I did a test today. I wanted to see how well C2 stacked up against "normal" game programming, in terms of ease of use and speed of development.
I decided to do this test because I was following along in a game programming book for beginners, and an exercise was to make a very simple Breakout clone.
The language I was comparing against C2 was Blitz Plus (B+), which is an older but still very good language. It's a high-level language (C/BASIC hybrid) which is designed specifically to make games. So, it tends to be easier to use and requires fewer lines of code to do things than a lower level language like C++.
First, I tried using B+. The goal was to make a simple text version of Breakout. I was basically just following along and copying the code from the book (which sped up the process). It took me over an hour, and I ended up writing over 200 lines of code. And I couldn't get it to work. There were errors at compile time (B+'s IDE doesn't have syntax highlighting), and I couldn't figure them out. The source code was on a CD, and that did function correctly, but the game itself was still buggy. There were times when the ball randomly sped up, making it hard to hit, and sometimes it would just bounce up and down or left to right in a straight line, effectively causing the game to crash.
A little frustrating, but still satisfying to get that work done.
Next, I tried C2. I followed the first 2 video tutorials from "Cloning the Classics: Breakout" (it was all I needed).
I kid you not, I was done in about 10 minutes (not counting the time it took to watch the tutorials). The game ran on the first try and worked exactly as it should (no bugs), and it looked better too (graphics!).
Oh, and it only took 3 lines of code to write, if you can count the events as "writing code".
I'm blown away by how easy and fast it was to make a game using C2. I'm definitely going to be using it for future game dev.
Don't get me wrong though; I still think B+ is a great language. But when it comes to making game dev easy and fast, there just doesn't seem to be a better tool than C2 (for 2D online games at least).
So to Tom and Ashley: Thank you so much for making this amazing tool. I can't wait to start getting serious with making games with it. :D