Since a c3p project file is composed of mostly text files, established tools like Git can also merge multiple changes into one project file. Does your tool differ in anyway from how Git would do it?

It's not quite the same thing really.

Git is awesome for versioning a project and it does a awesome job doing what it is meant to do.

C3PM is designed to work merging diferent projects. I'm sure if you try to commit projectA into a repository with projectB git will go babanas and you'll have tons of merge conflicts.

-- Edit

Thanks for asking btw, I edited the post tittle to make it clearer.

Construct 3 Project Merger

So, I've created a tool called Construct 3 Project Merger (C3PM) that merges merges two construct 3 projects into one. Why is that useful?

• Easier and faster to use than manually copying events/objects/layouts/etc from a project to another
• Enables you to create your systems with a modular approach (create your systems in separated projects and latter merge them into your games)
• Easy way to share resources with the community

Download and full documentation here

Windows build available only FOR NOW. I'm actually looking for help amongst the community members to be able to build for linux and mac too. If you are a linux or macOS user, have some experience with python and is willing to help with builds for those OS please contact me(through this post or C3PM discord server)!

If you want to engane in more in depth discussion about it, join our discord server: discord.com/invite/SK8agN7

C3PM is a free and open source tool.

Code source: github.com/cb130felix/C3PM

I also have some templates that I think are good samples on how you can use the 'template projects + C3PM' combo to make your game modular. I made some of them free so the community can check them out and use as reference: itch.io/c/887402/construct-3-project-templates

Disclaimers

• C3PM essentially edits the source code of the resulting merged projects(not the original ones). Be carefull while using it and be aware of possible outputed corrupted projects. Be sure to never overwrite your own source projects to ensure they won't be corrupted.
• C3PM is a Construct 3 related third party tool. This means that Scirra (Construct 3 developers) have NOTHING to do with this project. If you have some problem related to C3PM, reach for help on the official discord server, don't bother scirra staff with C3PM issues.

So, me and other users have been discussing about construct popularity on the the construct community discord server. The study of use increase or decrease of a game engine is a complex topic and there are a lot of factors that surround it and I do not claim to be a expert on the area.

That said, some users there ended up agreeing on a specific point that may be holding back construct as a more popular engine, construct 3 free version limitations.

Why is that?

With so many choices for game engines - and with a lot of them even having the option to code things using visual scripting - I myself, a c2 and c3 user for more than 5 years, find that it's hard to convince new devs to try using c3 free version due to their limitations. To be honest it's hard to even convince myself to convince new people to try the engine with limitations like:

• - 25 maximum events
• - 2 maximum layers
• - special effects
• - use of families disabled

I honestly think those limitations makes it hard to make a small project or even to start to getting to know the engine a litle better. As for now what I can see is a lot of users trying the engine and giving it up too soon because they strugle to create simple games with it.

Also, This sentiment of not feeling confortable enough to recomend construct 3 for new devs seems to also be shared by others users.

I understand that the free limited version exists for a reason and that scirra, like any other companny, needs to make construct a profitable project to be able to maintaim it. That said, I think that decreasing the limitations of construct 3 free version may be a nice way to help increase the engine popularity (thus consequently making construct 3 a more profitable software).

Those are my personal opnions on what would be a great update on construct 3 free version limitations:

• - Increase the number of events to at least 500 (or maybe even 1000?) - I believe most dev would soon reach this free limit and would need to purchase a license as soon as it get serious on a project meanwhile these are enough events for new users to confortabily experience and get used to the engine.
• - Increase the number of layers to 5 - Same reason as for the increase of the events
• - Unlimited use of effects for the free edition - I see no reason to limit the use of effects given the others already existent limits
• - Enable access to families - Families is such a great feature and I think limiting the access to it might end up creating bad pratices on users using free edition that'll latter upgrade to a paid license, since they might get used to not use it in scenarios that would be better to.

That all said, I was wondering and hopping if Scirra staff would be willing to take feedback from me and other users about this matter and if a update on the construct 3 free edition limitations would be possible.

Thanks!

P.S.: I think it's worth saying that I'm already subscribed to construct 3 and I do not plan to ever go back to c3 free edition, so the only reason I'm creating this post is because I want construct user base and community to grow.

What I mean is that you do not set a specific object, like "Sprite2 on touched" but rather "this on touched" (kinda like in js). If you do it with Sprite2, copying between projects gets annoying. You can´t just copypaste because Sprite2 doesn´t exist, so you create it and then you wanna replace the object with a different one (say a Tiled background) and you can´t use the build-in replace object because it doesn´t allow replacing different types. So you might aswell recreate it from scratch anyway.

By referencing the object as "this" it would be a generalized event that can be copypasted between projects and reused for different objects without much hassle. And as mentioned, it would be another step in the "plugin via events" direction.

This! You explained it in a very clear way, thank you!

I think that a lot of what is in c3 can be redesigned to implement this idea. For example if we can make families that have a eventsheet attached to it and then restrain this event sheet to refer only to the family object attached to it. This way we would be able to copy event sheets with "behavior like" logic more easily between projects.

Then, extending the idea we would only need a "family importer and exporter" that would be able to import/export a family and the eventsheet attached to it as a, let's say, ".family" file type inside c3 editor.

Then people woud be able to import families created by the community to their project and then they would need only to assign their project objects to the families imported to give then some behavior like funcionality.

This way the community would be able to create "sharable" families with behavior logic similar to behaviors like platform, sine, 8 direction, tiled-moviment, etc...

And that's it, we pretty much achieved behaviors with events in construct that can be done and shared more easily by the community.

Please Ashley make this happen!

True, but that shouldn't be that bad? I mean you copypaste/create all objects you need and then copypaste all events and maybe do some cleanup. Or am I missing something? I mean it probably doesn´t work for all cases so yeah...

Copy and paste objects wont work if you use families for example, and I think families is a must have for any big projects. If you want to copy paste any code referencing a family you need to recreate that family with the same name and create each of it instance variables + add all the behaviors used by it manually. It's kinda of pain.

edit --

Now imagine the possibilities you can achieve with exporting and importing families. Peoplo could create new behavrios to sprites like other moviment behavriors, transforming the sprite into a HP bar, having the sprite as a controller for a menu (menu logic), etc...

And the only thing you would need to do is import a family created by some fellow c3 user to your project and add a sprite into this family.

I think something like that would be next level for c3, it's pretty much adding ability to create behaviors but with events.

I really think using families is the way to go for this feature.

That is a really severe restriction. It may even make the feature too restricted to be useful.

I don't think so tbh. Most behavior (if not all of them?) looks like they work only referencing it's own internal properties/variables and the object it's attached to (like the sprites properties) wich you would also be able to acess while referencing the family.

I think it's only a question of designing the project with a modular approach.

It's already possible to manually copy pieces of my system from one project to another, but this is pretty tedious and involves a fair amount of work for each feature I want to rebuild - I still need to create all the objects/families, variables, etc.

This. I use families as "pseudo behaviors" in my construct projects but I still have to implement them all over again whenever I start a new project.

Maybe if each family had a eventsheet attached to it, like this:

Of course the attached event sheet should have some restrictions, like referencing only the family object (no other objects) and not including other event sheets.

Then if we could export this family and then reimport it (alongside the attached event sheet) in another projects you would only need to include new objects in your families and it would work very similar to behaviors, but using events.

I guess even the community could gather to work on a project like that, I think the idea sounds possible even as a third party program.