I've read a number of developers write about releasing in a smaller region first instead of one platform or another. Then there's no worry about not getting featured because of being on android first.

Final fantasy 6.

I just wanted to say I've been following this project and it keeps looking cooler and cooler. That boss fight looks awesome. Keep it up!

This looks awesome! I like the name faster blaster - I think it's appropriate and made me think of blaster master even without the explanation of the type of game.

I haven't played it yet, but the one crit I have is the Mario ? blocks seem out of place, and distract from the immersion. I'll comment more after having actually played it.

I've changed my opinion a bit about construct classic. It's still good, but on the basis of what I've exerienced I can't recommend it for large projects anymore. I had more and more issues crop up the more I worked on my game. It seems kind of random which users encounter problems as well, as for some people it seems to be rock solid and yet not for others. I might have encountered more problems than most would because of how long I have been working on my game though, since I started it in a much earlier version when CC still had a lot more problems.

Nowadays I recommend construct 2 instead. It's solved all of CC's problems, is far more stable, has a bunch of new features that are fantastic, and is frequently updated about every week or two. It also has export to PC/Mac/Linux desktop apps.

If you want C2, now's the time to get it. I think this is the first sale scirra's ever had, they're not in the habit of doing so.

C2 used to cost less, the price was increased when the amount of functionality had increased past a certain point.

If it's a small game, why not use construct classic? It's capable of making small games (I wouldn't recommend it for anything past a small game though), it's free, and coming from mmf it would probably be the easiest thing for you to pick up. It does have quirks, but you get what you pay for in this case. If you decide later you want to do more game making, you can get c2 then.

That said, c2 is really worth the price over classic. It's far, far better.

I hear ya. Unless you know how to dodge the instability, CC can be quite frustrating at times. If you ever change your mind about HTML5 though, C2 is vastly improved, especially on the stability front.

You need a lot of clicks and dropdowns to use a function, which defeats the purpose of it being a quick access thing.

I'd like to be able to simply write "doSomething(value1, value2)" without any clicking. IIRC, Construct requires a lot of clicking for each variable you put in. I think it took me like 20 minutes just to put implement a simple 'roll dice' function. Way too long for something that would take 2 minutes at most with typical scripting.

But I'm talking about Construct Classic. Maybe Construct 2's is better.

Does C2 still use Python?

20 minutes? Did that include the time to make the events the function ran as well? Because in C2, making a 'call function' action with a perameter and then a 'on function' event only took me 30 seconds, and that's while using c2 on an ipad using Remote Desktop software (which it actually works surprisingly well on) and making multiple mistaps.  Including inserting the function object into the project, maybe 35 (that's not including the events the function runs, of course, as that could be any amount of them, this is just setting up the function itself). C2 has integrated adding perameters into the 'call function' window where you type the function name, so that's made adding them more efficient. CC wouldn't have taken more than about 5-10 seconds longer, though.

C2 doesn't have any integrated scripting like CC did, but JavaScript can be used through the SDK.

I've used MMF, construct classic and construct 2, and construct 2 is everything MMF should have been. In my opinion, there is not one part of MMF that makes it worth using over C2. I don't mean that to diss MMF - I mean that C2 is just that much better in basically every way.

I've been using construct classic for my game loot pursuit, about 3-4 years in development with hundreds of objects, thousands of animation frames and about 10,000 events (would have had thousands less had I known what I was doing when I started). While I can't recommend CC for complex projects, all of the reasons I can't reccommend CC have been addressed in C2.

Html5 bugged me at first too, but I've come around on the issue as its performance has turned out to be better than expected on mobiles (I have a prototype which is working smoothly at 60fps on an ipad 3/iphone4s, though care is still required to optimize), quite good on mid-level desktops and crazy impressive on the newest tech (with a new enough video card, C2 takes advantage of an optimization that makes its rendering about 30% faster than CC!) and the options for exe wrappers and such are steadily improving.

There's a free version, so there's no harm in trying it. Personally, I find C2 a delight to use not only with how easy it is to get stuff up and running, but after having created a complex game with CC, my opinion is it can be also easy to add new features and make bug fixes - but you still have to have good, organized code. C2 won't clean up your code for you. The earlier parts of the code in loot pursuit are an utter mess, but that's my fault since aside from one unfinished shmup it's my first game and I didn't know what I was doing when I started. The newer stuff since I learned how to code properly is very easy to work with and fix. C2 is also far more stable than CC and so therefore it is much easier to rework code.

It's also a delight to be able to preview a game on an iOS device with one click. Great stuff.

I'm not sure why Muz dislikes constuct's implementation of functions - they seem plenty simple and functional to me. Action: call function, condition: on function, do stuff. Calling a function from inside an expression is a bit more complex though, but not that much.

Creating events can be dramatically sped up by using keyboard shortcuts. I think you can even entirely use the keyboard to create events now, though for rearranging them you'll still need to use the mouse at times.

As for learning a scripting language to learn proper programming concepts, C2 does that too. Just from using construct, I learned enough about 'real' programming that I'm able to have conversations with c++ programmers, and they can have a solution to a problem I'm having, and it works.

No, they can easily create a wrapper to a language that can be compiled to .exe without too much trouble, but instead rely on something that is nothing more than a cut down browser. Hey, I'm ok if that's what they want and users accept. For me, it's a half-assed effort. Opinions we all have, and this one is mine.

C2 is great, but it would be top of the class if it wasn't for that quirk alone.

I think you're underestimating the difficulty of that task.  Ashley (C2's main dev) has said that it would take months - possibly even a half year (and since he's done it before with CC I think his estimate is probably pretty accurate) and as Tokinsom said, all the third party plugins would be incompatible.  They haven't completely ruled out the possibility of doing it eventually, but for the time being there's much more important stuff to do first and they can make an EXE wrapper much faster, so why not?

With WebGL and Chrome, performance is pretty much the same as CC's, and without the ridiculous input delay.

The main differences between construct classic and C2's rendering performance as far as I can tell are:

 - CC had double or triple buffering (not sure which), which helps to make the frame rate rock solid but is what causes the input delay of a frame or two while C2 does not (I'm hoping it's added as an option for the EXE wrapper for those who want it)
 - CC relies on its own renderer whereas C2 has to rely on whatever renderer the browser is using (which the EXE wrapper helps with by making sure everyone is using the best one)
 - Chrome's renderer isn't as fast as CC at drawing lots of objects (CC was highly optimized in making draw calls efficient), but it can draw plenty enough per frame for most games (not counting offscreen objects here, just drawn ones).

Javascript is a whole other matter, but browser makers are in an arms race to improve their browsers on both fronts, with them trying stuff like entirely new garbage collection techniques to improve speed and minimize/eliminate gc pauses.

Would be easier to illustrate with an actual example to a C2 game, since we've all got browsers and can try it out immediately

Here's one: http://www.scirra.com/arcade/addicting-rotary-games/848/airscape

Plays very smooth on my machine, AMD athlon 64x2 4400+, 9800gt, 32bit vista, though not at full screen - performance in chrome varies depending on how large the browser window is, because it's apparently drawing the whole window with the GPU, so even if the game window is only 640x480 there'll still be a performance hit by rendering the rest of the window, so if your GPU isn't up to it, if you shrink the window to the size of the game screen it helps more.

This is all with chrome though, again apparently the EXE wrapper has better performance, so it's worthwhile checking again once r100 comes out.

As much as I want a rock solid 60 fps at all times myself even with thousands of objects on screen (which even CC can't entirely manage - it occasionally has hiccups too when a lot is thrown at it or some background process monopolizes the CPU for a moment), I think it's worth having less objects on screen to get a game that runs on practically everything with the same code base - and lots of people are working on making it better.

It's a wrapper using awesomium, so it's not native, but apparently it has better performance than any of the other options out there for displaying HTML5 content, like chrome.

EXE export is showing up in the next version, which should be released somewhere in the next 2 weeks I'm guessing (they're adding a bunch of stuff to it this version like shaders and such so it's taking a little longer than versions usually do).

I strongly disagree that C2 is bs. I utterly love it. If you can't stand making games without typing your code, you actually can type and edit events with the keyboard. If that's not enough, then maybe it's not for you.

As for construct classic vs construct 2, I've extensively used both and I can tell you C2 is far, far better than CC in almost every way. The only things CC has over C2 anymore is code execution speed (C2 is fast enough for the vast majority of games on desktop. Mobile games need to be simpler, but that's a HTML5 problem that's becoming less of a problem as stuff like cocoonJS and others accelerate HTML5 and hardware/software improves) and a few more features (most of which C2 simply hasn't had implemented yet, like EXE export and being able to edit files on disk at runtime, both of which are showing up soon).

C2 is much more stable at both edit and runtime, much smoother to work with, allows export to many, many more platforms and it's updated an average of once a week - meaning it's actually not uncommon to report a bug and have it fixed within a week!

To me, it's a joy to use. It's easy enough for an artist and versatile enough for a programmer (doesn't do what you want? Program it yourself with the SDK). Almost any 2D game can be made with it, and it's incredibly fast to get something up and running.

I'll go ahead and look into FlashDevelop with Flixel, python and pyGame, too.

I wasn't going to mention it before, but since you're considering checking out other tools, you should try construct 2. It's similar enough to MMF that you should get it right away, and it's much better, IMHO. It solves the problem of this thread by having event sheet includes, so you can have one event sheet that works for all levels, and it doesn't have the quirks MMF has that need to be worked around. I highly recommend it.