Projects

A project is a complete game or app made in Construct 2. Projects contain every element making up the game, ranging from events to sound files. An overview of the project is shown in the Project Bar where elements can be added, renamed, removed and arranged in to folders for organisation. See Project structure for a summary of the elements making up a project. The rest of this manual section goes in to more detail about each part of a project.

Projects can be opened, closed and exported from the File menu. See also Saving and sharing projects and Exporting and Publishing. If you are interested in the technical details of exported projects see Technology. It is recommended to follow some best practices while working on projects.

Project properties

The properties for a project can be edited in the Properties Bar after selecting the name of the project in the Project Bar, or using the Project Properties shortcut in Layout Properties.

The Name, Author and Description properties are used for some of the export options, so be sure to fill them out accurately for any important projects.

Name
The name or title of the project.

Author
The name of the individual or organisation developing the project.

Description
A sentence or two giving a short summary of the project.

Version
A number identifying the version or revision of the project. You can use this for your own records, but it is also sometimes used when exporting your project to identify a new revision of the same project. Therefore it is a good idea to increment it when publishing a new version of a project.

First layout
Select which layout is the first to appear when the project is exported. When previewing in the editor usually a specific layout is previewed, so this setting has no effect until export.

Pixel rounding
By default Construct 2 objects can be drawn at sub-pixel positions, e.g. (100.3, 200.8). If the browser is using linear filtering, this can make fine pixel art appear blurry. If Pixel rounding is set to On, Construct 2 objects round their position to a whole number before drawing, e.g. (100, 201). This prevents any blurring, and can also prevent "seams" appearing on grids of objects. Note this does not affect their actual X and Y co-ordinates, which can still be between pixels - it only affects where they are drawn on the screen.

Window size
The size, in pixels, of the viewport in to the game. It is only used if Fullscreen in browser is Off. A dashed line indicating the window size appears in the Layout View.

Preview browser
Choose which browser is launched when previewing the project. All major browsers for Windows are listed. Use (default) to launch the system default browser. Use Custom to launch a custom browser set in Preferences. It is highly recommended to test in multiple browsers before releasing your project.

Preview mode
Select HTTP to preview using Construct 2's local server or File to preview from files on disk. Due to browser security limitations, projects usually do not work in File mode so HTTP is highly recommended instead. The File option is deprecated and will be removed in a future release - always use HTTP.

Fullscreen in browser
Instead of showing the project in a rectangle in a web page (with this option Off), the display can take up the entire browser window. There are two variations: Crop mode, which simply makes the viewport bigger, or Scale mode, which also scales the window content to fit the display. For more information see the tutorial on supporting multiple screen sizes.

Enable WebGL
Enable the faster and more powerful WebGL renderer where supported. The canvas 2D renderer will be used as fallback if WebGL is not supported. See the Technology section for more information on renderers. WebGL has two limitations: the XOR effect is not supported, and text objects always appear on top of everything else.

Sampling (WebGL only)
WebGL must be On for this setting to have any effect. Choose between linear (smooth) and point (pixellated) sampling when resizing images. Linear is recommended for modern games with hi-res graphics, and point is better suited to retro games with blocky pixel art.

Clear background
Skip clearing the screen to transparent black at the start of every frame. This is useful to improve performance on mobiles (see Performance Tips). Every tick, the frame is firstly cleared to transparent black, then secondly the background colour of the bottom layer is filled in (if not transparent), then finally objects are drawn. 'Clear background' sets whether to do the first clear. The layer 'transparent' property sets whether to do the second clear. If all layouts have opaque layers in them, you can safely set 'Clear background' to 'No' since a layer background will always clear the screen. If all layouts are completely obscured by sprites or other objects, you can also set all layers to transparent to skip both clears every tick. However, in this case, any areas not covered by objects will appear glitchy or full of garbage pixel data.