The issue from a few years ago may have been me - I added instance variables called TileWidth and TileHeight to my tilemaps, and when those were added as official attributes it caused a clash and I could no longer open my projects. It took hour of investigation to figure it out, and because I use templates as a starting point then this was an issue on every single project I had made. I still come across old projects with this issue, and it takes ages to open cp3 files in 7zip and rename the variables everywhere!

Strangely enough this has started randomly happening to me again every few stable updates, in the last few instances luckily the issue just went away with a restart. But I completely understand the frustration, I am still super stressed on every update.

Just reading through this made me realise that I've been a Construct user for 10 years now. I have finished maybe 50 smaller free web games or family/friend projects, countless prototypes and 1 commercial release as a hobbyist - how times flies! When the subscription model first appeared I was pretty angry, I work in software and I know the idea behind these models is usually to get a lot more money for doing less, but I have to say that feeling didn't last, and I don't think that way about Scirra.

Even though I don't get as much time on it as I'd like, at the current price it is definitely worth it, and I am happy to keep paying it for the foreseeable future. Ashley's point about having a sustainable company is a very good one, we get regular updates, and it's clearly a labour of love and not a cynical business model. All businesses have to make money, and I've found I'm much happier giving my money to a smaller business that is sensible about how it's run.

I do feel a bit for absolute beginners, because there are a lot of people who would love using C3 but will never be able to justify a subscription just to try it. It would be nice if there was a less restrictive free version somehow, for those who just want to see if it works for them, but you can't have everything I suppose.

My only complaints really echo those of everyone else, in that for the entire 10 years I've been around I was hoping for an easy and robust Steam release process, integrated and supported where possible. My only commercial release was my last act in Construct 2, and I ended up abandoning all the Steam features so I could release it. I was quite excited about the possibility of building something for Steam Deck, so hoping one day we get something. Other than that I'll continue to be an advocate of C3 and sing its praises to people.

Update in case anyone else has a similar issue - I had instance variables called TileHeight and TileWidth, at some point these were added as built-in properties of the Tilemap object, so none of my projects would open (just got a 'not a valid c3p file' error). So anyway I had to go back and open them all in an older version of Construct, rename the instance variables and save.

Thanks Ashley, I did that and it's the same error on all the browsers (and with all extensions disabled):

Error: name already in object class namespace

(then it looks like it lists all the places the name already exists)

So I would guess that I had an instance variable that has since become a built-in property and they are clashing. I use a template as a starting point for all my projects which I guess would explain why they all stopped working at once. Because I can open on an old version I guess I will just have to go through and try to figure out the clash

Thanks that was a good call, because bizarrely it does work on a different PC or laptop. Opens as normal, both machines have same O/S & browser etc. The only difference I can think of is the anti-virus, but I tried disabling it and still won't open.

What is even stranger, on my new PC if I go back through the versions then it suddenly works on r251.2 (again this is completely vanilla C3 with no 3rd party addins)

What changed in that version I wonder? I can't have all 34 of my projects just suddenly not work on my new machine so really need to figure this out :(

GeoffB - nice to know it's not just me! I would love to turn off updates for the desktop version, so I could get a stable setup and know it won't change until I want it to. From previous responses on the subject I don't think it's going to happen though. It affects me a lot because I only do this part-time, so have big gaps between periods of gamedev. I usually take a day or two off from my full time job to work on my games, and because I leave big gaps there is often an update. So I find I spend most of my time off fighting upgrade issues with nwjs or similar, rather than working on my games. Perhaps I am just unlucky.

dop2000 Thanks for letting me know, I tried it and still getting the issue though unfortunately. I know these things are always a fight over who is at fault, but on this occasion I updated Construct and not nwjs, then the issue appeared, and it's across every one of my projects.

Alon you there is a nice Construct icon included in the download, so you can go to the properties of your C3 shortcut, select 'change icon' and navigate to the provided .ico file (note you have to re-do this if you upgrade nwjs). Not quite the smooth user-friendly option you want I know, but only takes a few minutes and the C3 Icon is much nicer than the C2 one!