Ashley
However, please, please don't try to bypass the encapsulation, or start copy-pasting chunks of the engine. Please, please, please please please please don't do that.
So you're well aware the encapsulation does nothing? It doesn't achieve what Scirra wants, and the process of creating plugins hasn't changed, so it doesn't achieve what developers want. So why bother continuing with this lose-lose scenario?
"Because unless we remove it, people will just carry on using it, and the disasters will still happen."
Little Timmy shouldn't be using third-party plugins in the first place. If Little Timmy breaks a project because of a third-party plugin, it is not Scirra responsibility to fix it; that's the meaning of third-party. Something that I can't get my head around is that you're more-or-less known for being easily dismissive, but why can't you be dismissive for Little Timmy? Why do dismissals only occur with power users?
I've been using Construct since I was a child, 10 years ago, and I've almost never used third-party plugins. Once I discovered them, I never had any problems, and even if I did, I would have never desired for those addons to stop existing. No addon-dev wants that; no normal user wants that; it seems Scirra is the only one with those intentions.
"Addon developers largely ignored that warning, and hence the difficult situation we're in."
The situation would have never happened if Scirra had listened and created a proper API. Now after years of not doing a good job on the SDK, you are throwing it away, starting with an even more limited API and telling us that *now* you'll do a good job? What is the guarantee that you'll take into consideration developer wishes?? Because you're clearly not doing it in this and previous threads.
Great developers here have given you alternatives, please, please, please consider them:
- Make the warning message appear for SDK v1 plugins, but don't drop support.
- Prevent SDK v1 from being used in educational license.
- Make plugins be constrained to specific Construct versions.
- And one of my own, disable SDK v1 compatibility by default but have a way to enable it similarly to developer mode, so little Timmy can't easily access to those addons and break their project.