ppstudiomty's Forum Posts

  • great idea not gonna lie

    Working on it! :)

  • Thanks! I actually took all what I would like to have in a UI. I'm also looking for feedback on what components and features people look for more often in a UI, so feel free to leave your thoughts.

  • Some videos of the current state of the addons:

    Push Buttons

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    Radio Buttons

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    Dialogs

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  • mOOnpunk thanks for the report. I updated the blog post. I will also upload some videos of the functionality that's available already. :)

  • Smart UI is a framework and a set of addons developed with the purpose to simplify the UI design and build in the game engine Construct 3. The framework is still in development but has already reach a stage where the addons and the design components are fully usable to create functional UI's.

    The framework came from the need of upgrading the existing tools and addons from Construct's SDK v1 which has evolved into the SDK v2, introducing breaking changes and forbidding backwards compatibility for the tools developed by the community. Therefore, I decided to develop my own framework, highly integrated with the current SDK and aiming to live for long to keep my game projects running for several years. Compatibility with the SDK v2 is a major challenge, considering that the current state of the SDK is still in development, but with a stable version already rolled out.

    As part of this project, I've been reporting multiple bugs that Scirra, who has been resolving them swiftly, allowing me to move on and complete the milestones I've set for these addons, while helping the Construct 3 community to have a more stable SDK in the process.

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    If you have questions or suggestion, feel free to drop a message or leave your comment. I'd like to know how many devs would be interested in these addons.

    Read the full article here: pixelperfectstudio.mx/2024/08/15/smart-ui-is-a-framework-and-a-set-of-addons-developed-with-the-purpose-to-simplify-the-ui-design-and-build-in-the-game-engine-construct-3

  • Initialising ProUI stops the game (maybe crashes?) since the new C3 version!

    Today, the latest stable version came out: construct.net/en/animation-software/releases/stable/r397

    When I worked on my game, I noticed that something went wrong, the main menu's code was not executed as it was before although I did not touch it. I quickly found out that the ProUI Initialise function is the problem. When I deactivate it, the rest of the code is executed. When its active, it gets stuck there and is not going to the next line of code.

    The same project runs fine in the last stable build: construct.net/en/make-games/releases/stable/r388-2

    so something must have gone wrong in the communication of this plugin and the latest stable build.

    You must stay on r388.2 to be able to use ProUI, it's part of what scirra decided to break with the new SDK v2.

    > if your worry is that you want to keep opening your projects in r388, you will still be able to do that

    And this is what most 'big' developers will do - stay on r388 forever.

    I'm saying forever, but in fact it won't be a long term solution. This means no official support, no bug fixes, no new features. If WebView2 becomes available on Mac and Linux - we won't get it. A new version of NWJS is released (which requires updated Steam plugin) - we won't get it. Scirra adds Switch export (haha, I know) - we won't get it. Google or Apple introduce some breaking change - we won't be able to export for mobile. And so on and so on.

    Exactly! Yet people is still thinking that r388 LTS is the solution. Ashley already stated LTS won't have support forever... eventually, our long term projects that uses undocumented features won't open. With his latest reactions, what's the real guarantee that he won't change his mind later on. This whole SDK v2 thing came from a simple question to access engine internals 2 months ago, which suprinsingly rushed Ashley to launch v2.

    The real solution will be to allow SDK v1 to coexist indefinitely, at the same time rolling out v2, or creating Construct 4 with all the new architecture for further projects, instead of thrashing the existing ones.

    No one has ever said anything about older versions ever becoming unaccessible.

    I'd better have Ashley to clarify that, it must be an official pronunciation from Scirra, not from the community devs trying to make conclusions. We must have a guarantee that it will work permanently at r388, and that all our old projects will be able to access the internal features to freeze any updates to the lates c3 stable on our side when this goes live.

    Here's some quotes of the milestones:

    Milestone 4: Construct will remove support for SDK v1 addons. The addons will no longer be loaded in the editor, and projects using them will fail to open and report that the addons are not supported and need updating. This will be at least 6 months after milestone 3 (and so at least 12 months after milestone 2).

    Construct will ultimately drop support for the Addon SDK v1, so addon developers should consider starting updating their plugins and behaviors to use the Addon SDK v2.

    skymen None of the quotes above indicate that what I state won't happen.

    Ashley's comments about LTS.

    It's infeasible to keep supporting one version forever. Eventually we will have to stop supporting it. As far as I'm aware nobody else in the industry supports LTS versions forever - everyone has some schedule of eventually retiring old LTS versions and introducing new LTS versions, sometimes with overlap between them. The question is what schedule is being proposed here

    Ashley please clarify.

    What about all the private addons that were made for ambitious productions ?

    This is exactly what Ashley doesn't seem to understand. Theres already games live that had used a private addon to surpass a C3 limitation, those projects may have an income committed, and Scirra is killing them abruptly. I'm sure any addon used by those projects will be kept up to date and won't break "customer's projects", which is the main reason Ashley is giving to deprecatr sdk v1. I have several private addons too that I use in my live games, those games have revenue, killing the sdk v1 will be a catastrophic action because of the simple fact that I can't go to the an older version of construct because sdk v1 will be totally retired. Those projects are expected to live for several years ahead. Using older versions with permanent backwards compatibility is the industry standard, which construct won't provide.

    Ashley you are going against what the industry is doing. Look at Unity Hub, I can still access older versions of the engine and keep my games running. Scirra is deciding to unsupport that compatibility? Even when addons like funky quads, which used unsupported features, paved the way for you to introduce 3d capabilities. Scirra is forcing devs to invest time and money on a tool whose reliability and support to the community is in question because of decisions like this. Even when these addons leveraged the popularity of the engine and Scirra got the benefits of it. It feels like a shot in the back. The good will of the community to expand the engine and help your company is being directly aggravated by this.

    Ashley

    You say this like plugins don't break every now and then, every few updates. The only difference now is that 1) it's impossible to support existing, essential, and commonly used plugins; 2) the cons outweigh the pros; and 3) the reason is ironic; it creates the problem it attempts to prevent.

    He doesn't seem to understand the magnitude of the problem he's creating. I also have projects for the last 5 years that may become unusable at all, some of them use your valuable plugins from the construct collection. I'll be more than happy to make a strong pushback on this decision, it has so many downfalls, I see no benefit for us except for Ashley's intention.

    Ashley, construct advertises that it releases +60k projects monthly. Have you ever stop to think about the magnitud of the problem this is creating?

    Do you think caring about our community means allowing customer projects to continue to get ruined over the next few years, and possibly risking some huge disaster, when we know we can take action to prevent that?

    You are forgetting the fact that WE are customers, advanced customers, and probably we are the serious ones making money out of construct. You really have no idea of how many projects will break up permanently, this decision won't help us, the CUSTOMERS. I don't see Scirra considering allowing the v1 of the SDK to live forever, why removing it? Improving it is perfectly fine, but removing it?!?! I'm affraid this decision will cause more problems than benefits, even for those addons that didn't hack the SDK. And I'm pretty sure you are not fixing your customers projects, we have done it in a daily basis every time construct breaks. I had had to workaround Construct 3 bugs so many times, much more commonly than by using a 3rd party plugin. My in-house plugins had never broken a project on every c3 release, but the c3 release itself had, even delaying my delivery schedule for months several times because it broke existing functionalities that are c3 features, or because your priorities don't align with the bug fixing. Yeah I've lost money because of this. I perfectly know what I'm talking about, already been in the software industry for over 20 years. Do not neglect that v1 sdk must be kept alive. Investing time and money in the projects and accelerators I've developed for the past 5 years is a huge project. It will only push me to evaluate alternatives where the accelerators and features already exist, where I don't have to develop them again just because sdk v1 will be removed. Some of my addons took me over a year to be properly developed, of course all of that is not public, you are missing that important part: what you don't see in the forums/community.

    I just realized of the amount of projects I have that uses Aekiro's ProUI... it's just a ton of work what's coming ahead... terrible decision! I don't think even 1 year will be enough to port and test everything...

    Not to mention Chadori's work... there's a huge base of users for his addons.

    I'm really upset with this decision, which only confirms scirra doesn't care about their community and the way they had helped many other devs with their addons. This kind of decisions had affected me in the past with lots of additional work to maitain my projects, upgrading them to simply be able to run well again. I have tons of addons that enhances construct capabilities just because Construct is not robust enough, I was thinking on puting them on sale, for sure I won't. To be honest, it feels like retaliation from Ashley to force his will, not that we can stop him. I'm just really upset... let's see how things break and how my profit will be impacted, then I'll evaluate if I should continue here or move on to a more stable company/engine... I'm not a hobbist, I make games seriously, so I'm sure that 90% of their user base won't even care because they are students, hobbits, or simply just playing around to be gamedevs.

  • This whole thread is more like a battle with Scirra team to convince them to support the community around, but they look reluctant to hear us out. Construct wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't because of many 3rd party addons that made it easier to use, and stroger to compete with other engines, considering the fact that Scirra team is always "busy". The community is developing functionality that Scirra is not willing to implement, we all are basically helping the company be more succesful, but I'm very surprised by the position of "it will be your problem if something breaks", instead of aiming to provide more robust tools/apis/documentation to create better addons, which has proven to leverage other engines in the market, were even some 3rd party addons ended up being part of the core of those engines (like unity).

    To be honest, Construct SDK is weak and poorly documented, we wouldn't be able to create more complex games if it wasn't for the fact that we dig into the core of the engine to create our custom solutions. If Scirra ever decides to obfuscate the whole thing, we would expect the SDK to be way more robust and offer more functionalities than now, otherwise I can say that many of us would definitely drop the engine at some point. You guys need the community's work.

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  • Ashley I've always tried to create more complex plugins, but the SDK as many had mentioned, is too basic. If we'd like to incorporate our plugins through the "official way", I'd suggest you guys invest some time in documenting better the SDK and extending the features we need to use. For instance, if I'd like to create a specific plugin to follow bezier curves paths, I can't implement the "handles" because there's nothing documented on how to properly extend the editor, and not only this. We can't integrate our plugins with the custom tweening API you have because those features are not documented either. So please, consider investing some time to enhance the SDK in general, many other engines have a robust documentation allowing devs to create those features not available.