Curious about Construct

All things HTML5 or text based engines, or really any web based engines.
Post Reply
User avatar
Callan S.
Posts: 2043
Joined: Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:43 am

Curious about Construct

Post by Callan S. »

What do people know about contstruct?

I know very little about html5. What do you compile with construct? Can you do so with the free version? Is there a free version?

I've been using stencyl recently and considering widening my knowledge.
User avatar
Jackolantern
Posts: 10893
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:00 pm

Re: Curious about Construct

Post by Jackolantern »

I have a Construct 2 license, but sadly have not used it much lol. But I do know a fair bit about it just from studying it for a while before deciding to buy it.

You create a project in it in the same way you would start a new paper in Word (in fact, it is kind of odd how much it is setup like Word). It saves into a special Construct 2 project format. When you are done, you can "compile" the project into one of several forms. Probably the most common is just the HTML5 format, where you will get a folder with everything you need to put the game on a web server. Some of the other formats are designed to work with CocoonJS to put your game on mobile, a special format for Windows Phone 8, formats for Kongregate, a format for Windows 8, etc. They will probably all be about the same: a folder containing the assets, HTML container files and JS files with various tweaks depending on what format you are targeting.

In reality, there is no true "compiling". It is just what they call the process of the Construct 2 application writing the HTML5 files for deployment.

I also checked out Stencyl and was honestly not that impressed compared to Construct 2. At least at that time, it was Flash-based, which is growing to be a problem today. When I checked it out, it was making its mobile apps Flash-based, even though they said they had native compilation on the way. If that is true, that is pretty cool since you would get better performance out of native than HTML5.

If you have the extra money, Game Maker Studio has everything else beat, no questions asked. If you want to export to multiple formats, it can get pricey, but if you only want to focus on a couple of formats it is fairly reasonable and fairly close to the cost of Construct 2 (they charge extra for each "export module", one for each platform, or a special "Master" version that has them all at a discount. But that is rather expensive). The games made with it are extremely impressive, and the list just seems to go on and on.
The indelible lord of tl;dr
User avatar
Callan S.
Posts: 2043
Joined: Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:43 am

Re: Curious about Construct

Post by Callan S. »

Thanks for that extensive run down, Jack!

Does construct have some free mode though? Or is it a one time purchase? To be honest I'm looking for a bootstrap money making process and given that income from kongregate isn't that much for how many hours you can end up putting in, I don't want to pay for something that isn't going to pay itself off any time soon.

In regards to game maker I'm quite interested in putting games on kongregate - game maker can't do that though, can it?
User avatar
Jackolantern
Posts: 10893
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:00 pm

Re: Curious about Construct

Post by Jackolantern »

I'm not really sure what the capabilities of the free version of Construct is, or whether you would be able to create a full game to distribute with it or not. I can't find the restrictions on the free version on their website. Maybe just try downloading it if you haven't and see if it says them when it starts up?

Game Maker Studio can make HTML5 games, which can be tailored for Kongregate to my knowledge (and there are a few Kongregate games mentioned in their forums, so I would assume that is the case).
The indelible lord of tl;dr
User avatar
Callan S.
Posts: 2043
Joined: Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:43 am

Re: Curious about Construct

Post by Callan S. »

Thanks - that helps to know what I'm looking for if I download it.

Didn't know game maker had html5 capabilities - it's like they went from crawling to running, from .exe only then jumping straight to 'any browser will run it', if you get what I mean.
User avatar
Jackolantern
Posts: 10893
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:00 pm

Re: Curious about Construct

Post by Jackolantern »

Yeah, a company actually bought YoYo Games (the maker of Game Maker 8 and before) and really changed directions with it to be a major, AAA-quality 2D game engine. Some of the games in the showcase are incredible, and it can publish to an amazing amount of platforms, and they are all native.
The indelible lord of tl;dr
Post Reply

Return to “HTML5/Web Engines”