ok thanks for the suggestion but for some reason I'm using construct as a game engine and it's that I don't know how to program although lately I've been interested in learning gdscript but thanks for the idea anyway, and one last question, what if I bought a construct 3 license on February 29th would I have to pay for it on February 28th? (I'm just asking out of curiosity, not that it makes you do it), it makes me very angry to see how lately what is "yours" is no longer yours so to speak, since you're only buying a license to use that product at any time the company can take away that license from you, and hopefully the problem you have with your netbook is solved bro and that you get the most out of it. 👌

I don't create plugins either, but rather than change engine, I try to create inside C2/C3 events functions that can simulate a new behaviour rather than create a new plugin. Not for everything is possible, but in most case it works and it's still better than start from scratch with a new engine where you might find anyway other issues.

About the license, I don't know, but I guess that it would have to paid the 28th at the end of the day, so it would be still like having paid it the 29th at the end of the day. The day after is still the 1st of March in both cases.

Yeah, the owning part is something that only in rare case I give up as idea, aside for C3 license, Dropbox and my website domain I don't have any major subscription where if I stop to pay i loose everything. This of course for the digital part of the world, on the rest of the things like utilities as electricity, water and such, I'm working on them.

Anyway, going back to Windows XP, that's another issue about things, something that was still working was forced to end so Microsoft could make more money. The whole push for advancement leaving things behind, makes me always thing about the waste of resource we are pushed to do. So again, if I can still use C2 on my old netbook, I'm happy to do it :)

I totally agree with what you say about subscriptions, I also continue using C2 although I also tend to use C3 to try out new things that come out. In my case, I tend to use third-party plugins from time to time such as Canvas or Rex_waitevent and Litetween, I normally use Rex's since they don't give me as many bugs compared to the others I have, and apart from that, I get anxious for some reason thinking that if one day Scirra and its servers close and we're left without C3.

Yeah. With plugins the only good alternative would be to make them by yourself, especially if you can make them for both C2 and C3, so you are able to manually port your games to C3, recoding the plugin part.

About subscription, the future can be better or way worse. If people don't wake up quickly, private property will be gone soon. I understand that companies as Scirra must survive, but I will be happy to support the company every year, but be sure that for any reason if I stop to pay, whatever I paid so far I can still use. So for C3, no more new stuff, but still able to use indefinitely the features I got with my last payment. That's also the reason why I try to don't buy anything on Steam, but buy only games from itch.io or GOG.

but you can't run construct 3 on the netbook? and if you can't, are you sure that with construct 2 you can do the "same" as with construct 3 despite its limitations?, in my personal experience something similar happened to me with a laptop that I had, I also wanted to use construct 2 on it but it gave me an error so I decided to install clickteam fusion which for some reason works very well even with many objects in its preview (I was using the latest version obviously the free one just to test since I don't like that engine)

That netbook is something I had since 2009, I doubt it can't do much with Construct 3. Also, I prefer to don't connect on the Internet with that one. I can use the remote preview just to load things on the other devices, but if I can connect to a LAN, I will probably do that without using Internet at all.

About what I can do with C2, normally I use C2 even if I have C3, then move to C3 only if I have to do things that I can't really do with C2, like exporting for mobile. Most of my tests and prototypes are done in C2, it's a safety measure. If the Internet connection is down for long time, Scirra server can't be reach or worst case the company closes down, with C2 I am still able to access and edit my projects, while with C3 everything will be lost forever, unless a standalone version is released by Scirra in the unfortunate event that they run out of business.

Sorry for the late reply, I am busy with house renovation and my old netbook was in another location. I just access to it a couple of days ago and this is the result:

- I could successfully install C2 release 275. Above stable versions cannot be installed.

- Latest NW.js I could install is the version v0.44.0 (Chromium 80) of 5th February 2020.

- Installing NW.js 0.44 (and few earlier versions), fails to install latest DirectX. I think the url it tries to grab does not exist anymore.

- The preview works on Firefox, but due to my little netbook computation power and perhaps weight of the browser (I believe), even the platformer template runs at 2 to 7 FPS.

- NWjs preview does not work instead. I can export the project in NWjs, but once launched the 32 bit version I get the same error of the preview.

I have installed DirectX End-User Runtime and Firefox ESR, the latter is the last update available for Firefox 32 bit version 52.9.0, but that does not solve the problem of the NWjs preview and neither improves browser performance (tested on the same platformer template).

The error message I get with NWjs is in Italian, but on the Internet I found other people have the same issue with other software, that translates as: "The procedure entry point could not be located in the dynamic link library kernel32.dll".

For what I can understand, that's the limit of XP architecture and basically NWjs in those latest versions doesn't work on XP.

Possible solutions could be to try to go back to earlier NWjs version and maybe install Chrome or other browser that might be a bit lighter weight.

Just to add more info, C2 'About' section mentions that is rendering with OpenGL 1.1.0, GDI Generic (no shaders) and recommends driver updates...

Overall, it's not great, but I can still use the netbook as emergency backup for little projects, especially for turn based game mechanics an such that does not need fast interactions.

Now, about the good part. Since the remote preview works, if there is an Internet connection available that can be shared, you can still use your mobile, tablet or other device to test your game. That is still something positive and useful as temporary backup and it's easier to work with keyboard and mouse instead of using C3 on mobile, that I could never even use to write a single line of code...

Thank you Ashley, I have found a similar issue reported on May, this year, so for now I add my comment there instead of opening a new post.

In case you or anyone else want to follow up the topic, it's here:

https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/issues/8184#issuecomment-2308648756

Ashley I did a bunch of export with all different NW.js until I find the breaking point. With NW.js version 0.84.0 (Chromium 121) the export works fine, from version 0.85.0 (Chromium 122) the export doesn't work anymore.

I know that the Linux players are not so many and developers using C3 are probably just a bunch of people, but if you would like to give it a quick look maybe we are lucky enough to solve the problem with latest NW.js versions.

Thanks :-)

By the way, I have also noticed that the export has a favicon and taskbar icon with C2 icon and not C3, this because the template has still the old C2 icons in the project. Not sure if you care about updating those or leave it as nice memory of the past.

Thank you Ashley for the reply.

I did try to uncheck 'Ignore GPU blacklist', but it didn't work, so I tried one by one to uncheck other things, use PNG and JPG and so on. In the end I got the idea. C2 export works, so something new that is on C3 doesn't work.

So, I checked the latest C2 version of NW.js and it's the v0.54.0 (Chromium 91) [Requires C2 r217+] dated 27th May 2021. I then exported C3 with all options as default, including checked 'Ignore GPU blacklist' and the exported Vertical Shooter Template worked without problem. On the contrary of C2 export, I can even resize the window without problems!

Now, the only thing left is to try to export from the second latest version and going backward to 0.54.0 until I find a working NW.js.

The question left is now this. Is an issue that goes case by case with Linux depending on the individual computer and distro, or is the issue related to C3 in how it interacts with NW.js regarding to Linux?

By the way, I am totally new with Linux, so I will try to avoid solutions that might lock me out of the system :-P

Anyone uses Linux?

I'm starting to transitioning to Linux, so by this chance I have an opportunity also to test Linux export from C2 and C3, thing that I wasn't able to do earlier.

I did try to export with C2 and C3 the Vertical Shooter Template. Now, with the C2 I have no problem, it runs smoothly in Linux, unless I maximise the window, in that case the view is messed up as for screenshot. Not sure if changing screen setting on the project I might solve the problem, is an issue with Firefox on my Linux distribution or is the export itself having problems.

With C3 export instead, the game window opens and closes straight away. I can't even see any image before it closes. If I try to right click the file and run it in console, the result is the same, but I have a long list of logs about the crash that I don't know how to read. I can copy and paste it, if needed, but it's quite long and seems sort of repeating itself.

This is just the beginning of the console log error:

[8579:8579:0816/123632.706808:ERROR:object_proxy.cc(576)] Failed to call method: org.kde.KWallet.isEnabled: object_path= /modules/kwalletd6: org.freedesktop

.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message recipient disconnected from message bus without replying

[8579:8579:0816/123632.706834:ERROR:kwallet_dbus.cc(112)] Error contacting kwalletd6 (isEnabled)

[8579:8579:0816/123632.706983:ERROR:object_proxy.cc(576)] Failed to call method: org.kde.KLauncher.start_service_by_desktop_name: object_path= /KLauncher: o

rg.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.kde.klauncher was not provided by any .service files

[8579:8579:0816/123632.706986:ERROR:kwallet_dbus.cc(81)] Error contacting klauncher to start kwalletd6

[8579:8579:0816/123632.771963:ERROR:object_proxy.cc(576)] Failed to call method: org.kde.KWallet.close: object_path= /modules/kwalletd6: org.freedesktop.DBu

s.Error.NoReply: Message recipient disconnected from message bus without replying

[8579:8579:0816/123632.771976:ERROR:kwallet_dbus.cc(502)] Error contacting kwalletd6 (close)

[0816/123632.785725:ERROR:elf_dynamic_array_reader.h(64)] tag not found

[0816/123632.785762:ERROR:elf_dynamic_array_reader.h(64)] tag not found

[8610:8610:0816/123632.946977:FATAL:resource_bundle.cc(363)] Check failed: g_shared_instance_ != nullptr.

Anyone has an idea about what should I do to run the program on Linux? Sorry if it's a stupid question, but it's my first time using aside few interactions with the Raspberry PI where I did really not much with it.

Thanks!

You are welcome and good luck with your project! :-)