Ashley's Recent Forum Activity

  • Thanks for the feedback! I always thought there's a lot of software out there that's unnecessarily complicated, and we try to make Construct straightforward to use but flexible enough to be powerful.

    If you want to get back in to coding, perhaps try out JavaScript or TypeScript coding - I still think that's an underrated part of Construct, as you can use industry-standard languages and tooling and it integrates with event sheets too.

  • Will SDK V2 be a superset of SDK V1 (all SDK V1 functions + additional V2)

    Yes, the goal is for SDK v2 to be a superset of SDK v1 in terms of the officially documented and supported capabilities. We promise to ensure any addon using only the documented and supported features in the SDK v1 can be ported to SDK v2. In some cases we may change how the API works, so code is written differently rather than porting exactly the same set of methods, but in this case it will still be capable of the same feature the addon was previously using.

    Undocumented unsupported internal details of the engine are not supported, never were, and may be fully removed and become permanently inaccessible in SDK v2 as we always warned they might. This does not mean SDK v2 is not fully compatible with SDK v1 or that it is a subset: as is standard in the software industry the only concern is what happens with supported and documented APIs, and in that regard, SDK v2 will be a superset.

  • Construct will keep working offline so long as the browser keeps its data saved. It's not in Construct's control. Perhaps check your browser settings - if you have privacy settings or browser extensions that do something like clear storage (possibly referred to as "cookies", a term I think is a bit misleading) periodically, then that will possibly also clear the saved data for Construct to work offline.

  • I realise this thread is about 3 weeks old now, but I note that the methods of the YandexSDK class do not return anything, so they cannot be awaited. Async methods need to either return a Promise, or use the async keyword. Otherwise what happens is awaiting them will complete immediately, but the work is really still continuing in the background.

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  • If you think you've run in to a problem with Construct please file an issue following all the guidelines, as otherwise it's generally impossible to help.

  • I will take a look at the integration points raised in skymen's thread. Perhaps we can do some work towards that over the next year.

    However making Construct in to a capable 3D engine is a huge amount of work - and likely endless work, regardless of whatever anyone claims about "we just need this one last thing". Providing APIs to integrate a 3D engine is also a lot of work, but probably not endless work, so while it seems a more feasible path, it's a lot of work either way. This will all take a lot of time and work no matter which path we choose, and that will require patience. Meanwhile there are other tools on the market that are already capable 3D engines, and if people really need a capable 3D engine to develop their game, then it may be wise to choose a different tool anyway, as it's not currently a goal of ours to develop Construct in to a fully capable 3D engine ourselves.

    Accessing the engine internals against our advice is not a sustainable or responsible way to develop software, no matter what results it can achieve. Our SDK documentation clearly stated that undocumented features may be removed at any time. Presumably you had a plan for what to do if the features you were using were removed, as the warning stated may happen. If the addon SDK v2 removes those features, then you should implement your plan for what to do in that case. If you didn't have a plan, or assumed it wouldn't happen, then what can I say? We tried to warn you about this very situation happening. In the other thread the gist of what I was saying is that we will make a best effort to try to make sure addons can be ported where feasible, but that is not a guarantee, and we reserve the right to say "sorry, we warned you". In this case it looks like there's a lot of work whichever way we go, we do not currently intend to make Construct in to a capable 3D engine ourselves, and integrating a separate 3D engine looks like it might be a better way forwards in the long term, and that will inform our priorities when considering what to add to the SDK v2.

  • You can set a timeline's result mode to either absolute or relative, so you can have it both ways.

  • These are requests for SDK V2 for existing C3 addons, so they can be compliant SDK V2 instead of using engine internals.

    This means you ignored a warning in the SDK documentation specifically saying you should not do that. We will make a best effort to support all existing SDK v1 addons with additions to SDK v2, where feasible and where in our judgement we deem it important, but we still reserve the right to say "sorry, you shouldn't have done that, and that won't be supported any more - we tried to warn you".

    I would still rather you tried to use the approach of importing a 3D engine than getting us to continue adding bits and pieces of a 3D engine to Construct's own renderer, which will never be enough.

  • Are you sure that there are not other approaches that could make an integrated 3D engine work, or new APIs that would smooth integration? It seems to me that it ought to be possible to basically import existing Construct objects in to a 3D engine, so you can get the same result as using a 3D layer in Construct, but with that layer rendered in a 3D engine. Therefore the workflow would be the same as it is with addons now - using the Layout View to compose levels, perhaps using placeholders for 3D models and so on - but the runtime renders using a 3D engine instead of Construct's engine. It may be complicated, but I suspect it is possible to do something like that. If it is not possible, I'd be interested to identify why and what APIs could potentially be added to solve those problems.

    3D engines are vast and complex pieces of software with a wide array of tools and features. I'm afraid I am skeptical that the requests for 3D features will ever be limited to just a last few. We've done a lot of 3D features now, often with people saying that's the last thing they need, but the requests keep coming. For example more recently, we did implement 3D direct rendering for effects. It was a pretty complicated change and resulted in a few difficult bugs along the way that needed to be figured out, including a regression that made its way to a stable release. But straight away, it turns out that's not enough and there are more features necessary. I'm afraid I am of the view that even if we did what you ask, people would go a little bit further, get stuck again, and then file a feature request saying "the last thing I need is XYZ..."; then if we did that, people would go a little bit further, get stuck again, file another request... and on and on, until we've reimplemented a full 3D engine. We've already gone a fair way down that path and I am getting increasingly reluctant to go further down it. This is why I am instead trying to explore alternative options: if you integrate a full 3D engine, you get all those features you'd ever have requested all out of the box. Then instead you work on ways to improve integration, rather than reinventing a full 3D engine in Construct itself.

  • Ashley, can you please could provide your thoughts on this. I created a limited set of SDK V2 requests to enable community 3d addon development. What do you think of implementing the functionality of the SDK V2 requests in light of this?

    Have you prototyped building addons using a real 3D engine like three.js using HTML layers? You'll get everything you could ever dream of for a 3D engine that way. I would say that is a preferable direction, as we do not want to turn Construct in to a 3D engine, and I am sure that these feature requests for more 3D stuff will continue indefinitely until we've reinvented an entire 3D engine in Construct.

  • Usually that high a memory reading means you've done something extremely wasteful. It will probably have stopped working as you've exceeded the hardware memory limits. See Memory usage.

  • The OS usually suspends apps in the background to save system resources like battery life, memory, CPU power etc. This is good - your phone/laptop battery would likely die a lot quicker without it.

    The OS usually allows for some specific exceptions for specific purposes like GPS tracking, audio playback etc. but these are usually done in as limited a way as possible, e.g. only allowing a predefined audio track to play and trying not to actually wake the app as long as possible. So even in these cases, usually the app is still not actually running continually in the background. If you open the app and it has a log of things that happened while it was in the background, it might look like it was running in the background, but in reality it wasn't - it probably did something like obtain the log from the OS upon reopening the app.

    This is a common question - people often ask how to make their apps run continually in the background, but the reality is modern apps don't do that, even if they look like they do.

    Construct doesn't have a built-in feature to track GPS over time (it's an unusual feature for a game). Perhaps there's a third-party addon that can do it though. You may have to jump through various privacy/security hoops to get the app published though, as tracking people's location over time is a highly sensitive privacy issue.

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Ashley

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