relixes's Forum Posts

    I have a feeling what this discussion is pretty much asking to have all Construct for free (500 events is bonkers, C2 only allowed you 100, why should C3 offer 5X more ?), which, as already explained in previous posts, would simply end up with Scirra going bankrupt and no more support for either C2 or C3.

    That's not the intetion at all. You can ask around the discord server for example and you'll see most of the people use thousands of events for creating their games(me included). I see how you guys can think 500 events is a lot (I honestly think it is not) but come on... 50 events is just too little.

    I think we're also negleting the fact that there are also other limitations other than the number of events, that looks like they're being disconsidered in this discussion, that is a high incentive for the users to buy construct 3 like the use of scripts, timelines, families and exporting methods.

    Anyway, as Sam said we most have anecdotal experiences and scirra must have a bigger picture, so I trust you guys will make the better decision for the company regardeless of what it is. I'm just here to give my two cents about the matter.

    > Increase the number of events to at least 500 (or maybe even 1000?)

    We actually have numbers on how many events people tend to use. I checked the numbers, and this would categorically ruin the company.

    Maybe there is a middle ground?

    I still don't feel confortable recomending the engine to other users for example since the trial experience is so limited and I do think that may happen with other users. I know that may be a pretty anecdotal evidency but the actual number of events available to use on free version is too low imo.

    Tbh I don't think that having construct 3 available at full potencial only for jam is really worth for new users IF the user can't experiment the engine well enough before the jam. Usually 48h is not enough time to know a engine well suficiently to make a game on it.

    That's why expanding the free capabilities of construct 3 would be good. So people could try the engine with enough resources to create at least small games.

    Otherwise we'll keep having a lot of people frustrated on how limited construct 3 free edition is and giving it up too soon.

    So, me and other users have been discussing about construct popularity on the the construct community discord server. The study of use increase or decrease of a game engine is a complex topic and there are a lot of factors that surround it and I do not claim to be a expert on the area.

    That said, some users there ended up agreeing on a specific point that may be holding back construct as a more popular engine, construct 3 free version limitations.

    Why is that?

    With so many choices for game engines - and with a lot of them even having the option to code things using visual scripting - I myself, a c2 and c3 user for more than 5 years, find that it's hard to convince new devs to try using c3 free version due to their limitations. To be honest it's hard to even convince myself to convince new people to try the engine with limitations like:

    • - 25 maximum events
    • - 2 maximum layers
    • - special effects
    • - use of families disabled

    I honestly think those limitations makes it hard to make a small project or even to start to getting to know the engine a litle better. As for now what I can see is a lot of users trying the engine and giving it up too soon because they strugle to create simple games with it.

    Also, This sentiment of not feeling confortable enough to recomend construct 3 for new devs seems to also be shared by others users.

    I understand that the free limited version exists for a reason and that scirra, like any other companny, needs to make construct a profitable project to be able to maintaim it. That said, I think that decreasing the limitations of construct 3 free version may be a nice way to help increase the engine popularity (thus consequently making construct 3 a more profitable software).

    Those are my personal opnions on what would be a great update on construct 3 free version limitations:

    • - Increase the number of events to at least 500 (or maybe even 1000?) - I believe most dev would soon reach this free limit and would need to purchase a license as soon as it get serious on a project meanwhile these are enough events for new users to confortabily experience and get used to the engine.
    • - Increase the number of layers to 5 - Same reason as for the increase of the events
    • - Unlimited use of effects for the free edition - I see no reason to limit the use of effects given the others already existent limits
    • - Enable access to families - Families is such a great feature and I think limiting the access to it might end up creating bad pratices on users using free edition that'll latter upgrade to a paid license, since they might get used to not use it in scenarios that would be better to.

    That all said, I was wondering and hopping if Scirra staff would be willing to take feedback from me and other users about this matter and if a update on the construct 3 free edition limitations would be possible.

    Thanks!

    P.S.: I think it's worth saying that I'm already subscribed to construct 3 and I do not plan to ever go back to c3 free edition, so the only reason I'm creating this post is because I want construct user base and community to grow.

  • What I mean is that you do not set a specific object, like "Sprite2 on touched" but rather "this on touched" (kinda like in js). If you do it with Sprite2, copying between projects gets annoying. You can´t just copypaste because Sprite2 doesn´t exist, so you create it and then you wanna replace the object with a different one (say a Tiled background) and you can´t use the build-in replace object because it doesn´t allow replacing different types. So you might aswell recreate it from scratch anyway.

    By referencing the object as "this" it would be a generalized event that can be copypasted between projects and reused for different objects without much hassle. And as mentioned, it would be another step in the "plugin via events" direction.

    This! You explained it in a very clear way, thank you!

    I think that a lot of what is in c3 can be redesigned to implement this idea. For example if we can make families that have a eventsheet attached to it and then restrain this event sheet to refer only to the family object attached to it. This way we would be able to copy event sheets with "behavior like" logic more easily between projects.

    Then, extending the idea we would only need a "family importer and exporter" that would be able to import/export a family and the eventsheet attached to it as a, let's say, ".family" file type inside c3 editor.

    Then people woud be able to import families created by the community to their project and then they would need only to assign their project objects to the families imported to give then some behavior like funcionality.

    This way the community would be able to create "sharable" families with behavior logic similar to behaviors like platform, sine, 8 direction, tiled-moviment, etc...

    And that's it, we pretty much achieved behaviors with events in construct that can be done and shared more easily by the community.

    Please Ashley make this happen!

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  • Last update we had about this was here: construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/general-discussion-7/c3-plan-possible-create-143748

    Last ashley response I've seen about the subject was

    I'm afraid I have no update to provide. We deal with hundreds of feature requests, thousands of bug reports, our own internal priorities, and all the other support and administration that comes with running a software company, and we have just three developers. We simply don't have the resources to tackle everything quickly, let alone huge projects such as this one that would likely involve overhauling how much of Construct itself works.

    So, unfortunately looks like it'll take a while for plugin making in editor become a reallity. :\</p>

  • True, but that shouldn't be that bad? I mean you copypaste/create all objects you need and then copypaste all events and maybe do some cleanup. Or am I missing something? I mean it probably doesn´t work for all cases so yeah...

    Copy and paste objects wont work if you use families for example, and I think families is a must have for any big projects. If you want to copy paste any code referencing a family you need to recreate that family with the same name and create each of it instance variables + add all the behaviors used by it manually. It's kinda of pain.

    edit --

    Now imagine the possibilities you can achieve with exporting and importing families. Peoplo could create new behavrios to sprites like other moviment behavriors, transforming the sprite into a HP bar, having the sprite as a controller for a menu (menu logic), etc...

    And the only thing you would need to do is import a family created by some fellow c3 user to your project and add a sprite into this family.

    I think something like that would be next level for c3, it's pretty much adding ability to create behaviors but with events.

    I really think using families is the way to go for this feature.

  • That is a really severe restriction. It may even make the feature too restricted to be useful.

    I don't think so tbh. Most behavior (if not all of them?) looks like they work only referencing it's own internal properties/variables and the object it's attached to (like the sprites properties) wich you would also be able to acess while referencing the family.

    I think it's only a question of designing the project with a modular approach.

  • It's already possible to manually copy pieces of my system from one project to another, but this is pretty tedious and involves a fair amount of work for each feature I want to rebuild - I still need to create all the objects/families, variables, etc.

    This. I use families as "pseudo behaviors" in my construct projects but I still have to implement them all over again whenever I start a new project.

    Maybe if each family had a eventsheet attached to it, like this:

    Of course the attached event sheet should have some restrictions, like referencing only the family object (no other objects) and not including other event sheets.

    Then if we could export this family and then reimport it (alongside the attached event sheet) in another projects you would only need to include new objects in your families and it would work very similar to behaviors, but using events.

    I guess even the community could gather to work on a project like that, I think the idea sounds possible even as a third party program.

  • Ashley can we have a update about this topic? Did we have some progress in the backstage area towards this feature? I'm really excited about the possibility of creating plugins inside the editor.

    Ashley thank you so much!

    Ashley he meant on steam, like this. Steam users can't roll back to r265 ):

    I've mentioned it in another topic already but setting up a branch for a previous version could be done using Steam's branching feature. (Keeps the most recent version as is for reproduction testing.)

    Please, this! It's been two months and still no fix! I get crashes everyday and usually more than one per day. As a fellow dev I do understand that fixing problems are generally harder then your audience thinks, but you guys could at least provide us the oportunity to rollback to an older release on steam(I only have the steam license).

    I also tried to contact supportjjm@scirra.com to see if I could turn my license to a non-steam one but my email was sent june 19 and I still got no response.

    Seems like the only way for me to keep working on my project withouth the infuriating crashes is to either buy myself another new license for the same engine I already have or to start my project over on C3(tried to port it, not a option).

    Ugh, this is so frustrating.

    At this point wouldn't it be better to just rollback to a release that is stable?

  • <removed wrong awnser>

    edit --

    With the object picked, Compare picked count of the family selected and check if it's greather than 0

    Like

    if (FamilyA.pickedCount > 0)

    ->Object from Family A

    else if (FamilyB.pickedCount > 0 )

    ->Object from Family B

    Else:

    ->Object is not from family A or B