rosareven's Forum Posts

  • I've been experiencing Scirra website, including the forums, being really slow on Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Note 3 and S2, using Chrome and Firefox. The symptom is that when the website becomes visibly loaded, nothing is clickable until after ~5 more seconds. So far I haven't had the same delay gap from other websites except Scirra.

    Wonder if anyone else has the same issue?

  • It's been a while since I last followed the beloved Ghost Shooter tutorial, and I know much has changed to Construct 2 with all its most awesome glory. With consideration of fiddling with game making again, I figure I'll need to learn from scratch after 2 years of being away from Construct 2.

    I wonder though: did any of these beginner tutorials get an update that reflects the massive changes that have been made to the engine? Just want to double check if there are current, updated tutorials better for the current versions of Construct 2, or if I should continue to follow the original tutorials and adopt my way through in case there is any discrepancy, or better way of doing things with the new features.

  • I haven't been working on anything, to my very shame! Though I'm considering coming back for some more constructing nowadays.

    Having brought up with a game programmer friend of mine about making turn-based games in Construct 2, and how it feels more geared towards action games, he told me one thing: if you really think about it, everything is a turn based game. The "turns" in real time games are simply with much shorter delay and with many "empty turns". This makes sense when you think about how Baldur's Gate and Fallout have a real-time / turn based toggle.

    Before any of that though, I'm going to hit up a basic tutorial again to learn Construct 2 from scratch, after all these updates...

  • Since Construct 2 is all about HTML5, I figure you guys can get a laugh out of this.

    <img src="http://cubiclebot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/browser-alignment-chart.jpg" border="0" />

  • The replies in this thread have already said the biggest limitation of C2 - the users' design capabilities, which applies to pretty much every technology that has to do with creating something.

    (I got carried away below... the paragraph above is really all I wanted to say. You can stop reading from here XD)

    I'll move onto a lesser limitation instead: C2 uses technology that is largely experimental with unknown stability, namely HTML5 and "fiddly" javascript.

    It's not a problem for everybody, especially if you stick to well-organised and systematic design practices (which should be technology neutral), which is what my first paragraph was talking about. However some people are not comfortable, or literally run into problem, with C2 game building where the root of the problem lies in javascript or HTML5 itself. The platform that C2 targets, which is HTML5, can be ever so flexible, but at the risk of not having every single use case covered already and end up having you to fiddle with the core aspects / backend of your game.

    Some people may have particular ways of designing their games, be it prior knowledge from other engines or programming language, and suddenly they can't use the exact same practices C2 is designed for. That's more of a preference problem rather than limitation. People who came from programming background may also find the graphical program logic interface (aka the event editor) a bit weird and prefer typing them out instead of visually arranging the logic.

  • I always love reading about experiences that are just brutally honest about the reality. Knowing that early will save the wannabe-freelance a lot of surprises, for when they want to do the same, they know what's going to be ahead of them.

    Some outsiders may call that discouraging, and that's where the question of personal passion comes in. There are people like me who don't bode well with the standard employer-employee structure and work much better off self-employed. Reading honest experiences help us to predict what we have to do to get there.

  • I never heard of Starling either, and I'm very bad at understanding the hardware optimisations, so I can't compare.

    However I instantly turned away after I see that it is a Flash framework. I just really hate Flash. Sorry for not contributing =(

  • Nicely said, alspal and Arima. The real reason I shared this is because, jokes aside, there really are so much to ponder over about this new existence of an industry "video games". Lots of people still don't understand the point to it (just like how some of us don't understand television, making it even XD), and since it is a new phenomena, anyone can say anything to define / deteriorate what this video game industry really means.

    People have debated for a long time whether video game is an art or a toy. Even in my year (grew up in the early 90s) there are still some peers who cannot perceive video games as anything beyond toys. They can't even believe how video games can have epic storytelling that rival Hollywood movies. The quality standards are simply so different between video games and the rest of the art forms. That difference which makes video games stand apart is the barrier that prevent most people acknowledging this new creation as a proper art form.

    All that being said, I'm happy to see the national art galleries that I've visited in Australia now also have video game exhibitions. Granted, the set up is less properly "artful" than paintings, with actual game console controls and all and making the whole thing like an arcade, but the point is there. It probably only feels less special because that's what's happening now, rather than in history.

  • Awesome blog Wrangler. If you don't mind me sharing this on my social network sites, I'm sure I have some college friends who would enjoy pondering over your experiences.

  • Just something to laugh about.

    <img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JMJFP7UnNLo/Uaec7TJ5ttI/AAAAAAAACbc/MqcAgECzXT4/s1600/video+games_1c535b_4611358.png" border="0" />

  • From what I understand so far, the point of this game is to be a Scirra community medley. If that's the case we could use different game play in each level depending on the games we're spoofing off of.

    For example if we have a squiddster level about AirScape, make the level plays like AirScape or something resembles it - a rotary side-view platformer. Then in any level we throw in as many Scirra community references and meta parody as we wanted.

    I'm excited for this idea! Would be really cool to have something fun that represent the community.

  • Nice points zendorf. I'm neutral with GM because I know it is a tried and true engine and it's just my personal taste that I decided against GM. Nothing can yet be said for certain with C2 because everything about C2 is new, even its philosophy is to be ahead of the technology at the time of this discussion. That adds up into a lot of uncertainty compare to GM which conforms to current, tried and true technology.

    Like you said, C2 relies a lot on third party technologies, which themselves are new as well. Until HTML5 is more stable, we continue to be in an experimental age right now with C2, and it's up to all of us to either push this to be the next norm or keep this as a toy.

    With that being said, arguing about what the future is going to be like for these game engines is moot and the only way to find out is to use whatever works. C2 let you do something complex for other engines in a day? That's great. Feel better off to write scripts for a mechanic than endlessly drag-dropping bunch of objects and events? Go for it. Stick with one engine, use several engines, doesn't matter. Our actions over time will tell what will work for the next generation.

  • Seriously man, the Scirra team have 10 arms per person or something. Perfectly functional updates pour out of them like 7-11 drink dispenser.

    Can never thank you enough, Scirra.

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  • If all you hate is PHP, there are other server side languages that you can try such as Ruby which emphasise code readability, and Node.js which could possibly let you interact with your C2 game directly being a javascript technology itself. Both languages have free hosting services out there, with limits of course but anything free is a generous gesture.

    Node.js is still very new and feels fiddly, so I would recommend Ruby, which has a hilarious introduction book that motivated me to learn it in the first place.

    If your real concern is any server side language, that's going to be difficult on the "user login" part because the infrastructure for logging in has always been a client-server architecture.

  • Ignoring money, both GM and C2 can be equal performers, with everything depending on the ability of the developer. But for the money that it's worth... yeah C2 is a better bargain.