Guess people now are too offended of what I already said to continue the discussion in a constructive way, instead they blindly defend C2 with all they got and bullying the OP with their "high fives" to each other.

I'm not offended at all, let's keep on this constructive discussion. Nobody defended C2 blindly. Accept that this community loves this software (which they expressed) and will not see it as a toy, but we can still talk about it's issues and strengths. Both are interesting topic, and since my research subject is based on visual programming I believe it's important to see both sides of the coin.

The way I see it, no tool is perfect, you have to beat it into submission in one way or the other. And I agree that C2 is not perfect, I'm just trying to see the silver lining through all this bitterness I've seen towards C2 not being a cookie-cutter program made for everyone and all (it isn't, it has limitations just like everything else). What I mean is that if there's a feature missing, make it yourself. For most programs I've used I have wanted to do a specific thing only to look it up and see that it isn't part of the suite, so I either change my design or try to find a way to bend the program to do what I need. It is very important to understand the scope of the suite you work with, never expect something of a program you use, always read the manual, do your homework and you'll spare yourself the heartache.

+1

You can't just compare these tools with each other based only on their price.

I did not compare the tools based on their prices. I compared the prices of these tools based on their prices.

There are no reason as I see it to defend C2 in areas that clearly falls outside our area, but areas where something is said, for instant that C2 just can't do something or like some people complain about performance and blame C2, and then it turns out that they made some bad design, then C2 gets "defended" when it is pointed out what is wrong with there program.

We can gather quite a few issues about C2 yes. Should these issues be fixed by Scirra? Yes. Will the good hearted community defend it? Of yourse. They just love it (I do too). I can understand both sides (just not the "toy" and "overpriced" thing). I think that Scirra should put more effort on fixing these problems that the experienced developers point out. But keep in mind, that they're a small team and they also have to keep up adding new features because of their competitors. Not an easy task. For one, IMHO the best would be to set up a seperate page to collect the bug fixes and suggestions for the engine based on community posting / voting and drop this forum based bug reporting method (it works, but it's not so efficient). I think I already posted it before in an other topic.

Yes, I also have to agree with that features should be extended, not just added and bugfixed. However in my opinion this alone does not qualify C2 as a toy.

Is C2 an overpriced tool? Well, that is just ridiculous. Have you ever checked the other engines' prices?

GameMaker Professional costs 150$ and the cheapest export module for it (the HTML5 module) is 200$ more. If you go with the master collection, it's 800$.

Stencyl Indie is 100$ a year. To be able to export to more platforms, you'll need the Studio, which is 200$ a year.

ClickTeam Fusion is 100$ and around a 100$ more for each export module. The Developer edition is 400$.

The only considerable product on the visual programming market that is cheaper is GameSalad with 20$ and 30$ per month, and if you want a restricted software, go with it.

C2 gives you all the features for 130$. Forget about the business license for now. You won't get any new features with it. You only need it if you have more developers on your team who uses C2 or if you reach 5000$ in revenue. No always online stuff, you can use your license even offline and you'll get all future updates for free.

I repeat: €330. I expect this to be built-in. Why shouldn't I? Or do you think I'm asking too much of a "professional" product now? Thought you guys said this wasn't a toy.

The more pre-built stuff an engine has brings more limitations with it. I prefer the way as it is now, which is to give the power to the developers to build what they want with logic. Including a floating controller. And as it was said before me, using the Touch object it's no big deal.

Nice work This indeed shows the potential of C2 and you as a developer.

I'm using C2 for years now and I can verify that this is no toy. It's a complex tool. Sure, it has it's issues and it takes some time to get used to, but in my opinion it's worth it. It's the best visual programming engine (using event sheets) on the market right now. Since it's based on HTML5 we can expect some changes regarding the development of our games, but Scirra does it's best to make it nearly unnoticable for developers.

Thanks for the news.

While I'd love to here something about C3, I have to agree with —

+1 to this topic and all suggestions.

I don't think that a well written plugin will drain your performance that much down. However there is always the possibility that the plugin will not be developed further, so you won't get updates for it (in rare cases, when changing something in C2 breaks some plugins, you can get stuck there, but as I said, it's rare). I would suggest, go with the vanilla C2 and if you feel that there's something you can't do with the basic tools, just use a plugin that has at least a few satisfied users. There are a lot serious, great plugins here

I started to use C2 when it was in early-adopter stage. Since then I tried Unity, GameMaker, Stencyl, but I always came back here. C2 is fast, easy to use, and it has many other positive things to make it a great engine. It has a few permormance issues, but it's not because of C2 would be a poorly written engine, but because the technology is based on. HTML5 performance is greatly affected by the current browsers (even, when you export your game to an .exe file, you wrap your HTML5 game with the Chromium browser). An other very usual cause of the performance issues is bad game design. Yes, it's easy to use, but it doesn't mean you can ingore the optimization of your game, and it's true with all engines. I personally yet to encounter any serious performance problem, but I value the opinion of others who already had.

As it was mentioned before me, C2's event system helps you learn programming. It doesn't help you to get to know an actual language (unless, you're developing a plugin with the SDK in JS), but it helps you with the logic that you can use with any language. The hard part of learning programming is getting to know the logic, developint your algorithmic skills. And C2 is great for that.

You can make almost anything with C2. I say almost, because it's not designed for 3D, but there's the Q3D plugin for that.

Some pros:

• Easy to use GUI
• Powerful event system for visually programming your game
• SDK for writing custom plugins
• Great and rich documentation
• Friendly community and developers
• Great licensing policy (you buy once, get all features, updates and platforms, and you can use your license offline as well)

Some cons:

• It's based on HTML5 and for some people it can be a problem.
• The editor is Windows only (C3 is going to change that in the future).
• No modularity and co-working in the engine (planned for C3).
• Designed for 2D (it also counts as a pro, but if you're looking for 3D, you either have to use the Q3D plugin as mentioned before, or you'll have to go with an other engine).
• Using wrappers for supporting different platforms (like the .exe wrapping example at the beginning of my post).

Overall, I'd highly recommend getting this engine. It's one of the best representatives of the new era of programming a software visually. It's easy and fun to work with and you'll get results pretty fast. You won't regret it. That's my opinion about it