I remember them saying they were planning on allowing HTML5 stuff, and just the other day IGN reported they dropped the "must have an office" requirement. They also dropped their thresholds of units shipped/sold before getting paid--you get paid from sale #1 now. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a pipe dream, but Wii U support with C2 would be unbelievable.

BTW, if they do it, we need to make teams here to crank some stuff out.

The new visible grid is great and makes a big difference. Would love to see a grid option in the sprite editor as well. It would really help when making low res sprites.

The sprite editor certainly needs a fair bit of work to get it up to the level of standalone apps, but top of my list would be a tilable option <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I'm glad there is a visible grid now! There are a lot of uses for it (though admittedly fewer for my game <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> ), but I would pick new/improved features over updating the sprite editor any day. There are so many better, free options for graphics creation and manipulation that it seems strange to make it too full-featured.

Yeah, I backup to a local hard drive. It's not the same one my game is on, but it's still physically in my computer. Heck, I'm backing up to my C drive where windows is installed :-P

And when I mean crashing, it'll bring up the windows not responding dialogue. It is seemingly random, but occurs either during the backup portion after I manually hit save, or during a preview.

I actually get this problem, too. After working on a project for a while and saving a number if times, it will seemingly randomly stop responding. It happens less frequently on previews, but still occasionally. If it dies during a save, it's during the backup portion. It happens more often the longer I've had C2 open with a project.

I'm running Wondows 7 x64, (old) Pentium D

Be sure you have a layer for the UI on each layout with the scroll/zoom rates set to 0. Then, on an event sheet that you can include on each layout, On Start of Layout -> Create Object and create all of your objects at runtime on each layout. That way you don't have to go on a copy-and-paste spree every time you make a change. If only you could create a layer at runtime...

Thanks to Whiteclaws for the mention! It is definitely capable of longer, deeper experiences. It's actually quite well-suited to it, I've found. But you need to do some planning, prototyping, and organization at the start to increase your odds of success.

In all seriousness, build a smaller game using some of the mechanics you'd like to include in your bigger project. This lets you prototype, get a finished game (no small task!), and experience with the engine. You'll run into some of the same natural roadblocks that you would on your long-form game, but they're easier to fix when they don't have the potential to cripple weeks/months of work or set you back too far. I made a maze game that you control as you would a top-down, 8-direction rpg. I got to play with dynamically zooming, z-ordering, different movement speeds, touch input, interacting with environmental triggers, fake unified shadowing, etc, in a much easier-to-produce game. I even got got to play with leaderboards, posting to social networks, and a lot of great workflow things without the overhead of inventory management, quest statuses, npc's, a fleshed-out story, or a ton of animation.

Use your small game that gets you used to C2 as your quasi-prototype for your larger game and kill a flock of birds with one stick of dynamite.

Also, check out Courier in my signature to see some of the stuff I'm doing. It will be playable (though I'll be updating continuously adding content) in May. I hope it helps you some. Also check out Loot Oursuit. Arima has since moved it to C2 (from Construct Classic), but it shows some more things that can be done and may be more like what you're looking to do.

Last week's UI binge went very well. Logging in, the store, health meter, and all kinds of other UI/menu stuff got done and it works quite well!

This week is all about audio, which means I won't have any pretty screenshots to show until NPC week next week! I won't be posting works-in-progress for the music because I only want it to be seen when it shines. But to give you a taste, know that its a combination of live instruments and sampled instruments. It's orchestral, but, in my opinion, far more interesting and nice-sounding than a lot of indie stuff I hear. I plan on posting at least one of the completed tracks this weekend.

Yes, it would be extremely well-suited to it, actually. But don't stop there, you could just as easily add touch input (C2 does it for you, basically) and allow tablets to get in on it, too.

Wrangler Thank you very much!

This week, I'm completing all of the menus, UI, and shop stuff. Next week is audio!

But I know you're here for the pictures and not for the words, so here's a screenshot from inside the first dungeon:

<img src="http://www.adamprack.com/materials/dngn01.png" border="0" />

It features fancy lighting and shaders, a turret with seemingly foreign design principles/technology, and more of those wonderful spikey gates!

Also, something neat for players, the mouse is entirely context-sensitive. So if you hover over interactive objects, the mouse gives you information or directions. For instance, on NPC's it'll tell you their name. On doors, it'll tell you if they're locked or not. By default, the cursor is blue/teal, but if you're hovering over something clickable, the mouse turns white. This makes for a very intuitive experience for players.

Buuuut it screws my touchscreen support, so I'll have to rethink things for tablets.

Even more than that, I'd love to be able to zoom out further.

Here's a screenshot from the newly-created title screen:

<img src="http://www.adamprack.com/materials/title.png" border="0" />

And, of course, it's all fully animated.

With a tiered release schedule, stating Courier's release date is kind of hard. But the first release, which I view as a soft release, isn't as far away as you might think. My personal goal is 8 weeks to complete the 6 major things that need done before I can go public. But, no doubt, numerous testing sessions, tweaks, and little UI additions will put me a little over. Perhaps I'll go to record a clarinet or trumpet part and it will rain that evening, rendering me unable to get a clean recording. I'm not stating this as a means to announce a release, but to bring up a sense of accountability for myself.

I plan to have Courier available for play by mid May. This will include the first town (which is quite large), the first dungeon, the overworld area immediately around this forest area, and the associate story segment. Some other features this will need to entail would be persistent save data, a leaderboard, and in-app purchases.

I plan on nothing less than a weekly update, typically with something visual to show.

This week's update is showing one of the early environmental puzzles:

<img src="http://www.adamprack.com/materials/puzzle01.png" border="0" />

The switches (which are mouse-driven) change the position of the floating platforms, but also change all other platforms to their opposite position.