tgeorgemihai's Forum Posts

  • ...

    It's the user, not the tools, in this case. I feel the same way about C2 and 2D games.

    100% Agree. I've seen Airscape, Cosmochoria, The Next Penelope,

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    , so I know what C2 is capable of. Thanks to C2 I've learned the basics in games programming, but I don't see it as a viable solution for me in the future.

    Even if C2 is good at the moment, it has a lot of catch up in order to be the "best 2D game engine", some examples would be DPI-based 9patch/tilemap/tiledbackground, isometric tilemap, animated tilemap/9patch and Unity's smart sprite ... At the moment C2 can't even rotate 9patch/tilemap (you need to rotate the whole layer). Yes, you can walkaround over these, but would still me useful.

    saiyadjin

    1. I've worked in C2 for over 2 years, so I know about optimizations and other procedures.

    2. I agree, especially when the engine is bigger, the possibility of encountering bugs is bigger. I don't agree with the second part: If the exporter fails, roll back to a stable version. Also you talk as if the 3rd party warpers are perfect. And yes, I agree again with the javascript part... Even if the other engines uses C#, you still have to learn engine's specific C#.

    3. Yup, a lot of time and work is needed in order to make money after a game ... Unles you are f_cking lucky and make the next Flappy Bird

    4. And you think that with a program that lets you make a game "without coding" you will get only super polished games ?

    5. I agree. This is where Indies come in to bring small but innovative games.

    6. Like any product, you need to invest money to make money.

  • Sorry but this topic has become more Unity vs UE4 than Construct. Is like comparing apples (Construct) with pears (Unity/UE4). Yes, Construct 2 has competition, but is not Unity/UE4 . This is a personal choice.

    You won't make any profit at all if you don't make anything. It seems more like a what it can't do thread than what can I do thread.

    I'm sorry but when I see the complaint about not being able to export to consoles with heavy licensing, and yet no one seems to want to make content on a platform that requires none I get a little annoyed.

    This is nothing but excuses, and blame.

    I already have done my scribbling for a few small games (and the order of development), but I needed to know on what basis I develop the games. Yes, with Construct 2 would had been easiest and fastest to develop but after that I would have to spend a lot of time to fix/workaround for 3rd party warpers, or other inconvenient might appear.

    One example would be Aurel's The Next Penelope. Truly a masterpiece made with C2, that would look great on consoles and handhelds like PSP/PS Vita, but unfortuanly available only on PC (Windows, Linux, Mac) and WiiU. He also had a lot of trouble with NodeJs/Greenworks plugin.

    I repeat: Construct 2 is a great HTML5 engine, even when Unity/UE4 will support HTML5, C2 will still have the edge because is especially designed for that and is very optimized/light.

  • Thanks for all the replies. Yes, before making my mind on Unity I also tested UE4. Here are the 2 engines compared:

    Unreal Engine 4:

    • UE4's lightning and overall visual aspect is better than Unity's
    • Blueprints is an official plugin, developed by Epic themselves (unlike Playmaker that is 3rd party)
    • Blueprints is free (Playmaker is not)
    • Assets Store still has some catch to do

    Unity:

    • Unity have more export options (supports Blackberry, Tizen, Samsung's Smart TV, even WiiU and the new 3DS)
    • Unity (+ Playmaker) has a sh!tload of tutorials (there were a lot of UE3 tutorials and books about UnrealScript, but UE4 uses C++ and Blueprints, rendering previous learning materials useless)
    • Assets Store has almost anything you can think of
    • Unity projects are easier to manage by a small team/indie
    • Unity seems to be easier to port on other platforms compared to UE4 that seems more complex/optimized.

    Long story -> short: Unreal engine is better suited for bigger teams where Unity is better suited for smaller teams/indie

    To reply to some of the comments

    Agree.

    i already moved on to unity + playmaker

    but i also track scirra for the new engine and i hope it will not disappoint me

    Same here

    At least for me

    UE4 blueprint nodes speaks to me better and they are managed and maintain by people from UE4 who constantly makes them better and faster. They are although 10-12 times slower than pure C+ but I'm just learning and not doing another AAA game (which in most cases they should be called BDB games - Beta Dollars Bugs xD) so i don't mind.

    But i hope they will soon figure it out (which are doing all the time) how to remove VM from blueprints and then it will be the same speed as C+

    Not to discouraged or anything, you can still make games with it

    I didn't knew this. Still, unless you do some really complex AI, I think you will not feel any slowness since is native. From what I can see Playmaker is C# code and the Nodes UI are just shortcuts for that functions/scripts (or something like that).

    Interesting discussion.

    Wouldn't it be amazing if one could have a 3D Construct? I like Constructs's events system and being able to use that power in 3D.

    I know it wont happen but it will be something brand new. never been done as far as i am aware.

    3D games...well i come from making Flash Educational games then moved over to some 3D visualization games in Garagegames Torque 3D but we had a small team. So i was mainly level / Environment designer and others coded.

    My main job now is Drupal and Sharepoint work so non interactive gaming but always thought to get back into 3D.

    Thing is it's tough as well. 3D is not as easy as 2D to make WELL. If you don't make 3D well it looks amateur. An amateur 2D game can have some style or some sort of feel to it that cannot be captured in 3D.

    However, with VR and AR i see a big boost in the gaming arena with 3D games and VR tech. Nielsen marketing i think it was, said that it will be a $ 150 billion industry by 2020.

    ...

    Yes, with all the new "toys" (Oculus Rift, Microsoft HoloLens ... etc) the 3D has become more engaging, regardless the engine/technology used.

    ...

    I personally think html5 for games might drop popularity for web assembly. All those C++ game engines might be more popular than html5 game engines in future.

    By the time when WebAssembly will be mature enough, HTML5 will be on another level.

    host online (html5) -> you got it all

    More or less ... And how do you get some profit by doing that ? Only Ads ?

  • eli0s

    I already started to do tutorials in Unity + Playmaker. It is a little more complex, but not hard. Thanks to C2, now I have a better understanding of procedures. The hard part will be when I will need to write my own scripts, but there are a lot of tutorials on the internet, so I'm optimist. And since is considered an "industry standard" I will have more chances to get a job in this domain.

    GM:S looked like a nice alternative, especially since I've got the 12$ bundle (I was more interested in the source code for the games) but the old UI (especially the room/level editor) and somewhat lack of direct support communication made me think again. Also, If I have to learn a scripting language, why not learn C# for Unity that is used world wide instead of proprietary GML.

  • First I want to say that it has been a great experience and this is not a rant topic. I've learned a lot of useful things about making games and I've made a decent amount of $ .

    While I like C2's approach of easy visual programming and clean interface, but there are 2 big reasons I choose to take a break and try another engine:

    Reason 1: C2 uses developing/unfinished technology

    Certainly HTML5/Javascript is and will be used a lot in the near future, the question is when it will be optimized for games ? Next year, after 2~3 years ? The fact that is still in development means that is has room for improvement, but this is also a terrible disadvantage. Ashley has to bugfix and tweak C2 to maintain compatibility. Some examples are: in the past some games made with an older version started to crash due to an update to Chrome and needed to be re-exported with a new version of C2; WebStorage-ul has been depreciated, some Audio bugs ... etc.

    Another disadvantage is that C2's core uses the "old" javascript. In order to update C2's core to use asm.js, Ashley has to rewrite the whole engine again aka Construct 3 (please correct me if I'm wrong)

    Reason 2: Limited commercial possibility

    Desktop: Yes, exports an .exe file and that is all, there is no official Steam plugin, the 3rd party one is a lot of work to implement and is hit or miss.

    Websites: There is support Kongregate but should also be for Newgrounds and others.

    Mobile devices: You only get the HTML files. Good luck with all the 3rd party warpers that are somewhat hit or miss and no constant fps. Also, very little support for ads vendors. And you can't use Physics due to CPU load.

    I'm not against of 3rd party warpers, the problem is that Scirra has no control over them.

    Also i dislike the lack of 3D (and the motivation not to implement it in C3). I know that C2 is for 2D games (3D models are harder to manage then 2D sprites ) and I agree with that, but some simple 3D objects like the ones in Construct Classic would make great difference (example: New Super Mario Bros or Sonic Rush for Nintendo DS)

    That being said, I would recommend C2 to anyone who want to start creating games and I'm sure that C3 will fix a lot of C2's current shortcomings, but if you plan to make a big project, you should think twice.

    This doesn't mean that I give up on C2, it is still the easiest, fastest and optimized HTML5 game engine i know

  • Ashley

    Everybody have different needs, but I would like to specify a few plugins that I consider that should be included by default in C2/C3:

    Pode HTML Pack - Since is an HTML5 engine, these functions should be included by default

    LiteTween - Very useful for smoothing menus and in-game movement

    Paster - Useful in many ways and mandatory if you want to create a split-screen game

    Other nice plugins (but not as important as the above): Mode 7 and Magicam

  • Sorry, no luck then

    You should try to optimize your game and test it on more devices.

  • First thing: Start small. You need to know how to walk before you can run. See the tutorials and the predefined templates to get to learn C2.

    Q1. Don't rely on resolutions, use aspect ratio measurement. I recommend Scale outer mode

    https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/73/sup ... reen-sizes

    https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/1126/m ... le-devices

    Q2. Not sure, try to keep it around 100~200MB on actual devices. About optimizations, there are a lot of ways, use google, or search the forum. Remember that bigger sprites/images use more RAM memory. Also music/sound files are memory hungry. And you will need to optimise a lot on mobile devices.

    Q3. I've tried a lot of ways, at the moment it seems that you can't get constant framerate in any exporter. In my opinion Cocoon seems to run the best , but this depends on your device.

    https://cocoon.io

    https://www.ludei.com/cocoonjs

    Q4. There are a few games published (some even on WiiU). Is up to you to judge.

    Q5. Yes, Mortal Melon was made with C2.

    Q6. Ads depends of vendor, if C2 has or not a plugin for that ad company. I've never tried IAP so I can't tell.

    In my opinion, C2 is a great software and you can learn a lot about making games, but if you are serious about making bigger and commercial games, you should search for another software. You missed a great 12$ Humble Bundle if you knew a little programming.

  • You could try http://cocoon.io , but don't expect miracles, you will not get constant 60fps.

  • I know other software that you can request a Steam key if you bought it from their home site... So is not impossible.

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads

  • "Additional paid

    native

    export modules" as a key feature. lol

    Here, fixed

    Sorry to say it, but for 12$, that is a steal (Windows + Mac + Ubuntu + Android). Yes, if you plan to buy separate modules after that, is kind of expensive (200$-300$ each module), but the possibility is there. If you plan to get more modules, better get the Master Collection (priced at 2~3 modules) and have all the modules. So in other words, this is a good marketing stunt . But at the same time is a great opportunity for small devs, but beware about coding and like any other big software it has it share of bugs.

  • I am sorry to say it, but I am starting to regret I've had chosen C2 instead of Unity or GM... Yes, I've earned more then the cost of C2 and learned important procedures, but I simply can't see it as a future option.

    Everything is great (the software is easy to use, the community is great, the updates are fast and fix or bring new functionality) until you get to export your game and you are disappointed that a simple 2D game can't run smooth on anything (from smartphones to medium-high PC) no matter how much you optimize them, you can't get constant 60fps for a simple 2D game.

    Yes, Scirra's bet on HTML5 is the right direction, but is not there yet and will not be too soon. By the time HTML5/Javascript games will be a viable solution, other engines that already have native support will add it (already started adding it).

    And instead of waiting for C3 or a miracle, i decided to start it all over with an engine that is already proven to make commercial games.

    This doesn't mean that I will stop using C2. I will still use it, but only for prototyping or small projects.

  • I get 26~31 fps on my Galaxy S4 ... It may be because S4 have an 1080p display, but is still kind of slow.

    You should test Intel XDK or CocoonJs to see if you get better fps.

  • AllanR

    Ok, I will try with gradient sprite. Witch sprite is indicated to have the gradient, the one at top or the one at bottom ?

    Something like this:

    Instead of using big sprites to mask/hide, only use a small sprite to show that area of layer.

    I will make some tests on my phone when I have a playable version.

  • AllanR

    Thank you. This is what I needed

    But I also would like to know the following (might be useful in the future):

    • Can it be made to look as the sprites are fading away instead of being "cut" ?
    • Instead of masking the margin, can it be made to show only a small part of the layer ?
    • What is the recommended/optimised method to use for mobile devices ?