jbadams's Forum Posts

    Oh, missed that he finally got banned. Thank god, long overdue.

    The dedication to allowing free speech was admirable, but his behavior was beyond ridiculous and I don't think anyone would have thought you were being heavy - handed banning him much earlier.

    I actually really like it and am excited to see the full capabilities and bugs fixed, and my only major complaint is the same as some others that it's a little hard to test with the current limitations.

    Assuming my impression doesn't change after trying the full version in the one week jam, I'll almost certainly subscribe for at least one year, although probably not for an extra few weeks to some large expenses due at that time of year.

    Not answering any of your other questions because I personally feel you should be discouraged from continuing to harp on and on about it. You've already said multiple times you don't want to subscribe and will probably move on. Maybe either move on or just wait quietly for whatever you're waiting for; you've made your views very clear, and surely I'm not the only one getting sick of how repetive you are.

    Agreed with this, to an extent.

    Sure, maybe spread some stuff out (GMS2 did!), but really it would seem to only be beneficial to release some more info all together, or at least let us know what's coming up next.

  • Isn't subscription really better for poorer people or those in poorer countries though? They've said there will still be a free version, and this way when you outgrow free or need a licence the up-front payment is smaller than it would have otherwise been.

    As long as the offline support works well and it performs well on potentially weaker hardware I see it as a win for those users.

    Native exporters would be nice though, although unless I missed it in the announcement I don't think we've been told whether or not we might be getting those yet.

    I don't mind subscriptions:

    • The up front cost is reduced, and for most products I buy that way it takes several years for the subscription to become more expensive; often there are major updates within that timeframe that would mean an additional up front payment, and if I don't need the subscription for the whole time I end up saving money.
    • The regular income can be beneficial to Scirra, which then also benefits me because they can keep doing awesome stuff.

    In my opinion it's quite obvious that it will be 3D was not only is it called construct 3

    It's called Construct 3 because it's the follow up version after Construct 2 -- that's simple counting, not a reference to three dimensions, and no, it isn't at all misleading for that title to not be 3d.

    We were already told it will be the same runtime engine with a new editor, so unless plans have changed it will definitely still be 2d.

  • If you opt-in to using a beta release some bugs are to be expected; if you wish to avoid that risk you should use stable releases, that's what they're for.

    The fact that the changelog shows that a bug was fixed does not guarantee you will not encounter a similar bug or perhaps even the same bug if different circumstances.

    It's not "blaming users for being frustrated", it's explaining a simple reality of software development. If you choose to use a beta product you may experience bugs; it's understandable that this can sometimes be frustrating, but it isn't really valid to be as angry as you seem to be with the developers -- you have the option of sticking to stable releases to have a much better chance of avoiding problems, and if you encounter serious problems in a stable release then some level of anger may be more understandable.

    Given you opted in to beta releases and have experienced this error, have you submitted a high-quality bug report to help the developers solve the problem for you?

  • EDIT: Had a bit of a brain-fart moment and somehow didn't realise there was more than one page to this discussion, so this response is probably somewhat out-of-place depending how the last 12 pages of discussion have gone.

    Yes, there can be performance issues with the software, but the larger part of your complaint seems to be about poor communication from Scirra, and personally that's been the opposite of my experience.

    See for example their tutorial on "Physics in Construct 2 : The Basics", which states:

    [quote:z0stt7ae]Physics simulations are very CPU intensive. It can take a lot of processing to work out the proper motion. To make sure your game runs fast, it's recommended that you don't use too many objects at once. Over 100 physics objects moving at once is likely to slow your game down. Also, phones and tablets have much more limited processing power than a desktop computer. If you're targeting mobiles, you should be very conservative, and try not to have more than 20-30 physics objects.

    Their "Performance Tips":

    [quote:z0stt7ae]You must test on mobile from the start. Since your computer may be well over ten times faster than your mobile device, you may inadvertently design a game that has no hope of running well on a mobile device and not find out until later. To avoid surprises test regularly on the intended device to make sure it is still running fast enough. The Preview on LAN feature can make this quick and easy. You should aim to design simpler games for mobile devices to match their lower speed and resources.

    ...and...

    [quote:z0stt7ae]Too many objects using Physics

    The Physics behavior is very CPU intensive. Using too many objects with the Physics behavior can cause considerable slowdown. You should design your games to use a few large Physics objects rather than many small Physics objects.

    The "Best Practices" article says:

    [quote:z0stt7ae]Perhaps the most important is when developing for mobile, test on the target mobile device from the start. Your computer could be 10 or 20 times faster than your mobile device, and something which runs fast on your computer may be unplayably slow on the mobile device.

    The blog entry "Optimisation: don't waste your time" says:

    [quote:z0stt7ae]Realistic physics simulations are extremely processor-intensive and having over 50 physics objects can reduce the framerate, especially on mobile. Simply using fewer objects usually fixes this.

    To me it seems like they've tried to be pretty clear: performance on mobile is not as good as in the browser, physics should be kept to a minimum, you'll need to design simpler games, etc. If you read and follow that advice, and are willing to put some effort into following all of the other advice given it's possible for simpler games to perform very well even on mobile.

  • ...what were you expecting?

    It's barely over a month since it was originally announced, when they told us it would take some time to create and that there would be updates "as soon as they're ready to share" them. It takes a lot of time and work to create software, and in these early stages there simply won't be much for them to show or tell.

    If you sign up for updates and wait there will be plenty of news eventually. In the meantime, Construct 2 is still a great product and will still be maintained. I would expect we might start to hear little bits and pieces in 6 months or so, and (unless they've secretly got a head-start on the project or hired additional developers) probably won't see an actual release until very late in the year or quite possibly sometime next year.

  • You can already code your own plugins and behaviours using the JavaScript SDK, which sounds pretty suitable for your purposes. <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

  • Personally, I'd really rather if time and effort were not wasted on implementing this rather than actual features, improvements and bug-fixes.

    We already have the (much more flexible) option of using any text editor or even more sophisticated software for planning and note-taking rather than having an editor included in Construct 2.

  • Why don't you simply try it and see? There's a free version of the software if you don't own a personal or business licence...

  • From the manual entry on the debugger:

    "The estimated CPU time (e.g. 20% CPU): an estimate of how much CPU time is being spent in the logic of the game. This is not always accurate, especially since it only takes in to account time spent on the main javascript thread, and should only be considered a ballpark figure. The profiler can break this down in to how much time is being spent in each area of the game, and is described in more detail later on in this guide. This value corresponds to the CPUUtilisation system expression."

    Emphasis mine.

    In addition, although it's likely to provide a more accurate picture of overall system resource usage the Windows task manager also doesn't provide entirely accurate results -- it's a simple tool intended to provide a picture of computer performance suitable for general end-users -- not a precise tool intended for developer usage.

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  • I can't speak for Scirra of course, but from my experience of previous Construct versions, new features appear in beta versions and documentation is added to the manual in the next stable version -- based on that I would expect a manual entry to appear in the next stable update, which will likely be reasonably soon.

  • Sort of baffles me that no other users see this as useful?

    It would be useful, but only in a very minor way, so personally I hope other features that have a much great impact take priority.

    I try to only install a minimal amount of plug-ins required for projects currently under development, and remove any un-needed ones after I'm done with them. Keeps things nice and snappy and uncluttered. <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />