Introduction

Construct is a free open-source game creator for DirectX 9-based games. It includes an event based system for defining how the game will behave, in a visual, human-readable way - without programming! It's intuitive for beginners, yet powerful for advanced users. Optionally, expert users can also use Python scripting to add code to your creations.

Construct is not a commercial software project, instead being developed by volunteers. It is 100% free to download the full version - no nag screens, adverts or restricted features at all.

Features

Create games and applications with:

• Intuitive event system for beginners and advanced users alike to get results fast - no programming!
• Super fast hardware-accelerated DirectX 9 rendering engine
• Add pixel shaders for special effects, including lighting, HDR, distortion, lenses and more
• Advanced rendering effects like motion blur, skew and bumpmapping (3D lighting)
• Innovative built-in Behaviors for easily defining how objects work in a flexible way - eg. the Platform movement
• Physics engine for realistic object behavior
• Bone animation system for smooth, dynamic animations using separate objects as 'limbs'
• Place object on different layers for organising display, parallaxing, or whole-layer effects - and freely zoom individual layers with high detail
• Debugger giving you complete control over all aspects of your game for testing purposes.
• Python scripting for advanced users - however, Construct's Events system is still powerful enough to complete entire games without any scripting.
• Smaller, faster specialised runtime for applications
• 60+ plugins ranging from Tiled Background to Windows controls and a C++ plugins & behaviors SDK for expansion

Development process

Construct is developed open source under the General Public License (GPL). This means you can download and use Construct for free, but it also means that the underlying source code - the code that defines how the program works - is also freely available. This means other programmers are free to fix errors in the code and make their own contributions to Construct. Development is located on Construct's SourceForge.net page.

For more information, see Open-source Software (Wikipedia) and GPL (Wikipedia), the open-source license Construct uses.

User Interface Library

Construct uses the Prof-UIS professional user interface library, with kind permission of FOSS Software, Inc. Remember if you wish to use this library in your own project, you must purchase the appropriate license from the website.