Jase00's Forum Posts

    I'm so so muddled it stings.

    I know I'm just a basic game dev and moving at a snails pace, but I have always been so proud and eager to put the Construct logo at the intro of my game and such (obv asking Scirra first but I'm just a happy customer so it's a priority to me).

    I still have a strong loyalty and I adore Scirra and Construct, smart people that took a huge "gamble" and was 100% on point with said gamble. But, this feels different compared to past drama...

    If this change literally does nothing to benefit addon devs or users, creates work for addon devs with no gain, and a bunch of addons will die due to impossibility or jaded addon devs, then it's really hard to empathise with Scirra.

    Scirra getting angry support emails is the key thing to empathise with.

    So 2 years from now, Scirra will still get angry users even if it's a chrome/apple/nwjs/webview issue, they're angry at Scirra which we all know is incorrect since it's out of Scirra's hands. If it's educational sector, at least can be formal and have policies for Scirra to protect themselves (whereas game devs are just ruthless as we know).

    So angry emails will still exist, just 1 type of them is eliminated, at a massive cost to freedom and it looks like alienating some key members of the C3 community.

    And again, the only reason I care, even though I don't know anything about addon development, is because I care about the game I envision. It's painful when there's a feature just barely out of reach, like I started using the new Dynamic animations, but there's a few missing things that I only discovered when half-way implementing a new system. I know there's high chance I can ask addon dev for help, but low chance to get upvotes on suggestions platform to maybe be accepted/rejected.

    Edit: worth noting, I empathise with the warning that was always displayed about undocumented stuff, but I guess I'm not as attracted to addons that automate stuff that can be done via events (that's the fun part I wanna work on myself!), I like the addons that fill in a small gap, fix a small thing, enable a small feature. They're often tiny things but matter when trying to craft your game exactly how you envision, or utilise the features C3 offers to it's full extent.

    If Scirra get support scares like that, we see it with bug reports where Scirra are unable to assist and must say "it's a chrome issue" or "report this to apple".

    Can't the same be said for support queries about broken projects with addons? "you'll need to speak to the addon dev, Scirra cannot assist I'm afraid". I mean, even if V2 is implemented, I'm sure Scirra still would reject a support email since it has 3rd party addons, right? (or ask them to remove them then send back to Scirra).

    If a chrome issue broke C3 for a user, some users may still be mad at Scirra, but ofcourse Scirra can't worry about that, it's a chrome issue, Google's issue!

    This could be same for addons? Not Scirra's problem, just the addon devs issue.

    Not to mention there's a much higher chance to get a response from an addon dev, compared to hearing back from Google or Apple.

    I try to empathise, I really do, but I don't see how this benefits us as C3 users.

    I always looked at addons as the "if you can't do this in events, then an addon can get around it".

    But this SDK change would be more like "if you can't do this events, and if you can't do this as an addon, then either change your vision for your game, or submit a suggestion and wait X months/years to maybe see it accepted or rejected".

    I have always had a good time dealing with addon devs, very quick to fix things on a new C3 release, and also this grows the community as there are wonderful addon devs that feel proud to serve the community.

    Even addon devs that left, like with ProUI, the community worked hard to contact them and they kindly open sourced it and now it's being maintained by the addon devs of this community.

    I have no clue who will take on porting ProUI, or if they even can. I don't use this personally but it's a great example of how hard working the addon devs are and how much they care, but it sounds like it is inevitable that their hands will be tied entirely.

    I wanted to look at skymen's FMOD plugin soon, but now I have no idea if I should risk it. Infact thinking long term, I don't know if I should be removing all addons from my project for safety. Whereas over the years, if an addon broke, it was usually fixed before I asked the addon dev.

    Was also thinking to pay addon devs for specific things, but again, I have no idea what to do anymore.

    I think the best thing that could happen would be a major change to how suggestions are handled. Then the whole "this is impossible to achieve in events or the new addon sdk" at least has a chance. But I understand Scirra's position and small team and such, I don't see this able to be changed. Suggestions are a luck based time based thing, can't save some money and pay Scirra to make a suggestion (but we could save money and pay addon devs).

    The absolute top fear, is, there's not a big addon dev community for C3, and I pray they see positivity in this sdk change and find value in it, rather than them giving up.

  • Could you show your events, or upload your c3p file, please?

    0.1 should work, anything too low like 0.00001 I think should still work but would behave similarly to "every tick".

    Also if you have multiple objects that do this, you must add "for each" to the "on timer finished" event.

  • I'm hoping you took a backup of this project file before changing the C3 version numbers and such within the project.

    Its a useful way to fix things, but there can be potential issues, so just hoping you kept original file, took copy and started messing around with it!

    I'm spooked about the nwjs steam plugin by Scirra no longer being maintained. I do understand Scirra's side, yet another plugin to maintain when there's alternative available. I'd love to use webview and I did explore it, but just few reasons I cannot use it. I would willingly tear apart my project and replace all nwjs events for webview, but currently there's just a few pros to nwjs that win me over.

  • What image size are those big animations?

    Ofcourse it's up to you to design how you feels best, but just a quick warning:

    Think about Video player software - They don't preload an entire video into RAM, they buffer as the video plays.

    Dont forget: Image sizes when stored as files, they're compressed, but to display them ingame, they're uncompressed.

    Assuming the size of the images are 1920x1080, which is around 8MB of VRAM, and you have 50 frames, then that would be almost half a GB of VRAM.

    That's only 1 sprite, and will cause issues for players that have an integrated chipset, like many laptops have.

    If you have many unique sprites at same size and frame count, and they exist all at once and are not cleared from memory, then around 15 sprites would max out the VRAM of a GTX 2060,and around 31 to max out a GTX 3060. That's just these sprites, may be many other images in your game.

    Would be good to playtest this on some mid-tier computers, make sure it works there.

    None of this matters if you are targeting high-end only, or it's just a personal project lol

    > I will have to reevaluate bread because it seems to keep rising in price.

    Sounds like you kneed more dough to afford the rising costs of bread.

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  • All posts here come from a place of commitment and/or love for C3 and Scirra. This manifests as fear, anger, panic, but it's all because we highly value C3.

    We are indeed all only human. I have faith that Scirra are committed to making the best game dev software out there, and they certainly have empathy with the frustrations of companies like Apple.

    High hopes for the future. Also absolutely LOVED seeing the recent C3 update with a handful of suggestions implemented, can't put it into words how excited that made me. I know that doesn't mean to expect it all the time, but yeah definitely made my day to see this.

  • Maybe this would be of use, but it is paid:

    construct.net/en/game-assets/addons/uid-anything-3723

  • People messing with undocumented internals causes disasters. This has happened. Who gets the blame, takes the reputational damage, and has to spend hours picking up the pieces and helping desperate customers whose projects are ruined? Us.

    This ***** and Scirra doesn't need this headache. But, isn't it a similar situation to any support request that Scirra receives: if a project has correctly-made third party addons and sends it to Scirra to fix, Scirra wouldn't touch these until the addons are removed?

    And if the person dissects their project to remove the addon and it happens to fix the issue they had, then Scirra prob would say "that's not C3's fault, try asking the addon dev"?

    Yeah there will be the confused individual, much like how people got angry at C3 with that recent Chrome bug that crashed when you typed a function name. Whilst stressful, it's not Scirra fault and the rest of the community stood up for Scirra during this time. Informed people were annoyed at Google, not Scirra.

    If there was 0 blame thrown at Scirra from users that are confused about a hacky addon breaking, would that ease this situation?

    I really appreciate that we have a last resort to achieve things, sometimes minor things like the 3D FOV stuff. Yeah, Scirra is likely to add this one day especially if in demand and not a major project, but priorities matter and this may be months/years and may not ever come. Feels very hopeful to have a chance to have a feature even if it has a risk of breaking.

  • Could you share a screenshot of your project statistics? Right click your project's name, view statistics.

    This will tell us how big your project is.

  • In an ideal world, I wouldn't touch third party addons with such a risk attached to them, but I want to make the game that I envision, that's what matters most of all.

    There was a missing setting that I mistakenly reported as bug (as it was deemed a feature request). It's not an big feature, just a setting not exposed.

    Might get lucky and post the suggestion and it gets upvoted, but what if it's a niche feature, yet required for my project? No chance. It seems risky to "wait months and it might get added".

    But then I contacted an addon dev and they solved it within minutes! But the solution uses undocumented stuff and they warned me of the risk. But, it solved my issue, and I can now continue making my game.

    The addon dev is my line of support for this solution. They warned me of risk, I know to go and pester the addon dev if a C3 update breaks the solution they gave me.

    Would always immediately switch to the Scirra-provided solution if it gets added.

  • I gotta admit it's kinda spooked me too.

    I had some suggestions that aren't popular and may not get implemented by Scirra, so community members have assisted, where their solution uses a few undocumented things, mild things but it gets the result I need.

    I know the risk, can break any time, but it's nice to know I could try to ask the community to help again if it did break.

    Whereas if an update for C3 dropped and it obsfucated those things, then this would permenantly prevent me from having the result I previously had.

    I guess if this really has to happen, I will need to resist urge to update and remain on last working version of C3, but I like being a beta tester and playing with cutting edge stuff!

    I get the risk but would feel painful if things broke, not because a new C3 feature broke it and could potentially be fixed, but because an active choice to obsfucate thing permanently breaks it, would feel very hopeless.

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