joelmayer's Forum Posts

  • Truth of the matter is i burnt myself once by using a lot of Rex' old add-ons back in the day and ever since then i stay away from 3rd party things, even though there's great stuff being done.

  • My 2 cents is that

    a) as Ashley said, people are sceptical of Browser-based software and don't value it as much as desktop software (kinda like mobile apps that can't ask for the same price with same functionality as desktop apps)

    b) there's a certain subscription fatigue in the marketplace in general (look at Streaming services, etc.) I'm sure Scirra will argue strongly against it but they have to be really careful to not outprice themselves out of reach of their target audience. Sure, Game Maker etc. has subscriptions too but they have a bigger brand, more hit games to back themselves up, they promise you exports to consoles (which even then isn't as easy as they make it seem), etc. I don't know however, if you'd have substantially more users when charging $79 per year vs $130 and the danger could be that you lower the price but don't gain any users which would be basically harmful to the company.

    c) The No-Code aspect CAN be seen as something that will hold you back. I also think it's much less of a sales argument than people think because most beginners still flock to Godot now, which is using a Scripting Language etc. Instead of Ease of Use i'd rather focus on emphasizing SPEED of use. Meaning Construct is the only Game Engine that let's you make projects almost at the speed of thought thanks to its revolutionary approach to visual scripting. There i'd rather compare the event sheet system to the more common node based structures that we see, that lead to quite unwieldly results.

    Some more random thoughts:

    Personally i don't think there's anything wrong in having tools that are more suited for smaller projects at all. I mean it becomes more and more clear nowadays that there's actually a DEMAND for smaller games, because of the overabundance of offerings. People simply don't have time to play every 200 hour AAA game anymore and more often than not, they're actively looking for something that will keep them entertained on a rainy sunday afternoon.

    I think Scirra could probably think about doing more sales promotions. Stuff like get the first three Months for 50% off or something like that. Just to get people to sign up and hopefully convince them enough so they stay on.

    I'd also forget about all the petty "We're better than GML" stuff because the average user who'd use either engine really doesn't care much about that. Also you can get onto thin ice very quickly. These kind of posts were never well received either and don't come across as very self confident from Scirra's side.

    I'd rather always focus on the vision for the end user. Know their dream, i.e. creating your first game from your bedroom but no idea where to start and sell them the solution to their problem. Know what values the brand stands for (making games should be accessible) and hammer that home. Simply JavaScript > GML won't inspire anyone but being the number one address to put people on their path of game development will.

    I think if Scirra works on their storytelling a bit and caters their marketing activities (and website) a bit more towards that it would definitely help. I agree however that recommendations will always work best but even those can be much more amplified. Instead of weird spinning cubes on the homepage, why not have some quotes by people who actually made and published games with the engine and what they love about it?

    Self Promotion is always the hardest which is why even ad agencies often get outside partners for their own marketing because an outside view always helps. I think maybe investing in some consulting, even if it's just a workshop or something with the whole Scirra Team would be something to think about. Just to get an evaluation of the website, the social media strategies, the sales channels, etc.

  • Sproud :

    Have you checked this new tool for C3 Spritefonts?

    stmn.itch.io/font2bitmap

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  • I thought i'd share this since it's fairly new and might be a good replacement for the age old .NET tool that everyone uses:

    stmn.itch.io/font2bitmap

    Works completely on itch.io and spits out both a png of the font and C3 SPACING DATA!!! Great news for us Mac users :D

    Tom maybe we could even pin this because it's so useful to Construct users and this guy deserves a few donation bucks thrown his way.

  • Phew long time no posting in this forum!

    Been awa from Gamedev for a while but recently got back into it. I tried out the Webview/WebWK or whatever on Mac export option and it‘s really beautiful how small the file is. I can literally feel the weight of Nw.js bloat taken off my game. It‘s a huge shame that certain Steam features don‘t work with it. Also, as one of the 0.1 % of developers developing with (and for) a Mac, it would be obviously a shame to lose the export option. However i think in the long run Ashley‘s suggestion is probably the way to go and a pure, lightweight Construct 3 tailored wrapper would be really cool…. Hope that Steam stuff gets solved somehow or maybe there‘s a havk that would work in the meantime i dunno…

    Personally i find this is kind of an essential thing to future-proof Construct so i don‘t mind a Feature slowdown if it benefits this project.

  • They used to have Iain (or Ian?) next to Diego. So there were three developers at one point. Also at some point there was a mention that they would maybe enter some sort of partnerships or work closer together with one of the porting services for Construct etc.

    Oh well, we'll see where it takes us I guess :)

  • I hate to be THAT guy and again, i've been advocating for and defending Construct against criticism in the past but as someone who animates for a living this is just very close to heart...

    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.

    In any case, the claim that Construct is the "BEST and EASIEST" animation tool to me is just either delusional or simply a very bold claim that can be debunked and backfire very easily.

    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.

    Again, i don't mean to be nasty or criticising just for the sake of it but it seems to me, that Scirra tries to enter a market that they neither really understand the customer base nor the competition. They saw an opportunity to kill two flies with one blow with the timeline and went for it, which is commendable, but for Construct Animate to be in any way a consideration for animators it would need a HUGE and i mean HUGE, probably months to years, amount of research, programming, testing and marketing.

    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...

    I've never been this critical of any of Scirra's decision and i've been with them since the early C2 days and was a day one adopter of C3. But this project, to me, doesn't seem to be under a good star, unless they are willing to put enormous resources into it and i can't see how that will NOT affect C3.

    But just my 2 cents, rant over :D

  • Updated again:

    * fixed the coloring issue.

    * let you use "white" or "black" as a color in addition to "r,g,b".

    * added an option to change the background to be darker when using lighter colors.

    * now generates the "spacing data json" that C3 uses. So in c3 no events are needed to setup the spacing. joelmayer

    * some general event cleanups.

    R0J0hound

    Dude thank you so much seriously. I can imagine it took you hours and I really appreciate that a lot, this thing will be so useful in the future for so many people. Really really appreciate it thanks a ton!!!

    Again, if I can give you a small donation or anything anywhere, let me know I don't want you to feel like your time and effort is taken for granted.

    Thanks!!!! <3 <3 <3

    Got a little error message while trying to open it :) Probably just needs a conversion to str in front of an expression or sth.

  • Understand completely. For me personally, i don't mind adjusting the grid manually at all, in fact, a lot of commercial sprite font generators have you do this anyway. The one bottle neck is the JSON string. But, again, thanks for all your effort!

  • Really awesome dude. I made myself a checkbox for the AlphaClamp already but yours is obviously much more elegant. I wonder if there's some way to generate/parse an out of the box JSON String for C3 right in your little App that you could then just copy paste into the editor where you use the generated Spritefont... It's easy enough to use as it is already but i mean that would basically make it the de-facto sprite font tool for all times :D Awesome job either way! Thanks again!

  • Plus if you're thinking of getting a publisher be prepared to provide multiple languages in your game as well...

  • I built a dialogue system with an array that i load into a dictionary which makes it somewhat visual using the array editor but i don't really have anything branching. Maybe looking into the Ink Language could help and there seems to be a plugin for that in Construct:

    construct.net/en/make-games/addons/518/ink

    Otherwise, i too think JSON is probably your best bet. It takes a moment getting used to but it's really not hard although i prefer to have my dialogue in a spreadsheet kinda way so that's why i'm using arrays but, as mentioned, i load that in to a dictionary so i can access specific keys directly rather than looping through a huge array every time i want to call upon a dialogue.

  • The only feature GDevelop has over Construct is easier integration of Kerning/Spacing Date of Spritefonts... Construct's JSON thing is just not a standard at all and no Spritefont app out there supports that except the one floating on the forum that is Windows-only and buggy and can't export aliased fonts in the latest version.

    Been urging for literally years to get that fixed with whatever means necessary but it takes me literal days to set up Spritefonts in Construct.

    Funny, i asked my gardener recently if he will finally be for free. Needless to say, the grass is knee-high since then...

    Sorry for the snark but the amount of people who ask for software to be free every day on every forum i visit of the tools i use is starting to get on my nerves lol

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