It's been a while since I last tested C-Animate.

Quick question: still no scrubbing of timelines?

> As a background, I produce animation for corporate training and educational purposes, lead a team of two people as a creative director for a fortune 500 company where we produce a lot of animation and freelance for more "fun" projects next to all that like i.e. a credited brief stint as an animator on an adult swim show.

>

> I've worked with After Effects, Flash (now Animate), Moho Pro and, my favorite, Toon Boom Harmony Premium.

>

> There is absolutely NO WAY that i would use Construct for animation over any of the above mentioned software packages, which have literally decades of development behind them and were very carefully catered for animators and suits all their needs.

>

> When it comes to producing HTML5 animation for the web, i'd either go with Animate CC, which i rarely use these days but it comes with our company wide CC subscription OR, would look into Rive.App, which was recommended to me by my colleagues and seems to be a really robust piece of software that is very similar to tools found in the above mentioned packages.

>

> I maybe used the Construct timeline once or twice in my projects since i found it to be extremely confusing and non-intuitive. If i have to think longer than 30 seconds about how a timeline works, there's really something wrong, sorry, but by now after using so many timelines, this is just something so standardized, that it should work in a more standardized way. Beside that, in my experience the timeline used to crash a lot. I don't know how it is these days, it might be better.

>

> Construct's animation features are just very clearly developed with neither a clear understanding of animation workflows nor any sort of input from professional animators and it shows. The interactivity might be nice but it's probably already a total overkill for most animators, who definitely won't spend the time learning the ins and outs of the event sheets. As intuitive as they are, they still need time to learn. Compared to something like Rive or all your usual prototyping tools like Figma or Invision, which can export HTML 5 and offer easy(er) to use interactivity features as well, it's really not all that intuitive as you might think.

>

> I just hope they didn't bite off more than they can chew and hope they really go in and look at whats out there and what the people they want to sell this to actually need. Which also brings me to this: WHO is this for exactly? WHAT animators? Motion Graphics people who work for video? Definitely won't use it, and one video export option with a file format that is highly compressed won't change that either (usually you animate either directly in the compositing software or export image sequences and then go to compositing or some ProRes or other video format with less noticable compression).

>

> Character animators, game animators, UI designers, etc. etc. there is really no clear indication, who they want to develop this for...

This. It doesn't seem anyone who animates for a living was actually spoken to, and the way timeline animation works here and in C3 is the very definition of counterintuitive compared to every other piece of animation software I can think of.

Seconded! I use or have used most animation apps in my career: Moho Pro, Toonboom, Krita, TV Paint, OpenToonz, After Effects, Spine, Flash/Animate, Blender/Max/C4D/Houdini, and others. And I use animation editors in game engines too.

After noticing the blog entry announcing this product, I was curious and after trying it a out I would have to agree with the other animators here: it is counter-intuitive to use coming from other animation software.

Personally I fumbled around for minutes before understanding the workflow, and I had to read the intro article to get up and running. But I got quickly fed up with animating stuff. It's not terrible, just... really awkward. It's easy to tell that this is a game engine dressed up like animation software. And not really pulling it off.

I agree with the others here that it is VERY obvious no-one ever consulted with actual animators, and the developers sorta copied stuff from other animation editors. But without real understanding of animation workflows?

For actual film/shorts animation work solid free alternatives exist: OpenToonz, for example. And that timeline is a joy to work with, comparable to commercial apps such as Animate, ToonBoom, and TV Paint. Those allow us to create/draw things too instead of relying on external assets only. And add various high-end effects! Not even mentioning nodal compositing in ToonBoom, OpenToonz or Blender.

So I will not and cannot compare it with off-the-shelves animation software. This is in my opinion still too limited. Comparable to a toy and too clunky. Animators -even novices- would be better off avoiding it.

Which leaves game engines and animation apps meant for web animations.

Compare Tumult Hype, Soala Animate, or even Google Web Designer - much simpler and intuitive to animate in. And built from the ground up for the type of market that, I feel, the Construct team is trying to dig into.

Or compare Godot. I like to animate stuff in Godot, because it feels similar to other animation software. It also has a proper graph editor, and properties are easily animated with the key icon, which is again similar to After Effects. The nodal scene architecture fits an animation paradigm better too. And there is support for FK/IK animated characters. And last but not least easier to preview animations which can be playing while editing other animations. In short, it is fun to animate in.

If I may make a suggestion Ashley? Hire an experienced all-round animator and allow that person (and other animators) to inform your new animation product. Because in its current state I'd say you will not succeed. It's fine for a game engine animation editor (still clunky to work with though ;P ), and even if your new animation adventure fails, you'll still have a much improved animation editor in Construct.

PS the animation software market is much more congested and competitive than the game engine market. Free industry level competitors are readily available like Blender and OpenToonz. Kiddies rely mostly on free options or hacked old versions of Flash.

I had these issues in the past in other game engines, and the solution is to 'extrude' the edge pixels.

TexturePacker includes this option. It works really well, and removes the bleeding due to anti-aliasing issues caused by scaling up and down.

Here is an example. Open in an image editor, and zoom in. Notice the double pixel border around each tile. Each tile is 32 by 32 pixels, and the extruded pixels prevent any bleeding from occurring.

Not sure if this is the same option as Ashley mentioned earlier.

I did keep in mind what Ashley said in mind, I responded to that.

I've checked game dev comparison websites and such, and I can't find a comparable product to C3, one that ticks the three boxes that caused my concern when combined:

• Is subscription based only
• Is Web based only
• Creates a file format that is designed to run in one application (yes its a zip file technically, no you cannot easily view or edit it by extracting it if C3 was closed, minus assets)

If I could find some products comparable to the above, I would have checked their t&c's before being more worried in my replies.

The closest comparable products to C3 to me are C2, CC, Gdevelop, GameMaker, clickteam fusion. But these don't tick the above 3 tick boxes I listed.

I don't know why I'm battling how to spend my time and money, it's crazy, I've never had such an experience like this, I really thought you guys would empathise with the concept at least, even if you had to state a firm "No" to my request.

If you feel that strongly about it, why not pick another game engine that makes you feel less anxious and insecure? No-one can foresee the future.

To fix this, open the enemy sprite and player sprite, switch to the collision polgon, and pick an animation frame that has a full rectangle collision polygon.

Right-mouse click the view, and choose "Apply to whole animation". Do this for both sprites.

Fixed.

Excellent progression and refinement of your visual style. Super interesting to follow this dev thread. You are taking it to the next level.

Do the queen's eyes blink as well?

HolidayExplanation Yes, the bottom segment of the indie game engine market is experiencing some disruption, which I think is mainly due to Godot. Yesterday I read the news that Corona Engine is now open source, but any game made with it must have its source code made available to the public (or negotiate a commercial license for big $$$). I doubt the engine will survive that transition.

I still use my Construct 2 license for quick game prototype tests, and then switch to Godot when I am satisfied with an idea. Lately I've been testing GDevelop as a replacement for C2 and quick prototyping, since GDevelop is actively developed, and C2 is not. That said, my scripting skills have improved a lot in Godot: meaning I can do most prototyping just as fast in Godot now.

Construct 3 sounds nice, but I refuse to be hooked into a subscription model for any development, because I feel it is too volatile. Besides, Godot/GDevelop being open source is very attractive to me.

I did not say that i could not afford it , i said i wont because of given reasons. (im not talking about the money fact im talking about the philosophy or say the felling behind this)

Well i get your last point, really. But then it would be a rent to own thing but you never own it.

It feels not really good to give money and dont have smth at your hands, it can be all gone by tomorow.

CC is open source. You could even improve it.

Since you mention open source, why not switch to one of the open source alternatives if Construct's rent bothers you?

Godot is arguably much more capable than Construct - at the expense of losing Construct's visual scripting. You'd have to learn an (easy) scripting language instead.

Or GDevelop, which is also open source and free, and quite similar to Construct.

You have the choice.

GameMaker's popularity is waning. These are the stats from last weekend's Global Game Jam. Construct was used more than GM for the first time. Construct, however, is also losing game jammers.