[modi123_1]

I came across this today: http://www.scirra.com/construct2

Quote

Construct 2 is a ground breaking HTML5 game engine.

It lets anyone make games - without any programming experience.

Okay.. HTML5 engine.. not bad.. a free edition as well as a personal and business pay-for edition... bundled assets.. mkay... though I am wondering how complex of a game you can get when all the background coding is done for you.

Any thoughts on this platform as a possible avenue for the very new to get their hands dirty turning out games, or is this just another flash in the pan / "all your games are rinky dink and just basically re-skined" sort of environments? Of course that begs the larger question about how much "no programming required" becomes a determent to learning and progress.

Their beginner's tutorial:
http://www.scirra.co...-to-construct-2

Here's a video link of a pong game being made:

[BBeck]

Wow. Long video. lol

Sounds kinda cool. Interesting, at the very least.

I'm kind of agreeing with you on the thought of what the end product is going to be.

Still, "reskin" has become the name of the game. Reskin it and give it better graphics and more "flash" is the video game industry's mantra.

I keep trying to explain to people that First Person Shooter is not a genre, it's a game. No matter how many times you change the tokens, rename Boardwalk and Parkplace, or even change the Chance cards, it's still Monopoly. :-)

I've lost track of the thousands of games I've seen produced that are all just basically reskinned versions of the exact same game and that's not even counting the remakes like GTAXXX or Halo 23.

Anyway, sounds kind of like another game engine to me where they've kind of combined the level editor and game engine into one product. With some advanced scripting, you can do a lot, but if you can't get under the hood and modify the engine itself, then you're obviously going to be basically just building new levels for the exact same game over and over.

So, I suppose it's one of those things where you have to understand the advantages and disadvantages and just make a decision about which is most likely to do the best job for you. For just getting started in game programming, that sounds like a really awesome thing. For going deeper and producing professional games, maybe not so much.


I've been getting kind of interested in Unity. I downloaded it last week. And I'm kind of tempted to play with it. I mean you could probably crank out a lot of game with that thing. But then I keep thinking "You know you're going to hit a brick wall eventually, where something doesn't work the way you envision it. Then you're going to have to get under the hood, pull it apart, and rebuild it or not make the game you envisioned, one of the two." And I think Unity costs something like $1,500 to get the pro version (which I think has source code). Without that, there's no getting under the hood and so you're just mostly building levels for the same game.

But that can be fun too. And you learn a lot about what a level editor should look like and how one works for when you're putting your own tools and game together.

But in the end, I keep going back to XNA where I can learn what's really going on in the bowels of the game. I figure that even if I choose to work with a game engine later, I need to know the fundamentals of game programming. Otherwise, I'll never be able to rebuild the game engine to work the way I need it to to make the game I'm imagining; I'll just be stuck reskinning the same game over and over.

[modi123_1]

I hear that..

I agree games are just "reskinned" but there's a even more so aspect with things like this or that GameMaker thing.

I also have been eyeballing unity, but for the moment it sits about five projects back in the log. That and plugins for unity... *sigh*

[BBeck]

Yep. I kind of loaded up Unity, ran through the demo, then said, "Well. Maybe one of these days after I get this project finished, and that one, and that one over there, oh and that one too..." So, I know what you mean.

[SixOfEleven]

I want to get into mobile games with HTML 5. Unfortunately, as with others, that is a few projects down the list. Looks like I'll have most of Saturday to devote to my current project. Maybe even on my lunch break tomorrow, will have to see what is up.