Possible? Definitely.. A lot depends on what you want to archive.

As a simple example.. Make a torch-like light (that is bright sprite with some opacity? perhaps blend mode) at the wall and then adjust it's brightness (or opacity) during the time with some 'random' pattern. If you also animate the image of the flame at the same time. it'll be quite nice.

Of course.. there are options to make some shadows.. and make them move (or deepen) ..

Like Spriter? I think it has a lot what you are looking for ..And then some (with only 25usd)

In a real world.. Largest action multiplayer action game (FPS) I have played was MAG on PS3 .. it had play modes upto 512 players (two teams 256 players each) on a single map and it worked quite ok. No the perfect though, the games were much better when there were like 32 or at max 64 players on same map. But that was some years ago.. I have no idea what's the limit these days.

Of this C2 beta? I have no idea.. Results depend a lot on what kind of game you are planing to do. There are some real world limitations (bandwidth, data loss, ping times) that can't be avoided, so a lot depnds on server and networks.

Looks nice. Frame rate is steady 60 on my pc, so .. not yet too many sprites.

Some suggestions..

I'd like to see the moment to end on grid positions.. sometimes its hard to know what block the character is digging. This will be important on the future when there will be monsters and one has to know what direction to hit.

For magic spells: I don't know if you have ever played games like Moria, but at least on some of them there are spells that light the entire level, and other spells that reveal key items (like money, starcases or monsters) on screen even if those are have not been discovered yet.

IMHO the key question is.. How much extra are people willing to pay for these exporters? Programming, testing and maintaining those will take a considerable work (and ***load of hardware), especially with all these new 'like-androids' around.

For example Nokia just recently released new set of X phones that have forked android and "75% compatibility", Mozilla announced they are aiming for 25usd Firefox-phone etc.

Even though in theory most of these new (and even existing) systems support html-5 there will be differences, both on hw and sw level and it's quite a complex mess.

It all boils down to .. How seriously you want to take the security? Are we talking about game scores, save files, banking info or something really seriously secret?

For high scores and game saves, it's not worth to spend a lot time and effort. Perhaps use some encryption (with hidden keys) and that's it.

For serious stuff, you are more or less helpless since the platforms these days aren't secure enough to provide trustworthy environments for applications.

This latest video made me purchase the Spriter. These features are definitely something I'll want to support.

PS: Is there any convenient way to make character not swap items on it's hands when facing/moving left? I know that at the moment this is done with simple mirroring the right facing animations and it looks somewhat kooky.

Warning.- I'm quite old school, so if you don't get the reference, please use google etc.

When I think the games I have spend a most time with, there have been so many different types.

At Apple II ... Lode runner (150 levels) and Castle wolfenstein (2D), relatively long games (hours), single player with primitive AI enemies.

At C64 .. so many.. Like M.U.L.E. multiplayer strategy competetive/co-operative game. Numerous arcade-shooters ..

On unix machines Moria, Angband and Nethack. Deep, hard and quite unforgiving

On Amiga .. A lot, way too many to mention (many ideas are from this era). Gfx and Sound become more important, but also the ideas and story likes are more complex.

On Consoles (PS2 and PS3) Metal Gear series game mechanism, hide, don't prefer brute force .. Games like Bioshock and Fallout3 for the atmosphere and storyline. Valkyrie chronicles and Flower.

On PC .. Point&cliks.. some unique ideas like Frozen synapse, Spacechem. Simulators.

When you use Construct 2, there are two buttons at the top one next another.

Left one is "run layout", that opens your game at the browser normally.

Right one is "debug layout" which opens the game with a debug window attached. Debug window (bellow your game) show a lot useful info of the game, like cpu usage, frame rate...

Id say that there's really only one rule. Testing, Testing and more Testing.

No problem.. I actually purchased Spriter just today. I recommend you to watch the tutorials Brashmonkey people have made. It's really capable program and integrates nicely to C2.

To stretch image, just modify image width and height parameters on the fly. I have seen some nice tutorials on implementing this with C2, no link to offer at the moment. Sorry.

I don't think Skewing is possible without some effects or 3rd party plugin.