my clunky English are very grateful for your time!) Now, some other brave/cuckoo/masochists friends of mine are trying to port Penelope to the Switch, but nothing sure yet. It could be as technically difficult and never happen, so please don't hold your breath on this (I hold mine but shhh). This is absolutely *not* an announcement or something. I so learned my lesson here, let's not announce anything until it's 100% finished now. Speaking of lessons, the new game I'm working on for more than one year now is made using Unity, so this situation never happens again. I can't wait to show some fresh stuff in the coming months so we can share some more joyful news : )

    Cheers, and thanks a lot for caring! Aurelien.

    But the good news is that it did get a release on the Nintendo Switch. In the end they ported it to C++ and their home grown engine. They re-used 70% of the game logic via Construct's generated json files, and also had to rewrite the shaders used. They also re-released the PC version for better performance and less hardware issues, I believe, because the engine they used was platform independent.

    seaven-studio.com/bringing-the-next-penelope-to-switch

    Anyway, I feel it is wise that Scirra is not advertizing Construct with a game that caused so many trouble during release time for the developer mainly because he used Construct, and had to resort to writing a custom game engine to have it run on anything other than a web platform/webview wrapper.

    Scirra used to advertize Construct 2 having Nintendo WiiU export support, but they wisely decided to avoid doing so with Construct 3. I suppose Aurelien would never have developed his game with Construct 2 if he had known in advance about all the issues he'd be encountering with the WiiU, because that was the target platform from the start in his mind.

    construct.net/en/blogs/construct-official-blog-1/construct-support-wii-817

    Interestingly enough Scirra still uses a screenshot of The Next Penelope on their C3 pages:

    construct.net/en/make-games/games-editor

    The Next Penelope showcases the best and the worst of Construct all at once, in my opinion. One of the best commercial games made with C2, all achieved by a single motivated developer, yet pained with final release troubles that prevented the game from being released on the platform it was meant to work on, and forcing the developer to write their own game engine to release it on the switch.

    Scirra now focuses on platforms with solid web(view wrapper) support, and isn't promising anything else, which is a good thing. Know your strengths, build on them.

  • HolidayExplanation Yes, the bottom segment of the indie game engine market is experiencing some disruption, which I think is mainly due to Godot. Yesterday I read the news that Corona Engine is now open source, but any game made with it must have its source code made available to the public (or negotiate a commercial license for big $$$). I doubt the engine will survive that transition.

    I still use my Construct 2 license for quick game prototype tests, and then switch to Godot when I am satisfied with an idea. Lately I've been testing GDevelop as a replacement for C2 and quick prototyping, since GDevelop is actively developed, and C2 is not. That said, my scripting skills have improved a lot in Godot: meaning I can do most prototyping just as fast in Godot now.

    Construct 3 sounds nice, but I refuse to be hooked into a subscription model for any development, because I feel it is too volatile. Besides, Godot/GDevelop being open source is very attractive to me.

  • I did not say that i could not afford it , i said i wont because of given reasons. (im not talking about the money fact im talking about the philosophy or say the felling behind this)

    Well i get your last point, really. But then it would be a rent to own thing but you never own it.

    It feels not really good to give money and dont have smth at your hands, it can be all gone by tomorow.

    CC is open source. You could even improve it.

    Since you mention open source, why not switch to one of the open source alternatives if Construct's rent bothers you?

    Godot is arguably much more capable than Construct - at the expense of losing Construct's visual scripting. You'd have to learn an (easy) scripting language instead.

    Or GDevelop, which is also open source and free, and quite similar to Construct.

    You have the choice.

  • GameMaker's popularity is waning. These are the stats from last weekend's Global Game Jam. Construct was used more than GM for the first time. Construct, however, is also losing game jammers.

  • When I open your project at precise pixel resolution and play it on my screen (a 27" tft IPS panel at 2540x1440 pixels) the black and white pixel grid texture turns a fuzzy gray, and thin white lines turn down a notch in brightness too when the screen scrolls.

    The black thin lines in the right wall texture become fatter during scrolling (depending on the direction scrolled, either the horizontal or the vertical ones).

    The gray blocks are affected also, and seemingly change luminosity too.

    This has nothing to do with Moiré patterns: for a TFT screen it is a technical limitation, because alternating between (switching) full white and full black pixels is the worst case scenario for most TFT screens.

    It just can't keep up. Even at twice the zoom factor the walls are still being affected by this technical limitation (on my screen).

    In the old 8-bit CRT TV days this wasn't an issue. And dithering patterns were used to simulate extra colors, because the maximum number of colors on-screen was extremely limited and CRTs (TVs in particular) produced blurry pixels, blending and melting combos of pixel arrays in creative ways.

    Shovel Knight and Hotline Miami have colored pixel art graphics, so it does not affect those games visibly.

    Your black and white pixel art is a worst case scenario. You must avoid thin lines, pixel patterns such as the ones which you use, but even then you may still experience unwanted visual changes in apparent luminosity while moving or scrolling.

    One option is to replace dither patterns with grayscale tints. Or accept it the way it is. It will be worse or better depending on the screen on which your game is displayed. Or reduce overall contrast.

    This, btw, is also the reason why many web pages display text as #333 and not pure #000. It reduces black text on white flickering.

  • Delenne

    I personally don't like Godot, I find that I can't do more versatile things compared to using Unity or Game Maker Studio 2. Godot lacks features & documentations compared with Unity's and Game Maker Studio 2's extended documentations.

    The reason why I left GM2 is because GM2 lacks almost any GUI support (Godot has truly mature GUI components), lacks an animation timeline option (anything can be key-framed in Godot, and it has built-in bones for characters), the glacial development rate of GM2, limited audio control, no true 3d support, and more.

    Feature-wise GM2 is quite behind Godot at the moment, for the most part. Have you actually used Godot for a game project? Just asking, because Godot objectively offers (much) more than GM2 in most areas.

    I've used GM2, Construct, Godot, Fusion, and Unity (and others in the past) for a variety of projects, and I can't say Godot is behind GM2, Construct, or Fusion in regards to 2d game features - quite the opposite, really (and of course there is no comparison when 3d support is added into the mix!). Unity is different, of course. It tries to be everything to everyone, and not very friendly for 2d game dev, in my opinion.

    Godot's documentation was pretty bad only two years ago, but has improved a lot since they had a documentation sprint last year. Loads of online youtube tutorials too.

    The GM2 manual is still somewhat better, you are right.

    Also, the fact that they don't have console support yet limits your choices. You'd end up in a same situation as Construct and you'd end up learning a new engine for consoles.

    Not entirely true. Godot has support for XBox One via UWP, and Switch, PS4, and XBox One porting is possible through a commercial service.

    Anyways, unless you have your own well-recognized game development company, and your game is of a very high quality, console support might as well be a pipedream for most. It costs a good chunk of $$$ change to arrive at a console release.

    That's why I like Unity and Game Maker Studio 2 better. Although, not to be bias, Godot is still very competent.

    It's just my personal suggestion from experience, anyone reading this can just use this as a guide if they want to choose a native engine. Just wanted to share too.

    Yes, I agree: it's like picking a clothing style. I like we have so many choices now. And I switch between engines depending on the project. For example, for click adventures I have used Visionaire in the past, and if I was asked to work on a similar project again, I would choose Visionaire once more.

    That's also why I use Construct for small web games for clients: fast and efficient.

    My motto: use the right tool for the right job. Don't be afraid to switch to another tool if it will save you time and/or the export platform requirements say so.

  • If you want native performance, I'd recommend using Game Maker Studio 2, ClickTeam Fusion or Unity. Although, the downside is that you can't make games as fast as you can here in Construct 3. Then again, Construct 3 does take more time to optimize for performance to make playable games, especially in mobile or big games.

    However, the greatest benefit with Construct 3 is that you can make great small games fast even with little to no programming knowledge. Having programming knowledge does help a lot though, professionally.

    If 2d games and native export are your requirements, Unity is not the most pleasant development platform in my experience. I tried Unity for some time a few years ago, and switched to GameMaker at the time. Now I am using Godot, however. Much nicer than GM, and geared towards 2d games (and quite proper 3d support too!), with a lovely editor and animation timeline. And GM lacks an animation timeline. Godot 3.1 hits all the right notes for me at the moment. The scene system is hard to beat in my opinion. Quite amazing engine for 2d work.

    No easy visual scripting like Construct, of course, in Godot. The native export makes it relative 'easier' to deploy, but with all tools I experienced gotchas and workarounds. I feel it depends on your requirements. No game engine is that mythical magical pink unicorn farting rainbows :)

    And I do still make use of my Construct 2 license for quick small web games and prototypes to figure out stuff and game ideas. You're right there. Nothing beats Construct for this!

    Construct 3 is beginning to lure me back in with its promising animation timeline, though. But for now Godot rocks big time if you're willing to deal with scripting.