All this talk about C2 not being able to make larger complex games on mobiles... not true. I came to C2 with no former programming or art background.

My first game idea was a huge RPG at HD res (some would say its a mistake to aim big as a noob, I think learning as you go helps a lot), and I stumbled and learnt my way around. When it finished months later, it was 83MB, wouldn't even run with CocoonJS due to its limitations (which I wasn't aware of at the time, my fault!). By trimming it down and changing a lot of assets into PNG8 (which turns out looking 95-99% the same as PNG32), shortening the music loops, removing a few sprites and BG, it went down to 27MB, but still CocoonJS had trouble since it took 450MB of free ram due to it loading all assets into ram at the start. It would run on Tegra 3 devices at 25fps, I thought that was the limitation of HTML5 and accepted my fate.. but its not true, after more optimizations, it now runs on the the same device at 50-60 fps!

Even better recently with Crosswalk, max of 250MB ram required only. I am not saying my game is a great example of game development, polish, artistic sense or whatever (I had to trim a lot of the art and effects to get it to run well on mobiles). I am just saying its a huge game with over 3,600 events and it runs very well even on older mobiles (HTC Incredible S with a 1ghz Dual-Core and 512mb ram, 800x480 res).

See how busy the gameplay is:

Now its no Airscape or Penelope, but with being designed for mobiles and the limitations, there's no way you are going to get those games running smooth on older mobiles.

My current project is a massive space sci-fi sandbox!

http://halfgeekstudios.wordpress.com/

Don't think such complex games are possible via html5/C2 on mobiles? I will prove its possible, alpha gameplay is already smooth on my Tegra 3.

My only gripes is the lack of AdMob and Google Store integration for C2/Intel XDK currently but its coming soon, something to look forward to when my current project is finished.

In summary, my opinion is that for smaller games, CocoonJS is actually fantastic for Android and iOS, but bigger games is where it falls flat on its face due to poor memory management, but its something Crosswalk can do (for Android only). Know the limitations and work within and around them.

Okay, then two things remain for CocoonJS to fix.

1. Memory management (lack of).

2. Horrible required permissions. Let us customize it like in Intel XDK.

#1 is not crucial for most small games, but bigger games is a must. #2 is just plain sense, not sure why after years it hasn't been done. Few people like to see the huge list of permissions when they install an App.

Either way its good to see improvements, we're nearly there with CJS and XDK!

Windwalker

making games is serious business - where people invest money and they want profits from it. Which means that game developers try to minimize possible risks. And they don't have time to wait. Now, with 3rd party exporters, risk connected with Construct 2 is quite big. That's why Scirra have almost 1,000,000 downloads but can mention only a few, bigger, really polished games.

To be honest, most games on the App Stores are absolute trash and the bigger really polished games are far and few between, and the majority are from bigger devs.

This is more than indie, because C2 is so simple to use everyone can make games. Just because everyone can write, doesn't make them awesome novelists.

When I see games like The Next Penelope being made with Construct 2, all I can think of is "How do I get better?!" and certainly not "This game engine is flawed and lacking thats why I can't make awesome games". What one man can do, others can do also. If they can't, indeed it is down to talent. I'm not talented, but C2 has been great in my experience.

IntelRobert

Great news about the audio fix, but I just went to try and recompile it and keep getting this message.

No changes in code on my end, same game version exported last time.

CJS seem to fix their crash on device sleep with their recent updates, previously it would randomly crash or fail to resume on sleep. That was an issue for Samsung definitely.

So now I think the only one left is the crazy blinking logo.

I disagree with everything OP has raised and not because I am a fanboy, but because of my own experience.

C2 has worked as advertise. An easy to use tool but hard to master, like most things in life. My first game is a MASSIVE EPIC. It was grand in scope and guess what? It runs great on mobiles thanks to Intel XDK/Crosswalk.

My second game was a crap Flappy Clone (hey its good practice trying new stuff!), runs great on mobiles thanks to CocoonJS.

I am making my third game now, it's an epic Space Sandbox RTS/RPG, aiming for the depth of games like Privateer, Freelancer & Escape Velocity. So far, its perfectly do-able with C2.

C2 is a great engine, but its still limited by your own talent pool. And C2 doesn't need its own native HTML5 -> Android exporter, because the ones available have massive teams behind it pushing through updates and improving it all the time, even if Scirra tried, I do not think they can match the international effort being Crosswalk or Intel XDK. In another few months when they add AdMob and Google Store support, it'll be perfect.

Yeah I was going to keep everything top down flat, but it felt a bit stale for stations, it just didn't pop from the background or foreground as Id like, so stations will be isometric... could be a weird gravity thing where stations all rotate slightly hehe.

However, I'm not a natural artist by any stretch of the imagination though, I'm an ex-scientist (working as a postdoctoral researcher during 2013)!

argail Thanks!

Are there any features you guys of the sci-fi genre like to see in the game? Some particular ship ability? I plan to have multiple active modules (not guns/missiles) but limit it to a maximum of 2, players would have to pick which they like, where players would touch an icon and it activates.

Pleasure City Station, "Vegas in Space"!

Mining Station

lolpaca Thanks!!

Yeah the Boids is interesting but without some more features, it's quite hard to implement a complex pathfinding AI with it. I will just resign to using the Solid Pushout plugin to keep them from overlapping each other, that was the main objective, because when they chase they all clump up.. ala, Starcraft style, think 40 mutalisks all clumped up and BAM, one aoe, all dead.

I wanted that to never occur, because missiles and beam cannons will do AoE and it would just be completely imbalanced to allow them to stack.

I've got most of the gameplay logic worked out, now its just a matter of making art assets (usually the longest IMO, my previous game Ninja Legacy took me 5 solid months of art and animation!), and lastly, menus and station trading/inventory!!

Modular Station for one faction, here, its the Bio-dome version, an Agricultural Supplier.

Will do a photoshop finish once most of the assets are done, to add some lighting and glows.

Good effort, keep it up and soon you will be a great game developer!