Friday, September 26, 2014

Developing games with Construct 2 Jump Start

Now, before I may start to talk about the topics from this Jump Start, there may be some controversies involving various origins of the game templates. The only controversial thing that kept me from paying attention was probably the clone of that Floppy Bullshit they were making, only to know the fact that the clones with completely original sounds, music and graphics may seem to be okay compared to the original which was kind of terrible that many people including me may want the original creator to be sued, anyway due to the unoriginal, uncredited and reference-less contents put in there. We already know the classic games and it may be the same for those working at the game companies, Microsoft, the companies behind the game creation tools, etc. So, who's to blame then? Well, that should be Doug Nyugen, the creator of that original bullshit I just talked about and I already had some rants about this on my Twitter account. The talks about this may be everywhere in all the modules but the third module was all about making a clone of that bullshit. Again, having to bounce like that non-stop instead of flying is kind of COMPLETELY BULLSHIT to me! Why can't the bird FLY NORMALLY? When you tap, it should fly up and when you're not tapping, it should FLY DOWN! Have you even seen the way Mario flies or swims? YES, WE FUCKING HAVE EVER SINCE OUR CHILDHOOD!
Negatives aside, there are already positives of this event. The first two modules are fine that they teach you how the game is made with various features that are differently common to the features in Game Maker but certain features are easily implemented unlike Game Maker such as the fact that you can have the enemy weapon to fire bullets from the end of the weapon tip and they will still fire from that even when the weapon rotates. Another cool thing is that you can get transparent sprites and background in multiple ways without having to buy the license unlike Game Maker where you have to do so. The rotation of the background and sprite should be easy without needing so much frames and taking so much memory. Again, it's a common thing between Game Maker and Construct 2 but you will need the full version of Game Maker if you want the easy rotation of the sprites. The layout and events are on the middle panes and are similar to rooms and events in Game Maker but be careful, you need to know the limitations of the number of events and layers in Construct 2 and it can pose a challenge to those developing games using it. Next thing is the amount of variables you can adjust on the left pane and some programming elements are needed when it comes to variables and it's a little bit more challenging than in Game Maker when implementing the text in there. For me, I can use the HUD background and then put in some variables as an example in Construct 2 just like in Game Maker without having to put in the strings in there.
The last module is about publishing your games to Windows Store for Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 8.1 that requires Visual Studio but if you're publishing games to other platforms, then I'm afraid that this last module is not for you. Not to mention that Windows Store may be notorious for low-quality apps and games compared to the high-quality ones which are the official ones.