Game development is very similar to making music, writing books, making movies, and pretty much every other creative process. As a creator, you might have an idea that you want people to enjoy. You have to find the tools and the time necessary to make your ideas a reality. If you don't make your idea a reality, people will not get to enjoy your creation. It only makes sense that you choose the right tools for the right job.
With lots of options in terms of how to develop your game and with what engine, it is easy to become lost. Let's take a moment to see what we really want in a game engine. A game engine should have the following attributes:
- It should be very user friendly
- It should have a lot of export options
- It should be fairly inexpensive
- It should be able to make your creation a reality
Let's have a small introduction to Construct 2. Construct 2 is one of the best non-programming engines around. I have made a ton of games on it.
So, what makes Construct 2 (C2) so awesome? The first reason is that it develops games using HTML5. HTML5 is the new version of HTML, and the best part about this is that you can play these HTML5 games right in your browser. The Web has a ton of infrastructure around it, and HTML5 games tap into that infrastructure. HTML5 games can be played almost anywhere, which makes exporting a real charm. While HTML5 is still under development, browser support gets better by the day.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Downloading and installing Construct 2
- Coding in Construct 2
Downloading and installing Construct 2 is pretty easy. You need to have a computer if you want to use Construct 2. You cannot run this on a Mac. You need to perform the following steps to download and install Construct 2:
- Go to http://www.scirra.com.
- Click on the Download button, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Once you've downloaded it, follow the instructions and the installation should be simple.
The numbers refer to the version of Construct 2 you are using (https://www.scirra.com/construct2/releases). This is simply just Scirra's way of versioning the software. There are stable releases and beta releases. Scirra releases a beta version first to work out all of the bugs then they release a stable version. You should use the stable release as the beta releases might be a bit unstable. On that note, I always download the beta releases and I have never had a problem. However, it is advisable to use the stable releases.