Questions from a mover (Stencyl to C2)

Hi to all.

First: my apologize for every typo / mistake, english is not my first language.

Second: If this isn't the right board, please move the thread accordingly

Third: I searched the forums and read almost every page of the manual, a book about C2 and approx 1248 tutorials

Fourth: in my day job, I am a Product Manager and Java / Groovy / Grails developer, focussing on mobile (cash) games, gambling websites and their backends

Enough said

Prolouge:

I was looking for a framwork to develop / draft out new HTML5(!) games quickly and while looking into several tools some years ago, a ended up with GameMaker: Studio, GameSalad, Construct 2 and Stencyl. Working on a Mac, Constuct 2 and GameMaker dropped to the end of the list, GameMaker to the very last place beeing very expensive for what I was looking for.

GameSalad feeled a bit limited to me and Stencyl 3 offered HTML5 export during the beta phase, so I gave it a chance and did four titles with it (a flash title for a GameJam and three mobile games) and a number of HTML5 prototypes, but at the end of the beta phase Stencyl dropped the (always limited) HTML5 support. While still loving the product, I had to look for another choice and ended up installing Parallels / Windows on my Mac to give C2 a chance.

What the heck?

Okay, to make a long story short: I noticed some major differences between C2 and Stencyl and some things I miss. And while missing things, I thought I could ask if there's something similar in C2?

Questions

Organzing code:

Stencyl has several places where the developer places his "code":

1.1. Scenes (Layout in C2) have an Event sheet. This is similar to C2

1.2. Scenes can have behaviors

1.3. Actors (Sprites/Objects) do have behaviors (similar to C2)

1.4. Actors do have it's own Event sheet.

1.5. The developer can write Scene (Layout)-Beviors in Stencyl

1.6. The developer can write Actor-Behaviors in Stencyl

1.7. Stencyl-Behaviors (Scenes, Actors) can be exported and re-used in other projects

While working with C2, I realized that it uses a different approach:

2.1. Each Layout can have it's own Event Sheet

2.2. Each Layout can include other Event Sheets

2.3. Behaviors are pre made and need to be developed externally in JavaScript

What I am missing now, is the following:

1. How to reuse my code? Can I export my Event Sheets? It looks like that copy & paste might work...

2. Can I do my own behaviors in C2 and attach them? (assuming that 2.3. is wrong)

For poeple who want to now "Why now C2?"

• HTML5. HTML5 and HTML5 (I can wrap them if I need native)
• Hoping the C3-Version for Mac is comming soon (thats the long term plan)
• A collegue of me is using it
• Don't laugh: I really do like the keyboard shortcuts C2 offers

What I miss (for the moment):

• The layout editor could need some love (compared to Stencyls Scene Editor)
• Folding events (not only groups)
• Comments on actions and not on Events (or do I miss something?)
• Printing / Exporting Events (I tried some tools to capture the window, but they cut the last two events or so)
• Retina support: on my machine the Icons are way to small and the action-dialogs "hide" the entries once I moved the mouse over them (have to resize the window to get them redrawed) and also Chrome's speed drops by the half (demo game 60fps down to 30 to 40fps, the game runs fine if previewed on chome on the Mac)
• Changing the font size of the properies editor and navigator panes

Thanks in advance for your replies, tipps & tricks and corrections on my wrong assumptions.

Cheers,

Dripple

Hi & welcome to the forums & C2.

1. For reusing code, the only way I know of is to copy-paste events/objects, & also use the 'replace object' command to quickly apply a set of events to a different object (or family of objects).

I've done lots of this & never had a problem, although you can only use replace object for objects of the same plugin type, eg. swap a sprite for another sprite, but not another tiled background.

2. Custom behaviors are made using the javascript sdk, but there's so much good stuff already available you'll probably never need to. Just do a search for add-ons made by R0j0hound & rex_rainbow (among others) & you'll see

Hi & welcome to the forums & C2.

Thanks, Matt. I am still looking around

1. For reusing code, the only way I know of is to copy-paste events/objects, & also use the 'replace object' command to quickly apply a set of events to a different object (or family of objects).

Okay, this is then where I have to change my workflow. Not a big deal.

2. Custom behaviors are made using the javascript sdk, but there's so much good stuff already available you'll probably never need to. Just do a search for add-ons made by R0j0hound & rex_rainbow (among others) & you'll see

I already found the stuff from rex and it was very helpfull with some of my experiments. I am not bad with JavaScript and can help myself if needed, but thats what I want to avoid. Otherwise I could simply start the games from scratch, doing them native.