I'm assuming its also one of the reasons Rex left.

I don't want to get too off-topic, but what reason do you mean? Did he ever actually say why he doesn't want to port any more C2 plugins?

I'll admit that whilst I can see the need for fledgling devs to see how the sausage is made, I'm with newt in hoping that the new runtime more closely marries the SDK to the event sheet system - it's one of the few ways I can see modular events being possible.

I agree, yeah - I would love for my list of gripes to be rendered moot as a result of event sheet-based plugins or something similar. I can't think of anything I've tried to do with a custom behavior that couldn't be done with event sheets, but event sheet logic+families is a pain to port from project to project, and if you make updates in one project you have to manually revise the other(s) too, etc. I have absolutely no real desire to look under the hood (er, bonnet) of C3 - I would much rather stick to event sheet-style logic for everything.

I'm sure this is frustrating for you at Scirra who have already put a tremendous amount of work into the docs, the editor, the runtime, and the website and often seem to be greeted with complaints (valid and otherwise) for your trouble. So thank you for all your efforts and the fantastic tools. Now it's time for some complaining!

I noticed on the original thread on the Addon Exchange announcement you are requesting suggestions for specific things that are missing. I can't dispute that what's there is enough for a seasoned javascript developer, but like the vast majority of Construct users I'm not one of those. So here are some things I think would help beginners, or things I looked for and couldn't find. This isn't meant to be exhaustive. Just some things that tripped me up as I was learning.

• I was unable to find anything in the docs on how to spawn objects at runtime (a search for "createinstance" takes me to the Theme Addon page for some reason). In fact it seems there really isn't much mention of the runtime API in these C3 SDK docs at all. I may have overlooked something really embarrassingly obvious, but it seems the only resource for finding such things is old C2 plugin source code and user forum posts. If that's correct, then this must be the single biggest missing category of information in these docs. I would love to be wrong about this! Bring on the humiliation.
• A suggested javascript/html curriculum for those who aren't already skilled in it would be helpful. Javascript is a pretty huge topic that could be overwhelming for beginners scouring the web for tutorials, books and classes. A summary of the js/html5 knowledge required to effectively write plugins for Construct would be useful, and direct links to relevant resources would be great as well. Obviously you can't be responsible for teaching your user base all this stuff, but the more you can push us in the right direction, the less you'll have to deal with threads like this one. That will free you up to deal with threads endlessly moaning about your business model.
• Inside the template, one instance I kept getting confused about the difference between a behavior's name and id, because the name is "My custom behavior" and the id is... "MyCustomBehavior". In the docs you say of the id, [quote:1nttuteg]"To ensure it is unique, it is recommended to use a vendor-addon format, e.g. mycompany-superaddon." You should definitely be sticking to such recommendations in the template.
• Similarly, the description for "name" in the docs could be elaborated on a little (this goes for quite a few entries, I'd guess). It currently describes the name as "The name of the addon, in English." That's clear enough, but some mention of where this name is actually used by the addon would be helpful to further differentiate it from the id. It might seem obvious, but to someone trying to figure out 100 different bits of syntax at once it might not be.
• BEHAVIOR_CATEGORY is another example of slightly insufficient description. Regarding the categories themselves it says, [quote:1nttuteg]"This must be one of "attributes", "general", "movements", "other"." But beyond that there is nothing - it's left to the user to try to reason out what the difference between "general" and "other" is. "Movements" is the only category name that's 100% idiot-proof imo. Not a big problem, but yet one more small unnecessary one. I'll stop with listing these, but I hope you see my point - I'd rather you err on the side of providing too much information in the descriptions to minimize the amount of trial and error and head scratching I have to do.
• Finally, some more examples (particularly with regards to runtime API calls) and even full tutorials on building some simple plugins from scratch would be very helpful. I realize such things are time-consuming to make and the runtime is in flux, but the more you can do along those lines the better.

Thanks.

I won't argue to allow everyone free access to the source code for plugins, but as a user who's written a number of simple plugins for my own use I can say that having access to the existing ones was the only way I was able to fully understand what was going on. Yes, I rtfm, but there are almost no examples in there for basic functionality.

Compare this with Unity, for which there are almost too many resources available on how to write components, etc. There's still a steep-ish learning curve (at least if you want to program things properly), and it's an apples and oranges comparison on some level, because in Unity you really have no choice but to program components if you want to do anything, and Construct's event system eliminates the need for such things. But it's impossible not to make this comparison when you're struggling with sparse documentation.

The template is a good start, but it doesn't really DO anything, so it's tough for those of us who aren't very experienced with js to extrapolate how to get more complicated functionality going. If one searches long enough it's possible to find examples scattered throughout various forums, but this is hit and miss, and often the people who're good at coding 3rd party plugins are perhaps not the best at explaining things to idiots like myself. So yes please, more include more examples and more elaboration in the official docs. Some well-written tutorials on how to write plugins for absolute beginners would be welcome, too. There is almost nothing available now.

> I don't think this is the place, but I dislike and am not interested in C3 because of the choice to make it only work in the browser instead of stand alone desktop application. Is that how it will remain or is there any plan to make a desktop version?

>

i dont understand the hangups with the browser app.

I fully admit i was a bit skeptical at first and yes there are still a few bugs / issues to iron out and im still a bit uncomfortable with the saving methods....but....

.... overall, it works real nice, and compared to C2 , it looks better, feels better, scales better from screen to screen, is more responsive, quicker to load, ui is cleaner, you can go full screen and have events sheet really top to bottom of screen, ........it works offline , will always be up to date on line, i can access it from pretty much any reasonably modern device from anywhere in the world ..... it also seamlessly transfers to a mobile touch interface to work beautifully on my android mobile phone wtf !!!!.....

all of a sudden, downloading and installing an exe onto a windows OS feels archaic

+1 to all this. C3 is a blast to use and I can't imagine going back to C2 at this point.

I was pretty annoyed when I first read C3 would be browser-based, because I'd had bad experiences with browser apps in the past. But having used the full beta version of C3 for the better part of a year I really like it. Not having to install anything is nice, and if you're using Chrome you can easily create a desktop shortcut so C3 runs in its own window, which does away with all the "browsery" stuff like toolbars and the browser menus. In terms of look and feel it's then behaving just like a standalone app. The only severe problem I've had with it is if a website script crashes Chrome, it'll take down C3 with it, but this happened exactly once in the entire time I've been using it.

As has been mentioned they are eventually planning a desktop version which hopefully makes people drop this concern, but at this point I'm not sure if I'd even bother with it. I'd suggest just trying the free version, and setting it to launch from your desktop. After you open C3 in Chrome, click the line of vertical dots in the upper-right corner (Customize and control Google Chrome), choose "More tools", then "Add to desktop", and leave "Open as window" checked. Launch that sucker from your desktop and see what you think!

Hi all,

Disabled events stand out visually and make it harder to read event sheets. So, I made a very simple theme that turns disabled text in event sheets light grey. It keeps the strike-through, and is otherwise the same as the default theme (AKA "no theme").

Download the addon file here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yh06bi61r0hbx5a/crc-lighter-disabled-events.c3addon?dl=0.

If this link ever breaks, the entire theme defined in the .css file is this:

/* Set commented-out events to a light grey. */
*[disabledevent]{
	text-decoration: line-through;
	color: #BFCCE0;
}[/code:2cmoeqhf]

Please PM me if there are any problems downloading, etc.

I'd like to be able to make the icons in disabled events look more faded too (the system "gear", etc.), but my CSS knowledge is pretty nonexistent, so if anyone knows a way to adjust them please let me know and I'll add that to this theme too.

I'm not planning to do versions of this for the light and dark themes, but perhaps the fine folks at Scirra would incorporate this type of styling into the official themes if enough people request it.

Enjoy!

Look in the browser console for the error message.

It would be something so incredibly obvious. Thank you.

That's ctrl+shift+j in Chrome, in case anyone's wondering.

Construct fails to start when I install my addon, which probably means I forgot to cross a t somewhere, but I have no idea where. Does anyone have any tips for figuring out where an addon is failing when Construct launches?

I've seen similar error messages before this version of C3, then the project just won't open anymore. I even extracted my C3P to look at the folders/json and everything looked intact at a glance. I had assumed this was just me breaking something with some 3rd party plugins I'd been trying out, but I saw a couple other people in this forum report similar issues. For example, the litetween thread in the C2 section has a report from someone whose C3 project won't open now - same thing. Previously-working project failing to load with a "<whatever> is not a function" error message.

As for this version of C3, I haven't tried Dropbox, but I've been having no luck getting OneDrive to open through the Cloud file open dialog. I get a Microsoft page saying there are problems with the service and to try back later, but I'm able to access my files just fine by browsing to them with the OneDrive web interface outside of C3. I have the previous version of C3 still installed on another machine, thankfully, and it is opening those files just fine.

Sure would be nice if there was some easy way to roll back C3 to a previous version, but I'm not aware of any.

Hi, I have a situation where I'm using physics to move things around, but I'd like to be able to react to collisions before the physics system does. So for example, Ball object strikes Wall object. If Ball.Speed > 100, destroy Wall, and Ball keeps going in the same direction, otherwise let the physics do its thing.

It seems that by the time you get the collision event from the physics system, it has also handled the collision itself and changed the velocities of the impacted objects. That makes sense, just wondering if anyone can think of a way around this. Thanks!

Hi, I've been successfully using a desktop link for C3 for awhile now, but recently on my laptop this just stopped working. When I double-click the link it opens Chrome, but doesn't run the C3 app. I think it's probably something specific to this computer since the link still works fine on my desktop machine, so I'm wondering if anyone else here has run into this problem and if so, did you find a solution? Thanks!

Congratulations on completing your game! Your core mechanic was pretty hilarious.

I'm with you - C3 is a great product. I was a bit let down at first that there weren't more flashy features announced for C3, but after working on my game over the last few weeks I've realized that all the smaller enhancements in C3 add up to a big increase in productivity (even taking into account the time spent writing up bug reports ). I'm looking forward to C3 stabilizing enough for Scirra to push ahead with some of the bigger features, but it in the meantime it's already a fantastic tool that I am happy to pay for.