"HTML5 is the future of the gaming industry." Interview with the creators of the Construct framework

Tom Gallen and Ashley Gallen are brothers, the founders of Scirra, and the creators of the Construct framework, with which anyone can create a game, even without programming knowledge. Construct Classic is distributed free of charge with open source and is designed to create DirectX-games (there is an SDK and support for plug-ins in C ++). On its basis, the shareware Construct 2 for HTML5 games is made, where Box2D is used as an engine. Description see in the article "Development of 2D games for Windows and HTML5 without programming . "



The founders of the company Scirra noticed the interest of the audience Habra to their development and readily answered the questions of habrazhiteley . Original interview in English. lies here just in case.



Basically, Tom Gallen answered questions, but he asked that he be helped by Ashley.



- When did you decide to make a designer of games on HTML5 and why? Do you play mobile games yourself? What do you think, the future of the gaming industry - on a mobile platform?

- Generally, Construct was originally designed for export in several formats. This means that you can connect to it other modules for export. We started with HTML5, because it is the most exciting new technology that we absolutely believe in, and it will be the most popular on the market. Over the past couple of months, when Construct 2 was being finalized, we have seen that HTML5 has come a long way. Our main goal right now is to make Construct 2 a de facto standard as a HTML5 gaming editor that does not require programming. When we achieve this goal, we can look at other export modules, but we think that as HTML5 evolves, the need for other export formats will become less important. We really think that now it’s obvious: it’s HTML5 that is the future of the gaming industry.

')

About playing mobile games, yes, it does! Although in reality we do not have much time now, they are very busy, because the two of us are the only full-time Scirra employees. We are working on an HTML5 arcade that has been recently released and which is gaining popularity, and between ourselves we try and play all the games that are being downloaded to us. My favorite so far has been Project Blaze Zero . We are very pleased to see different types of games that are created using our tool, and to see that it is used exactly as intended!



The mobile platform definitely has a great future for the gaming industry. For the first time in a long time, we see people of all ages playing games. They are extremely popular, fun and quick to capture. Monetizing HTML5 games is still a new area, but we expect many new features to appear in this area as technology improves.



- Why DirectX, not OpenGL?

- Construct 2 actually already uses OpenGL instead of DirectX. DirectX only works on Windows, so we switched to OpenGL so that in the future it would be easier to port Construct 2 to other platforms. However, we do not have such plans yet - we first want to finish the Windows version!



Our games also use WebGL (OpenGL in the browser) for super fast hardware-accelerated rendering. It is two to three times faster than regular 2D canvas.



- Do you have plans to port Construct 2 to other platforms besides Windows?

- Construct 2 was designed for Windows, because Ashley had the most programming experience here, after working with Construct Classic. But we received positive feedback from users about the successful experience of using Construct 2 on virtual machines on Mac and Linux (although we do not officially support these operating systems).



For other operating systems, we have some promising plans that we may begin to implement in 2012. I'm afraid so far I can not disclose the details. :) We are fully aware that people need it for Construct 2, we receive a lot of letters on this subject. But for now, the goal is to ensure the best possible performance of Construct 2 on a PC.



- What functionality do you plan to add?

- We just released particle effects, you can see some demos here:

www.scirra.com/labs/particlesdemo

www.scirra.com/labs/particlethruster



As far as we know, we have the first non-program game engine that officially supports the effects of particles on HTML5. I can't wait to see how it is used in real projects, with its help you can create really, really beautiful games!



- Will drag'n'drop be fully supported?

- Release 78 supports including the official drag'n'drop behavior, which should satisfy everyone.



- Will there be Russian localization?

- Because we ourselves are English-speaking, and also due to different time constraints, the project was created only in English. However, when it is ready, we plan to add language XML files, so that anyone can translate the entire Construct 2 entirely into their own language! We will be happy to do this, but first you need to finish the work on Construct 2, because adding localizations is much more difficult than it seems. We know well that the Russian market is huge and a significant part of the traffic comes to us from Russia! We want to please the Russian audience even more, non-English speaking countries are often neglected in software, and we don’t want to fall into this simple trap. Expect significant progress here this year.



- Is there any hope for an increase in the performance of HTML5 games?

- Definitely! Every month HTML5 is improving very quickly. For example, only today (at the time of the interview - note lane.) Google released Chrome for Android, this is great news. I think WebGL this year is also likely to work on more devices. Of course, there is still a lot of room for improvement, but HTML5 is clearly on the path to catching up and even surpassing other technologies like Flash.



—How complex games can you build with Construct 2? What genres is the designer focused on?

- Construct 2 is suitable for virtually any genre of 2D games! We have not yet seen very difficult games, because Construct 2 is still fairly new, but Construct 2 is capable of much, as long as the events are neat. :)



- Will you add behaviors from the previous Classic Construct to Construct 2? We are talking about such behaviors as Line of Sight, RTS, Turret, Bone Movement.

- Yes, absolutely, we hope that Construct 2 will completely replace Construct Classic. However, Classic was made 3-4 years a team of several people, and we started anew from scratch with a small team. We seriously intend to add all these behaviors, just for us this is a very large amount of work. We hope that in time we will do everything!



- Will there be support for the social component - Facebook, Twitter, etc., as well as support for InApp purchases using at least the same PayPal?

“We know well that social functionality and InApp purchases are important for professional users to monetize their games and help distribute them in a viral way. We are working on great projects in this area, which should appear later this year!



- How average is the size of the executable file obtained with the help of your tools, the larger (if larger) executable files? obtained by the usual coding for the same game? Are relevant optimization work underway? What programming languages ​​are the proposed game constructors written in?

- The editor is written in C ++, and the games are encoded in Javascript. Since Construct 2 has a wide functionality, an empty project after minification comes about 65 KB in size, which is less than the current version of jQuery (92 KB), so this should not be a problem. Moreover, since we have implemented many functions, such as automatic collision detection, this is completely justified. Construct 2 also has a modular design, so any plugins or behaviors that you don’t use are not included in the script, which helps save space. Using the framework usually means a slightly larger amount of code, but since it allows you to create games so much easier and faster, in the end it’s better. We don't want to make it too bloated, so I think staying less than jQuery is a good goal.



- Do development methods from the Agile-family work for open source, if we consider that they are nevertheless oriented towards face-to-face communication? (Finally, it is possible to ask a person in a live open-source project!)

- We are such a small team that we really cannot comment on software development on a large scale. At the same time, we truly believe that face-to-face communication is important for effective work. Another good thing is Skype communication, so that everyone is in the know. In general, our development methodology is probably best described as “working very hard”!



- Is it possible to make a more readable js-code (before minification) for manual doping?

- When you export a project to Construct 2, you can refuse the closure Compiler minification. However, using a large non-programmer framework like Construct 2 by definition usually means that the output code is not very useful for programmers. This is not something you would like to work with. If you are a programmer, take a look at our Javascript Plugin SDK, which allows you to add your own code and integrate it with Construct 2 - this method works much better than trying to edit the output code.



- What do you think about Russian programmers? :)

- Russia gives the impression of a country that is very interested in technology and programming, which is great, this is reflected in the large number of visitors who come to us from Russia! One of my good friends is Russian, he has a younger brother of only about eight years old, and when I came to visit them, he played with Construct 2 and made his own games, and asked me many questions about how the system works. Security in Construct 2! We are also very impressed with the nginx server that Igor Sysoev wrote. Russian programmers obviously know what they are doing!