I am a science teacher by trade. My primary job is to teach science at a large public high school. About five years ago, my school district embraced the "1:1" concept, providing iPads to every student in the district. I got my hands on an iPad as soon as I could and started developing what I thought was going to be the "be all-end all" iPad physics app in Objective C. It launched and was successful. Apple flew me out to California and gave me a full-page spread on Apple's education website. The app was featured on all of the in-store iPads around the world.

It was great to have the recognition, but there was one fundamental problem: I couldn't iterate fast enough. From concept to release, it took 9 months and 1100 man-hours. Each update took several weeks of work, followed by at least a week of review by Apple. A week is an eternity in the classroom, and after three weeks, students have long forgotten what they struggled with a few weeks back. If I had an idea on a Tuesday at 3:30 pm, I needed a way to create interactive content and push it out to my students by Wednesday morning at 7:30 am.

My colleagues and I looked around for a long time for a way to do this. Initially we tried GameSalad, but found that it was too limiting, and the iPad app was too clunky to be used with students. When we found Construct 2, we were thrilled. We had it all in a single package:

• an easy-to-use interface so that all of the teachers could quickly learn how to make something useful

• native HTML5 development so that we could simply provide a link to our students, rather than going through a funky export process to deploy to something other than a ubiquitous web browser

• lightning-fast development time so that we could realize an idea for our students in a night, then improve upon it over the next few weeks to create something that was publishable for the world at large

Over the years, we have made simulations and tools that have been used by millions of students around the world. We don't really care about the money, just as long as we make enough to keep our websites going.

Construct 3 is a bargain if it allows us to continue to support development of the tool that has enabled us to be so creative for so many years. I haven't found anything else that comes close, and $150/year is a pittance to pay compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars textbooks publishers are paid every year by major school districts.

My own request, to make myself an early adopter, is to have this feature on launch so that I can start working on a full 3D viewport right off the bat...

A full 3D viewport is #1 on my list of priorities for C3 as well. A lot of the simulations I

make in C2 benefit a great deal from 3D visualization using the Q3D plugin. The sooner I can switch everything over to C3 from C2, the more productive I will be.

I mean, can anyone name any big HTML5 games that make this profitable?

C2 has been a great hobbyist tool for me. With it I do contract work that has paid for over 100 years' worth of C3 license fees.

Making money selling games is very difficult, but for me, at least, contract work provides a much more steady income. This contract work would not have been possible without C2.

tunepunk, I took the liberty of shifting your question from a different thread over to here, where it makes more sense.

[quote:60t88i9p]@tunepunk

Good job. I bought Q3D as well to try out, but the lack of documentation, and tutorials made me give up, especially since editing levels and such was really painful in the Construct 2 environment. How did you overcome that?

I started the project thinking that I would make a simulator for our school's robotics team for its "Robot Rumble" competition. After playing around with Q3D and the AirConsole plugin for about a week, I realized that by working with students, we would have enough manpower to create an actual game.

Initially, I used a a combination of brute force (looking at all the examples and trying things), but then I asked for help from QuaziGNRLnose, who was awesome and super-knowledgeable. I wasn't trying to make a first person shooter (they aren't a good fit for smartphones anyway). Instead, we were making a "BattleBots"-style game where you don't need a lot of buttons or analog sticks. This meant that we could use a simplified version of the "Tiny Tanks" demo mechanics. We didn't even need a suspension system for the robots, just a box with four wheels. From there, it was just a matter of building out a simple platform and weapon.

All in all, it involved a lot of trial and error and learning, but I did the event sheets myself in my spare time (approximately 2 hours/day = 100 hours total) and had a working version of the game in 2 months.

The new documentation is technically incomplete (it doesn't cover physics), but is still extremely helpful. I wish it had been available when I started back in October, but I have learned a ton from it even after finishing the game. I knew nothing about 3D games at the start of the project, and I'm now confident that I could make pretty much anything I want in Construct 2.

Psychokiller1888,

Thanks for the comment!

Do you guys have a launch date? I totally want to host a C2-only AirConsole party.

tunepunk,

If my intention was to make 3D games, I wouldn't even look at C2. C2 allows me to do 2D games without coding.

We just published a 3D game using C2 + Q3D. We used C2 because we knew that it would have taken twice as long for us to create the same product in Unity. Once built in Unity, the project would have needed to be converted from C# to HTML5, with all of the associated bloat and inefficiency that the process would create. Because we worked in C2, we had significantly more time to polish our game.

In my mind, the greatest strengths of C2 are the speed of development and the fact that it is built from the ground up to create HTML5. If I were targeting consoles I might have a different attitude, but HTML5 allows us to create and publish the same product in weeks instead of months, and to better reach our target audience. If C3 allows us to keep doing this for years to come, then I'm happy to support Scirra's efforts.

Our entry was "Robot Rumble", and is available to play now in the "Arcade" and "Party Games" section:

DIRECT PLAY LINK

http://www.airconsole.com/#!play=com.nerdislandstudios.robotrumble

YOUTUBE TRAILER

https://youtu.be/bry1hOjbb3E

Psychokiller1888 and Anonnymitet,

Congratulations! That is fantastic news! I'm looking forward to playing both games as soon as they are released!

X3M

We used the ads API. Since the game was made by students with no ability to buy stuff online, hero-exclusive would have precluded them from being able to play it.

amariscal,

I totally agree! After working with the AirConsole team for the past four months, I've been really happy with how supportive they are.

I feel like Construct 2 and AirConsole are a natural fit, as AirConsole games must be written in HTML5. AirConsole has done a really good job of reducing latency for action games (on WebRTC-capable devices I'm seeing latencies of < 10 ms), and I'm looking forward to seeing how far people can push the technology.

Robot Rumble has officially launched on AirConsole! It is currently featured in the Arcade/Party Games section:

http://www.airconsole.com/#!play=com.nerdislandstudios.robotrumble

I'm a teacher by trade, and I've never had a problem with students going over the 100-event limit in the free version of Construct 2. 100 events is definitely enough to make something fun and playable In the limited amount of time we spend using the software (approximately 1 week of class time).

The big draw of using Construct 2 is that I can tell my kids that they can go home and fiddle around with it for free as much as the like. If they ever want to do a larger project, they have to pay. Unlimited events is pretty much a useless feature for most of my students, and paying to spend a few hours tinkering is an absolute no-go for them. In the end, I can get kids interested precisely because there is no looming payment hanging over their (read: their parents') head. I can only imagine the angry phone calls I would get if I told parents that they have to pay to do an activity in my class...