megatronx and at —
I get the reset factor sucks-- it just sucks-- it's like learning to drive a four wheel car in a world that has converted to self driving cars. I've studied art to make webcomics and focusing on making games was a hard decision as it was a complete refocus for my life. Luckily those art skills help in making game art or I would feel the last 20 years weren't worth it
I tried hard coding games in 2003 but debugging lines of code in C++ and Visual Basic for hours just ate me alive inside. Gamemaker for me was too complicated. I tried it in 2010 and flat gave up on game design again because of it. Unity also seemed pretty code reliant and not code light as C2 is.
What I like about C2 is it helps me find my errors faster, and god willing, most times I get help from the community here or on Google Plus when I'm stuck, but yes I want to be better and faster at prototype to final product for things like Ludam Dare. This may take another year at the rate I'm going.
I had to take a break from C2 for a year and am trying to catch up as people I know have been making both games and are close if not over the $5,000 dollar mark of money made from their games.
I'm investing time with C2 and am looking forward to C3. However, at times, I wish this was like a Blender project, because I fear a Adobe scenario again with what happened with Macromedia where the software becomes so big and popular, a competitor buys it, raises it's price and basically changes not only the price but a bunch of other stuff. I really miss "Free-hand" :/.
In any case, there are tones of game engines to make games for free like the unreal engine, it just seems easier with C2.