Thanks for your comments everyone, i'm glad you find those addons useful !!
I understand the apprehension, here are some thoughts regarding some points mentionned above :
- C3 is probably the most stable engine you can think of. You can basically open any 7-10 years old .capx from the Construct 2 era and it just still works in last beta. You couldn't say the same about Unity, Godot, Game Maker or Unreal, yet 98% of the successful games made with those engine are using 3rd party tools in production, even if it's in fact "riskier" to use addons in those engines, or to use those engines in general if backward compatibility break is such a big issue. The truth is that Construct actually lacks 3rd party tools enpowering C3 devs.
- Ashley is incredibly careful about making sure nothing breaks backward compatibility and he does it very well (it only happenned in very very rare occasion on tiny details and the documentation was available to handle those particular cases long before it happens).
- ProUI was by far the most complex addons ever made it was doing a huge amount of stuff related to many risky C3 features at the same time. This was a suite of interdependant addons that basically created a full Hierarchy system (among many other things) before it was a thing in the C3 engine and was using a big amount undocumented features of the addon SDK.
- I have a more "stand-alone" and "simple yet powerful" approach in all the plugins I made so far.
- My addons also aren't based on API of other services (ads network for example) that evolves over time and need active maintaining.
- Most of the addons ever made in Construct aren't risky. At the beginning of Construct 3, 5 years ago, there were a few changes in how addons must be written to support the new c3runtime and the worker mode. But since then, nothing changed.
- Keep in mind every single Action, Condition, Expression, Plugin or Behavior that are included in Construct are in fact addons. Fundamentally nothing really differs between an official addon and a third party addon. They're working on the same base.
- IMO the most risky thing right now regarding 3rd party tools are effects as WebGPU is being deployed and there is this whole compatibility topic with WebGL1, WebGL2 and WebGPU. But this has to do only with effects and I don't plan to publish Effects, I'm only making Plugins and Behaviors.
- I've been making games with Construct for 10 years and i'm still here. I'm working on the most ambitious project i've ever made (SECRET ROGUELIKE™) and I developped it so it could be a framework that will allow me to develop even more games on the same base. Construct 3 freelancing/consulting is the biggest part of my freelancing/consulting revenues (more than Game Design and Pixel Art). All in all, chances are high that i'll be still be working with C3 in a few years.
- All the addons I published so far (and the many more i created for my Roguelike and that i didn't release yet) are low risk. Most of the time i'm working with last beta on my big game and never had to edit anything for them to work while upgrading. When publishing an addon, I'm even more cautious regarding every single details to make sure I won't have trouble with people using them. Most of my addons could have be written exactly the same 3 years ago and still work the same. (Minus the fact i make my best to support the last features of C3, such as TemplateNames, ImagePointZ or BBoxMidX/Y in my UIDToAnything plugin for example : I want them to be on page with last stable C3 enhancements).
- From my experience, replacing a lot of events is sure annoying to do but isn't that impossible to achieve when needed. I have 6075 event blocks on my project and reworked everything multiple time to implement my addons when I first created them (to replace annoying tricks - non performant/ineffective ways i had to handle things before or just because Vanilla C3 didn't let me achieve what i wanted to do). Even in such big projects, it takes a few hours at most. Also when Scirra release a useful update, that's already what we're doing anyway, replacing old events with better and newest features.
- The recent dynamic layers were one of the most requested feature for many years and even Skymen (who is a friend of mine and who helped me a lot over the past few years btw) was begging for that feature to be released. His addon was mostly a proof of concept to use with caution because it was using undocumented features and hijacking the engine to work.
- IMO it wouldn't be in Scirra interest to copy my plugins and make them obsolete anytime soon, there are hundreds and hundreds of features and suggestions that are requested for a long time and that are very important and impossible to achieve no matter how skilled you are at Addon-Making, Eventsheets and Javascript. They probably better put focus on those impossible-to-do stuff or missing spot rather than convincing me right away that developping and publishing high-quality addons for C3 devs isn't worth my time. (even if I already made the plugin for myself, the fact to double-check, polish, publish, market and explain them takes a lot of time). It would be a strong signal to any experienced dev that they should not bother creating premium addons.
- The top most missing thing for Scirra to be at the same level of the biggest engine out there is more people like you and me, or guys like Skymen/Federico. Community members that dedicate a lot of time and effort to create awesome tools, ressources, spend time helping fellow devs. A game engine = its community. The small (extremely talented) scirra team can't be everywhere. The best way to attract talented and dedicated devs is to make sure it's worth it and safe for them to work within the Construct ecosystem. (Selling tools, making great games, creating Youtube Content). I think the Affiliate Program they just released today (and the Asset Store they released a few month ago) are proofs they understand the power of the community and are moving toward this direction.
- If someday i leave the community (don't see why it would happen anytime soon), i'll probably open source my tools so other devs can maintain/update them. (if they ever need to be updated which i'm not even sure)
- I'm using all my addons extensively in my own production, that's why I made them in the first place. I want them to be perfect.
I took the time to answer those points in details, but I would appreciate if this topic doesn't become a discussion about the history of construct or if it's safe or not to use 3rd party tools in general.
I went an extra mile and explained a few extra things I discovered/learned/understood over the past few years, I hope it helps :)
It's up to everyone to decide what's risky or not, what's useful for their game and I prefer that the people that buy my addons are relaxed about that. I'm mostly targeting ambitious Construct 3 dev, who are serious about gamedev/their project and who don't worry too much about spending a few dollars in tools that provide great value and that took a lot of effort and R&D to be made, especially if they know how useful it would be for their productions.
Thank you for raising those points and for your interest in my tools, I'm very happy to see how well the whole Construct 3 community welcomed them so far.
If those 2 tools keep doing that well, I'll probably release more of the best tools I made in a few weeks/months ! I still have a lot of exciting stuff 👀