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Show HN: Construct 3 – Make games in the browser

122 points by AshleysBrain 10y ago

Kiro 10y ago
I've been following Construct since the early days and it's amazing what a great following it has mustered. I keep seeing cool games made with Construct being posted in various indie game groups on Facebook. I initially disregarded it as a toy project you couldn't use to build real games but I was proven wrong.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Thanks for the comment! We're adjusting our language around promoting Construct 3 compared to Construct 2, we think we undersold it previously and it's been stuck with the "toy" feel. We're hoping to shed that moving forwards.
tgb 10y ago
I get a 404 on this.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Fixing this now! Sorry! Edit: Now fixed
throwaway2016a 10y ago
The link is a 404 Error. For what it's worth though. I went to the homepage and it does seem like a really nice product that a lot of effort was put into. When I saw game maker I didn't expect to be as impressed but it seems far better than the other web based game makers I've seen. Although it requires the absolute latest Chrome (I was half a version back) which is interesting. I wonder what is in Chrome 57 that is required and not in Chrome 56.
- AshleysBrain 10y ago
  CSS grid was the main reason: it's new in Chrome 57 and we use it heavily! Sorry about the 404, shouldn't happen to everyone but we're working on it...
  - throwaway2016a 10y ago
    Do the games made with it need Chrome 57 or just the builder?
    - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
      Just the Construct 3 editor itself. The games can run as far back as IE9 (but without WebGL). All modern browsers out the box will be able to run Construct made games.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  404 now fixed, sorry!
AshleysBrain 10y ago
Sorry folks, we only launched yesterday, if you happen to see a 404 message please just visit: https://www.construct.net https://www.construct.net
DigitalSea 10y ago
I've been an avid Construct 2 user for a long time now and I am really impressed with Construct 3 thus far (in its limited form). The performance is fantastic, literally feels like a desktop application running in the browser. I couldn't see use of any framework or library, is this all custom? What platforms will Construct 3 support exporting to, plans for supporting the Nintendo Switch? Really nice work, this must have taken a long time to build.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  > The performance is fantastic, literally feels like a desktop application running in the browser. We are so relieved to hear this, after 3 years work this was always front and centre of our goals. > I couldn't see use of any framework or library, is this all custom? Yes, all custom built > What platforms will Construct 3 support exporting to Exports HTML5 games, which can be wrapped in various ways to run on Win/Linux/Apple desktops, iOS, Android, Steam, FB etc etc. List goes on! > plans for supporting the Nintendo Switch? Would love to, but we know as much as anyone else about the Switch at this stage. If anyone from Nintendo reads this please reach out!
  - contentkraft 10y ago
    Try to get in touch with Damon Baker (@DWBakes). He deals with Indies but should also be able to refer you to the right people.
_pmf_ 10y ago
I've only tried Construct 2 for a short time, but the output for the HTML target was running amazingly smooth, and the tooling was very, very nice.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Thank you really appreciate the compliment. We hope we've managed to bring what we've learnt from outputting HTML5 games into the editor itself.
toddnni 10y ago
Very interesting. Any information about upcoming pricing?
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Full current details here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/construct-3-pricing_t187766 https://www.scirra.com/forum/construct-3-pricing_t187766 For most users, it will be $99 USD p/y. Businesses/educational institutes will have different pricing.
defenestration 10y ago
It's like Scratch on steroids. I'm making games together with my son in Scratch. Will give this a try when he's ready to try something more complex. Btw. the performance of the app is great for a web-app. What were your main challenges to get this performance?
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Thanks, and I'm happy you'll consider it to use with your son. Performance wise, I'll let Ash talk more about that as he's the one who's been obsessively making sure it loads and runs as good as possible.
  - AshleysBrain 10y ago
    Layout performance is the biggest problem probably - when things change the browser too often does a full layout of the document. We use tons of CSS containment but there are still bugs where Chrome does far more layout than necessary, e.g.: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=667370 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=667370 Virtual DOM is completely unnecessary to us. We have minimal problems with DOM calls. It is all to do with layout performance, and VDOM makes no difference at all there.
- tylermenezes 10y ago
  We run events for total beginner programmers and have actually found Construct to be much easier for beginners than Scratch. Scratch requires a lot more up-front knowledge to make a simple game, e.g. students need to learn control flow, event loops, etc. Construct, being event-based (and especially with the built-in behaviors) lets us get beginners started in about 40 minutes, while still being complex enough that they understand variables, instances, properties, etc within a few hours.
diggan 10y ago
> Currently the latest version of Chrome is the only browser that supports the advanced and exciting features we've built into Construct 3. We hope to add support for other browsers once they catch up with us! What features are currently missing from Firefox to be allowed to use Construct 3? Seeing more and more errors like this lately, and most of the times the features the developers don't think Firefox supports, actually exists. Edit: Running Firefox 52, I get a list of features that are not supported yet that is needed, so seems legit. If you want to try Construct 3 anyways on Firefox, you can enable dom.webcomponents.enabled and dom.dialog_element.enabled while running Firefox 53 in about:config, and everything should work fine. Firefox 53 is supposed to be released 2017-04-18. Thanks to the team behind Construct to actually use feature detection instead of user agent sniffing to block browsers.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  We are obviously extremely incentivised to support as many browsers as we can right now, but Chrome is the only one that can run it (nearly) out the box. Firefox is close, but is missing HTML imports and Dialog element. If you open: https://editor.construct.net/ https://editor.construct.net/ It will list the missing features.
  - endemic 10y ago
    I wasn't familiar with HTML imports, and after searching around it looks like Firefox will never support (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/12/mozilla-and-web-components/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/12/mozilla-and-web-components...). Any plans for polyfills, etc.?
    - AshleysBrain 10y ago
      We can potentially polyfill them - we're waiting for dialog element support first, that's still holding back support in most other browsers. HTML imports are outrageously under-valued as a technology for building this kind of web app. We're hoping to do some blog posts highlighting how awesome they are and try to turn around opinion on that.
cousin_it 10y ago
When browser vendors killed Flash, it was like someone killed YouTube and forced all amateur video creators to deal with portability themselves. It "professionalized" the field and drove away untold numbers of people who just wanted to show their interactive doodles to the world, not run the JS fashion treadmill for the rest of their lives. And programmers congratulate themselves on that! It looks like your browser will not be able to run Construct 3. The world craves a Flash replacement suitable for amateur creators, but it will need to take portability more seriously than every JS framework in existence.
- swiley 10y ago
  Java applets were pretty great in retrospect. Everything was more or less contained to one page element, the run time is open source (and often you can run the applet without the page) the language was (comparatively) nice. If only the security was handled better...
- AshleysBrain 10y ago
  You just need Chrome 57+ which is already on the stable channel. Just go to Help -> About Google Chrome and it should work.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- joshwcomeau 10y ago
  Hitting the same message, as my Chrome is 1 version behind. Most people will not be willing to change their browsing habits to use your web application. The onus is on us, as software developers, to ensure our code runs in the user's browser, not the other way around. Ultimately it's up to you to decide where the line is drawn; nobody supports IE7 anymore because it's hardly used. But I suspect you'll lose a tremendous amount of potential users by not supporting Firefox, Safari or recent Chrome. I'm sure you guys are aware of preprocessors; is there a reason you haven't used them to implement things like HTML imports or CSS variables?
j_m_b 10y ago
Has anyone tried using Electron to make a desktop version of their game? I think this is a great way to make games: release them on the web to see what kind of traction you get and than release a desktop version with Electron!
- disease 10y ago
  I'm considering this path. I'm currently making games for game jams with Phaser, so I imagine porting to Electron wouldn't be too difficult. I'm not sure what the best path for getting JavaScript games into mobile app stores would be though.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  I think you slightly misunderstood our product, Construct 3 is a game engine that runs in the browser, that lets people make HTML5 games. And yes, we're going to be releasing an Electron version at some point soon! And people who make games can distribute them in Electron as well.
tylermenezes 10y ago
We've been using Construct 2 for years at more than 200 events to get tens of thousands of students interested in coding at CodeDay. It's the only thing we teach in our beginner workshops now. Our biggest problem has always been that it was Windows-only. I'm super excited to see that Construct 3 for the web has finally launched. (Finally, we can use Chromebooks!) Congrats!
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Hey Tyler! That's amazing to hear. One thing we are interested in experimenting with in the future for Construct 3 (not possible in C2) is "free weekends" like some games do, but even "free time-period for specific events". If we look to experiment in this area I'll be sure to reach out to you.
  - tylermenezes 10y ago
    If it's similar to Construct 2, most of our students will probably fit in the free plan during the event, anyway :)
mrspeaker 10y ago
Charging per-year seems like a pretty risky move in the game-dev world. I understand WHY you'd want to, but think game-devs tend not to be big fans of this approach. Was it tough to decide to go with this model? How has the feedback been from Construct 2 users?
- dmix 10y ago
  Where do you see the pricing? https://www.construct.net/ca/make-games/buy-construct-3 https://www.construct.net/ca/make-games/buy-construct-3 It's telling me it's in beta.
  - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    Pricing is over here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/construct-3-pricing_t187766 https://www.scirra.com/forum/construct-3-pricing_t187766 Won't be available to buy until beta is over.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Yes it was tough, and yes we did get a lot of negative feedback. We also got a lot of feedback from people who seem to not care about this change and who understand why we're making this change. We're going to be making a couple of small adjustments, but so far everything is how we expected it to be.
  - dmix 10y ago
    Having done a lot of A/B testing on pricing, don't be worried about playing around with the price via experimentation. As long as you grandfather existing customers. You should consider doing what newspapers always do, offer an expensive high-end package that you don't expect anyone to buy, then offer a reasonably priced primary version which comes with a big (seeming) yearly discount. Then include a more expensive monthly option. There's some great books on the subject of pricing. I recommend this one: https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Pricing-Businesses-Innovation-Profitability/dp/013149418X/ https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Pricing-Businesses-Innovation-P...
neovive 10y ago
Ashley, Congratulations on such an ambitious release! I volunteer at a coding club for kids and Construct 3 seems like a perfect fit for the education market. We primarily work with Scratch, but are always looking for a good "next step" for kids interested in publishing more ambitious games outside of the Scratch sandbox. We've tried a few downloadable engines or pure coding environments (e.g. Stencyl, Gamemaker, Phaser, Corona, Unity), but run into problems with the learning curve and installations. Being web-based is a great advantage for Construct 3 in education. In our school district (NYC), students share laptops on carts and rely on Google Drive for storage. If you have additional information regarding your roll-out plans for the education market, please let me know. I could speak to some administrators at various schools and also teachers working with the csnyc.org initiative.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  We're really excited for Construct 3 in education, we think we have a unique offering here. We plan to have it rolled out and available for purchase in 8 weeks ready to go. Always happy to chat about this stuff, feel free to email me on tom@scirra.com if you have any specific questions and if there's anything we can do to encourage administrators to give us a go.
  - neovive 10y ago
    Looking forward to it. Are you planning to release an Educator's Guide? Also, are the Construct 2 docs/tutorials relevant for Construct 3? I never used v2, so I'm unable to compare. Thanks.
    - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
      We're obviously working on C3 guides, but there are a lot of similarities so the C2 resources should be useful until then.
- larrydag 10y ago
  Alice is a neat 3D gui based game programming suite targeted at youth. http://www.alice.org/index.php http://www.alice.org/index.php
dmix 10y ago
This website really needs a screencast video. The all text features page has zero pictures. I have no idea how the product works besides the one screenshot on the homepage. Look at this UX: https://www.construct.net/ca/make-games/features https://www.construct.net/ca/make-games/features it's a long list of links, all text, and you have to click each one to see the block of text.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Yes, are aware! There is still a ton to do on the website, and we're actively working on it. This is a beta phase which should last ~8 weeks then everything will look a lot smarter :)
  - dmix 10y ago
    Ah, great, I shouldn't be so critical of a beta product. Looking forward to a video of the new product. I watched one of the 2nd version and it looked interesting.
    - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
      Criticism is good, keeps up on our toes :)
galacticpony 10y ago
Does anybody ever actually want to do serious work "in the browser"? I can think of many drawbacks. Where's the benefit?
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  One code base to maintain which will (theoretically with the right browser) run on Mac's, Linux, Android, Windows etc. At the moment Construct 2 is bound to Windows only. Secondly, a huge feature that we're yet to show is multi language ability. This is an insanely difficult thing to implement in a C++ program, but reasonably trivial in HTML. In the browser lets us reach everyone in the world, whilst only maintaining one code base and let's us develop and iterate faster than ever before.
  - galacticpony 10y ago
    Like you said, this is all theoretical. You can reach "the whole world" with the right browser. At that point, you might as well ship an Electron app. But that's not even the point of my question. What I actually meant is: Where is the benefit for the user? I wouldn't want to use applications in-browser, unless there's some real value in that. For everything else, I strongly prefer a "native" application.
    - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
      What other game dev tools can a user on a Chromebook use? Or an Android device? Another thing, it enables us to rapidly iterate and deploy through one code base. Maintaining code bases for multiple platforms will be like a ball and chain on our feet. End user will get a better product.
      - galacticpony 10y ago
        > What other game dev tools can a user on a Chromebook use? Or an Android device? Well, you're kinda making a point for me there. Why would a game developer use a Chromebook or an Android device? The second point applies more or less to an Electron app, too.
Daiz 10y ago
Been a longtime follower and user of Construct (all the way back from early Construct 1 days) and the work that's been done in both Construct 2 and Construct 3 has been extremely impressive - I was initially skeptical about C2's move to HTML5, but over time it made a very convincing case for the fact that web can indeed be performant. I think moving the whole IDE to web was the logical way forward for Construct itself, and I'm glad to see it's working out with C3. However, as things are right now, it seems that the time has come for me to part with Construct. I do web development for a living, and game development is something I do for fun on the side mostly for my own enjoyment these days. The limitations of the C2 Free Edition were too much for me (as a programmer even my tinkering tends to be event-heavy, and even my smallest toy projects tend to start with creation of more layers than what's available in the free version), but this wasn't really an issue since the Personal License was simply a one-time investment, and I've been very happy with my purchase. However, with the move to a subscription-based payment model, this changes completely. I can't justify paying $99 a year for how much I use the program. The Free Edition is also not an option because it seems to be even more restrictive than the C2 one. This is extremely unfortunate from a personal standpoint, and I'm clearly not alone with this opinion, seeing how much negative feedback the move to subscription model has garnered on the Construct forums. But there is also the business standpoint to consider. The one-time payment was a huge pro for C2 and more than made up for the restrictions of the free edition in my books. But now with the move to a subscription model you're competing more directly with the likes of Unity that also uses a subscription model. And if you look at what Unity offers in the free tier[1] and compare it to Construct[2], the latter looks like a complete joke in comparison. With Unity, you get a full-featured engine with all the export options that you can make money with (with a revenue cap after which you need to upgrade, similar to C2 Personal -> Business), with the most notable "downside" basically being a "Made with Unity" splash screen. Something like this is what I would expect to see with the C3 Free Edition as well in order for it to be truly competitive. After all, game IDEs don't exist in a vacuum. [1] https://store.unity.com/ https://store.unity.com/ [2] https://www.scirra.com/store/construct-2 https://www.scirra.com/store/construct-2
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  We don't think we directly compete with Unity. If you imagine all engines in a pyramid, Unity is at the top and we're somewhere in the middle. Construct users often graduate to Unity, but conversely people who try Unity and find it too overwhelming come to us. I think in comparison to our direct competitors in our space, our pricing is still competitive.
MichaelBurge 10y ago
How does it compare with Game Maker?
skanga 10y ago
Will there also be an offline/desktop version of Construct 3?
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Yes, there will be. Coming soon! Also, as it is, Construct 3 will run offline. Try bookmarking it, pulling your internet cable out then visiting it :)
pjmlp 10y ago
Congratulations! Even if I prefer native to web, I have to concede you guys did a wonderful piece of work and I had quite some fun playing around with it. Good luck with the project.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Thanks for the message, glad you had fun playing round with it and appreciated the amount of work that went into it!
patrickg_zill 10y ago
Funnily enough, I just came across this site, this morning http://agentsheets.com/ http://agentsheets.com/ , an academic effort to make games in the browser. EDIT: don't leave a comma right after the URL, add a space :-)
- fuzzythinker 10y ago
  Link does not load
  - patrickg_zill 10y ago
    It should now, thanks!
citeguised 10y ago
Having tried lots of game-making-apps and frameworks, I always keep coming back to Construct2, now 3. Also as web-dev I'm impressed by the good performance and usability. (If you find the time, maybe do a blog-post about the challenges you faced and clever solutions you came up with :-P) I'm not a fan of apps in browsers, but on a Mac it beats having to start VMWare and Windows by far! For me, the hugest win over 2 is the ability to run it on the mobile device in parallel and have almost instant testing. Maybe you could add a feature like generating a preview-url at some point? On my Android it didn't work with the latest updated Chrome, but it works fine with Chrome Canary or Beta, which can be downloaded from the Play-Store. Also great to be able to pay monthly, even if it's a bit more. So, 1000x thanks for making Construct!
alalonde 10y ago
Congratulations on what looks like a very impressive piece of software. Do you guys have any plans to add collaborative features to Construct? Where, say, students in a remote classroom could work on the same game together?
hysan 10y ago
Since you are moving to a subscription model, I'm curious as to how updates and support will change. I usually equate subscriptions with better support and/or more frequent updates. What differences can users expect on this front in comparison to C2?

122 points by AshleysBrain 10y ago

Kiro 10y ago

I've been following Construct since the early days and it's amazing what a great following it has mustered. I keep seeing cool games made with Construct being posted in various indie game groups on Facebook. I initially disregarded it as a toy project you couldn't use to build real games but I was proven wrong.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Thanks for the comment! We're adjusting our language around promoting Construct 3 compared to Construct 2, we think we undersold it previously and it's been stuck with the "toy" feel. We're hoping to shed that moving forwards.

tgb 10y ago

I get a 404 on this.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Fixing this now! Sorry! Edit: Now fixed

throwaway2016a 10y ago

The link is a 404 Error. For what it's worth though. I went to the homepage and it does seem like a really nice product that a lot of effort was put into. When I saw game maker I didn't expect to be as impressed but it seems far better than the other web based game makers I've seen. Although it requires the absolute latest Chrome (I was half a version back) which is interesting. I wonder what is in Chrome 57 that is required and not in Chrome 56.

AshleysBrain 10y ago
CSS grid was the main reason: it's new in Chrome 57 and we use it heavily! Sorry about the 404, shouldn't happen to everyone but we're working on it...
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  Do the games made with it need Chrome 57 or just the builder?
  - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    Just the Construct 3 editor itself. The games can run as far back as IE9 (but without WebGL). All modern browsers out the box will be able to run Construct made games.
Scirra_Tom 10y ago
404 now fixed, sorry!

AshleysBrain 10y ago

Sorry folks, we only launched yesterday, if you happen to see a 404 message please just visit: https://www.construct.net https://www.construct.net

DigitalSea 10y ago

I've been an avid Construct 2 user for a long time now and I am really impressed with Construct 3 thus far (in its limited form). The performance is fantastic, literally feels like a desktop application running in the browser. I couldn't see use of any framework or library, is this all custom? What platforms will Construct 3 support exporting to, plans for supporting the Nintendo Switch? Really nice work, this must have taken a long time to build.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
> The performance is fantastic, literally feels like a desktop application running in the browser. We are so relieved to hear this, after 3 years work this was always front and centre of our goals. > I couldn't see use of any framework or library, is this all custom? Yes, all custom built > What platforms will Construct 3 support exporting to Exports HTML5 games, which can be wrapped in various ways to run on Win/Linux/Apple desktops, iOS, Android, Steam, FB etc etc. List goes on! > plans for supporting the Nintendo Switch? Would love to, but we know as much as anyone else about the Switch at this stage. If anyone from Nintendo reads this please reach out!
- contentkraft 10y ago
  Try to get in touch with Damon Baker (@DWBakes). He deals with Indies but should also be able to refer you to the right people.

_pmf_ 10y ago

I've only tried Construct 2 for a short time, but the output for the HTML target was running amazingly smooth, and the tooling was very, very nice.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Thank you really appreciate the compliment. We hope we've managed to bring what we've learnt from outputting HTML5 games into the editor itself.

toddnni 10y ago

Very interesting. Any information about upcoming pricing?

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Full current details here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/construct-3-pricing_t187766 https://www.scirra.com/forum/construct-3-pricing_t187766 For most users, it will be $99 USD p/y. Businesses/educational institutes will have different pricing.

defenestration 10y ago

It's like Scratch on steroids. I'm making games together with my son in Scratch. Will give this a try when he's ready to try something more complex. Btw. the performance of the app is great for a web-app. What were your main challenges to get this performance?

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Thanks, and I'm happy you'll consider it to use with your son. Performance wise, I'll let Ash talk more about that as he's the one who's been obsessively making sure it loads and runs as good as possible.
- AshleysBrain 10y ago
  Layout performance is the biggest problem probably - when things change the browser too often does a full layout of the document. We use tons of CSS containment but there are still bugs where Chrome does far more layout than necessary, e.g.: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=667370 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=667370 Virtual DOM is completely unnecessary to us. We have minimal problems with DOM calls. It is all to do with layout performance, and VDOM makes no difference at all there.
tylermenezes 10y ago
We run events for total beginner programmers and have actually found Construct to be much easier for beginners than Scratch. Scratch requires a lot more up-front knowledge to make a simple game, e.g. students need to learn control flow, event loops, etc. Construct, being event-based (and especially with the built-in behaviors) lets us get beginners started in about 40 minutes, while still being complex enough that they understand variables, instances, properties, etc within a few hours.

diggan 10y ago

> Currently the latest version of Chrome is the only browser that supports the advanced and exciting features we've built into Construct 3. We hope to add support for other browsers once they catch up with us! What features are currently missing from Firefox to be allowed to use Construct 3? Seeing more and more errors like this lately, and most of the times the features the developers don't think Firefox supports, actually exists. Edit: Running Firefox 52, I get a list of features that are not supported yet that is needed, so seems legit. If you want to try Construct 3 anyways on Firefox, you can enable dom.webcomponents.enabled and dom.dialog_element.enabled while running Firefox 53 in about:config, and everything should work fine. Firefox 53 is supposed to be released 2017-04-18. Thanks to the team behind Construct to actually use feature detection instead of user agent sniffing to block browsers.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
We are obviously extremely incentivised to support as many browsers as we can right now, but Chrome is the only one that can run it (nearly) out the box. Firefox is close, but is missing HTML imports and Dialog element. If you open: https://editor.construct.net/ https://editor.construct.net/ It will list the missing features.
- endemic 10y ago
  I wasn't familiar with HTML imports, and after searching around it looks like Firefox will never support (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/12/mozilla-and-web-components/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/12/mozilla-and-web-components...). Any plans for polyfills, etc.?
  - AshleysBrain 10y ago
    We can potentially polyfill them - we're waiting for dialog element support first, that's still holding back support in most other browsers. HTML imports are outrageously under-valued as a technology for building this kind of web app. We're hoping to do some blog posts highlighting how awesome they are and try to turn around opinion on that.

cousin_it 10y ago

When browser vendors killed Flash, it was like someone killed YouTube and forced all amateur video creators to deal with portability themselves. It "professionalized" the field and drove away untold numbers of people who just wanted to show their interactive doodles to the world, not run the JS fashion treadmill for the rest of their lives. And programmers congratulate themselves on that! It looks like your browser will not be able to run Construct 3. The world craves a Flash replacement suitable for amateur creators, but it will need to take portability more seriously than every JS framework in existence.

swiley 10y ago
Java applets were pretty great in retrospect. Everything was more or less contained to one page element, the run time is open source (and often you can run the applet without the page) the language was (comparatively) nice. If only the security was handled better...
AshleysBrain 10y ago
You just need Chrome 57+ which is already on the stable channel. Just go to Help -> About Google Chrome and it should work.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
joshwcomeau 10y ago
Hitting the same message, as my Chrome is 1 version behind. Most people will not be willing to change their browsing habits to use your web application. The onus is on us, as software developers, to ensure our code runs in the user's browser, not the other way around. Ultimately it's up to you to decide where the line is drawn; nobody supports IE7 anymore because it's hardly used. But I suspect you'll lose a tremendous amount of potential users by not supporting Firefox, Safari or recent Chrome. I'm sure you guys are aware of preprocessors; is there a reason you haven't used them to implement things like HTML imports or CSS variables?

j_m_b 10y ago

Has anyone tried using Electron to make a desktop version of their game? I think this is a great way to make games: release them on the web to see what kind of traction you get and than release a desktop version with Electron!

disease 10y ago
I'm considering this path. I'm currently making games for game jams with Phaser, so I imagine porting to Electron wouldn't be too difficult. I'm not sure what the best path for getting JavaScript games into mobile app stores would be though.
Scirra_Tom 10y ago
I think you slightly misunderstood our product, Construct 3 is a game engine that runs in the browser, that lets people make HTML5 games. And yes, we're going to be releasing an Electron version at some point soon! And people who make games can distribute them in Electron as well.

tylermenezes 10y ago

We've been using Construct 2 for years at more than 200 events to get tens of thousands of students interested in coding at CodeDay. It's the only thing we teach in our beginner workshops now. Our biggest problem has always been that it was Windows-only. I'm super excited to see that Construct 3 for the web has finally launched. (Finally, we can use Chromebooks!) Congrats!

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Hey Tyler! That's amazing to hear. One thing we are interested in experimenting with in the future for Construct 3 (not possible in C2) is "free weekends" like some games do, but even "free time-period for specific events". If we look to experiment in this area I'll be sure to reach out to you.
- tylermenezes 10y ago
  If it's similar to Construct 2, most of our students will probably fit in the free plan during the event, anyway :)

mrspeaker 10y ago

Charging per-year seems like a pretty risky move in the game-dev world. I understand WHY you'd want to, but think game-devs tend not to be big fans of this approach. Was it tough to decide to go with this model? How has the feedback been from Construct 2 users?

dmix 10y ago
Where do you see the pricing? https://www.construct.net/ca/make-games/buy-construct-3 https://www.construct.net/ca/make-games/buy-construct-3 It's telling me it's in beta.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Pricing is over here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/construct-3-pricing_t187766 https://www.scirra.com/forum/construct-3-pricing_t187766 Won't be available to buy until beta is over.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Yes it was tough, and yes we did get a lot of negative feedback. We also got a lot of feedback from people who seem to not care about this change and who understand why we're making this change. We're going to be making a couple of small adjustments, but so far everything is how we expected it to be.
- dmix 10y ago
  Having done a lot of A/B testing on pricing, don't be worried about playing around with the price via experimentation. As long as you grandfather existing customers. You should consider doing what newspapers always do, offer an expensive high-end package that you don't expect anyone to buy, then offer a reasonably priced primary version which comes with a big (seeming) yearly discount. Then include a more expensive monthly option. There's some great books on the subject of pricing. I recommend this one: https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Pricing-Businesses-Innovation-Profitability/dp/013149418X/ https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Pricing-Businesses-Innovation-P...

neovive 10y ago

Ashley, Congratulations on such an ambitious release! I volunteer at a coding club for kids and Construct 3 seems like a perfect fit for the education market. We primarily work with Scratch, but are always looking for a good "next step" for kids interested in publishing more ambitious games outside of the Scratch sandbox. We've tried a few downloadable engines or pure coding environments (e.g. Stencyl, Gamemaker, Phaser, Corona, Unity), but run into problems with the learning curve and installations. Being web-based is a great advantage for Construct 3 in education. In our school district (NYC), students share laptops on carts and rely on Google Drive for storage. If you have additional information regarding your roll-out plans for the education market, please let me know. I could speak to some administrators at various schools and also teachers working with the csnyc.org initiative.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
We're really excited for Construct 3 in education, we think we have a unique offering here. We plan to have it rolled out and available for purchase in 8 weeks ready to go. Always happy to chat about this stuff, feel free to email me on tom@scirra.com if you have any specific questions and if there's anything we can do to encourage administrators to give us a go.
- neovive 10y ago
  Looking forward to it. Are you planning to release an Educator's Guide? Also, are the Construct 2 docs/tutorials relevant for Construct 3? I never used v2, so I'm unable to compare. Thanks.
  - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    We're obviously working on C3 guides, but there are a lot of similarities so the C2 resources should be useful until then.
larrydag 10y ago
Alice is a neat 3D gui based game programming suite targeted at youth. http://www.alice.org/index.php http://www.alice.org/index.php

dmix 10y ago

This website really needs a screencast video. The all text features page has zero pictures. I have no idea how the product works besides the one screenshot on the homepage. Look at this UX: https://www.construct.net/ca/make-games/features https://www.construct.net/ca/make-games/features it's a long list of links, all text, and you have to click each one to see the block of text.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Yes, are aware! There is still a ton to do on the website, and we're actively working on it. This is a beta phase which should last ~8 weeks then everything will look a lot smarter :)
- dmix 10y ago
  Ah, great, I shouldn't be so critical of a beta product. Looking forward to a video of the new product. I watched one of the 2nd version and it looked interesting.
  - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    Criticism is good, keeps up on our toes :)

galacticpony 10y ago

Does anybody ever actually want to do serious work "in the browser"? I can think of many drawbacks. Where's the benefit?

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
One code base to maintain which will (theoretically with the right browser) run on Mac's, Linux, Android, Windows etc. At the moment Construct 2 is bound to Windows only. Secondly, a huge feature that we're yet to show is multi language ability. This is an insanely difficult thing to implement in a C++ program, but reasonably trivial in HTML. In the browser lets us reach everyone in the world, whilst only maintaining one code base and let's us develop and iterate faster than ever before.
- galacticpony 10y ago
  Like you said, this is all theoretical. You can reach "the whole world" with the right browser. At that point, you might as well ship an Electron app. But that's not even the point of my question. What I actually meant is: Where is the benefit for the user? I wouldn't want to use applications in-browser, unless there's some real value in that. For everything else, I strongly prefer a "native" application.
  - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    What other game dev tools can a user on a Chromebook use? Or an Android device? Another thing, it enables us to rapidly iterate and deploy through one code base. Maintaining code bases for multiple platforms will be like a ball and chain on our feet. End user will get a better product.
    - galacticpony 10y ago
      > What other game dev tools can a user on a Chromebook use? Or an Android device? Well, you're kinda making a point for me there. Why would a game developer use a Chromebook or an Android device? The second point applies more or less to an Electron app, too.

Daiz 10y ago

Been a longtime follower and user of Construct (all the way back from early Construct 1 days) and the work that's been done in both Construct 2 and Construct 3 has been extremely impressive - I was initially skeptical about C2's move to HTML5, but over time it made a very convincing case for the fact that web can indeed be performant. I think moving the whole IDE to web was the logical way forward for Construct itself, and I'm glad to see it's working out with C3. However, as things are right now, it seems that the time has come for me to part with Construct. I do web development for a living, and game development is something I do for fun on the side mostly for my own enjoyment these days. The limitations of the C2 Free Edition were too much for me (as a programmer even my tinkering tends to be event-heavy, and even my smallest toy projects tend to start with creation of more layers than what's available in the free version), but this wasn't really an issue since the Personal License was simply a one-time investment, and I've been very happy with my purchase. However, with the move to a subscription-based payment model, this changes completely. I can't justify paying $99 a year for how much I use the program. The Free Edition is also not an option because it seems to be even more restrictive than the C2 one. This is extremely unfortunate from a personal standpoint, and I'm clearly not alone with this opinion, seeing how much negative feedback the move to subscription model has garnered on the Construct forums. But there is also the business standpoint to consider. The one-time payment was a huge pro for C2 and more than made up for the restrictions of the free edition in my books. But now with the move to a subscription model you're competing more directly with the likes of Unity that also uses a subscription model. And if you look at what Unity offers in the free tier[1] and compare it to Construct[2], the latter looks like a complete joke in comparison. With Unity, you get a full-featured engine with all the export options that you can make money with (with a revenue cap after which you need to upgrade, similar to C2 Personal -> Business), with the most notable "downside" basically being a "Made with Unity" splash screen. Something like this is what I would expect to see with the C3 Free Edition as well in order for it to be truly competitive. After all, game IDEs don't exist in a vacuum. [1] https://store.unity.com/ https://store.unity.com/ [2] https://www.scirra.com/store/construct-2 https://www.scirra.com/store/construct-2

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
We don't think we directly compete with Unity. If you imagine all engines in a pyramid, Unity is at the top and we're somewhere in the middle. Construct users often graduate to Unity, but conversely people who try Unity and find it too overwhelming come to us. I think in comparison to our direct competitors in our space, our pricing is still competitive.

MichaelBurge 10y ago

How does it compare with Game Maker?

skanga 10y ago

Will there also be an offline/desktop version of Construct 3?

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Yes, there will be. Coming soon! Also, as it is, Construct 3 will run offline. Try bookmarking it, pulling your internet cable out then visiting it :)

pjmlp 10y ago

Congratulations! Even if I prefer native to web, I have to concede you guys did a wonderful piece of work and I had quite some fun playing around with it. Good luck with the project.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Thanks for the message, glad you had fun playing round with it and appreciated the amount of work that went into it!

patrickg_zill 10y ago

Funnily enough, I just came across this site, this morning http://agentsheets.com/ http://agentsheets.com/ , an academic effort to make games in the browser. EDIT: don't leave a comma right after the URL, add a space :-)

fuzzythinker 10y ago
Link does not load
- patrickg_zill 10y ago
  It should now, thanks!

citeguised 10y ago

Having tried lots of game-making-apps and frameworks, I always keep coming back to Construct2, now 3. Also as web-dev I'm impressed by the good performance and usability. (If you find the time, maybe do a blog-post about the challenges you faced and clever solutions you came up with :-P) I'm not a fan of apps in browsers, but on a Mac it beats having to start VMWare and Windows by far! For me, the hugest win over 2 is the ability to run it on the mobile device in parallel and have almost instant testing. Maybe you could add a feature like generating a preview-url at some point? On my Android it didn't work with the latest updated Chrome, but it works fine with Chrome Canary or Beta, which can be downloaded from the Play-Store. Also great to be able to pay monthly, even if it's a bit more. So, 1000x thanks for making Construct!

alalonde 10y ago

Congratulations on what looks like a very impressive piece of software. Do you guys have any plans to add collaborative features to Construct? Where, say, students in a remote classroom could work on the same game together?

hysan 10y ago

Since you are moving to a subscription model, I'm curious as to how updates and support will change. I usually equate subscriptions with better support and/or more frequent updates. What differences can users expect on this front in comparison to C2?