Putting an "is on screen" check above the collisions and patrolling could help, if done right.

I wouldn't bother with blank sprites though. Don't worry about that. Unless your image memory use is getting to the point of extremes, there's no point in trying things that may even make performance worse if not done correctly.

As always, organize everything into "groups" and use the debugger to see if it's actually helping performance. That's what the "profile" tab is for. It shows how much CPU resources something is using.

Will people be able to tell that they can scroll to the left past the levels? If it is not apparent to them, they may not realize it is possible. Never assume people will automatically know. Of course, I'm sure they will figure it out eventually.

If it were me, I'd add a side panel on the left or right that's always visible. Or maybe something at the top or bottom. Whichever looks best. They really don't need to see a ton of levels on screen at once anyway. Just have a handful of levels visible at once and leave yourself some room for some small, unobtrusive menu buttons.

Let us know the details how c2 compares with it, and is it difficult to switch?

So far, Blueprint seems pretty easy to learn. Obviously it will take a little time to master a new program. I mean, I've been using C2 for nearly 2 years, and UE4 with Blueprints for less than a week. But, I'm picking it up pretty quickly.

Since I'm used to working in 3d, I don't think UE4 is that hard to work with. There are a lot of things here, but nothing really seems that hard to understand.

It seems more geared towards making a game. I mean, there are templates for a variety of game types already there to test. Setting up controls and programming them with Blueprints seemed easier than it was in Unity. The AI has more features built in such as a behavior tree. I easily found an animation timeline for triggering sounds or events at specific times during an animation. That feature seemed more hidden in Unity.

I'm not going to jump the gun and say which is better yet. I spent the last week or two with Unity. So, now I want to give UE4 some time. I'll probably be studying it for several hours a day at least. Hopefully, I can get a little prototype going by the end of the week and see if it's right.

I'll be recreating the same game I made here, but probably with manual third person controls instead of point and click. I'd like to make the player controllable this way so I can add in traps or physics puzzles and just make the game world a bit more interactive. Both of these things seemed easier in UE4. I even saw a feature of quickly creating destructible objects. At least to me, this stuff just seems more ready to go in UE4 than with Unity.

Anyway, I'll report back after I've had some more time with it.

Cool, I'm going to be following more tutorials and doing more tests this week in UE4. So far, some things I wanted to do seem easier in UE4. It just seems like it was designed more for the kinds of games I want to make.

By the end of this week, I should know if I will want to work with UE4 or not.

If your goal is to make a complete game by yourself, then Unity will probably get you there faster (not as fast as Construct 2). If your goal is to become a competent game developer with a specific focus, UE4 is probably the most promising tool to learn right now.

Just curious, what makes UE4 take longer? I've watched some tutorials and played with both Unity+Playmaker and UE4, and it seems like UE4 has a lot of tools out of the box that help get things going. I'm still watching the tutorials of course, so I haven't looked at every aspect.

That's interesting. I've gotten pretty good with C2, so anything that operates on a similar kind of terminology shouldn't be too hard for me to pick up.

I've been following some tutorials on Playmaker and have done some quick tests, but I'm not committed yet. I want to choose to the engine that will get me the best results. I've already got a working prototype made in C2, though I may deviate slightly in how it controls (like 3rd person controls instead of point and click). But I haven't decided on any of that yet. Right now, I'm just playing with the engines to see if I feel like I could do it.

Since UE4 is free, I may give it a download and try it out.

UE4 blueprints are really easy to comprehend (after spending some years in C2 and CC). All you need to know is to learn a different workflow of the engine like GameMode, PlayerController, PlayerCharacter etc. It took me just about a week to learn how it works and to make a simple 3d adventure game system that have doors, rooms, transitions, player interactions, camera system... UE4 is stupid easy in comparison to Unity+Playmaker. To do exactly same thing in Unity with playmaker... i gave up after 2 weeks.

Like megatronx said, there's a lot of neat stuff exposed in blueprint nodes: timelines, delays, custom events, literally hundreds of different types variables (I really don't like in C2 that I can't make an array variable or simple vector2 variable to store XY - instead you need to make 2 separate number variables sic!).

And everything have build in help infos and tooltips, so there's no need to dig through the help online.

One thing that can be overwhelming is UE4 editor itselfs, there are a lot of buttons, options, parameters, options in options, parameters in parameters

Wow, so you think UE4 is easier to use than Unity+Playmaker? I should have a look at it then. I always figured it would be harder, so I never really looked at it.

I am playing with Unity and Playmaker right now as well. I'm already using 3d in c2, just pre-rendered. Having a full 3d engine would open up the types of games I could make.

I like the way this looks, especially the models.

If all you need is "hand" and "normal" then just use families.

Put sprite 1, 2, and anything else you want in a family. Call it what you want.

Then do something like this:

cursor is over family- set cursor to hand

else- set cursor to normal

Get rid of every tick.

I have uscript and dont understand why you think it is similar to construct's event sheet

They are nothing alike. Uscript is a node based approach, c2 is an even sheet approach

I watched a few videos of a Uscript tutorial. While it may not have the event sheets, it did look familiar to me. I saw actions, conditions, variables, animations, so on. The "node" approach is a little different, but I picked up on it pretty fast from my time with C2.

you should try uscript for unity

Hmm, I'm tempted to have a look at that.