Scirra's Construct 2 Engine to Support Wii U Nintendo Web Framework Development

Hey whatever helps more Indy devs get on the Wii U eshop, the better. The system needs to see more than 2 releases per week on there.

HTML5 is never going to end up with an end result worth having. (There again nobody has managed to with Unity either to my knowledge).

Reading this news makes me happy knowing there's still some type of 3rd Pary support for Wii U :')

Looks like a nice little engine! ...I might have to check this out! ...I'm good with making 2D games, this looks built for 2D.

Hey, interesting! I have been following Construct for a few years and it very well suited to implement 2D game mechanics... this is neat!

HTML5 is even worse than a native mobile app.

Bombermine and Super Ubie Land are the best two HTML5 games I know and they are both awful.

Especially compared to e.g Something like the Chrome native version of Bastion.

Very good move by Nintendo. Make things as easy as possible for devs to bring their games to Wii U.

@RCMADIAX More impressive than say the Chrome version of Bastion ? (Which is basically identical to the normal one).

Well, I'll say this much: anything that I'll make with this will probably look better than anything I've previously done; I've never used vectors before (only sprites)... so I'd be able to do a lot more advanced art than I've used before... though I do like pixelart. :3

@Kodeen To be fair I have never really had a problem with how what Unity creates looks. Problem is the end result is never fun to play. Same style of game / art quality + XNA it comes out fun to play.

@unrandomsam you sure are a negative nancy arnt ya

brb making a game for wiiu

@unrandomsam You should try CrossCode. That's just one of many exciting HTML5 games - and it has a tech demo that's even playable on the WiiU browser (albeit without sound):

http://www.cross-code.com/en/play

Give it a try, it's already pretty awesome (D-Pad to move, touchscreen to attack - or you plug a USB keyboard in).

There seems to be a lot of negativity towards HTML5, Construct and Unity. As with any engine it depends entirely on the developers. HTML5 has come a long way in terms of performance thanks to certain engines and wrappers. I've been a Construct user for several years now and C2 performs very well on most platforms. As far as style goes, it's down to the developers - people use certain styles or make certain games because they're popular, not because they're using a specific engine or technology.

@Kodeen So why out of the list of Greenlight Unity games do none of them manage to get the controls right. (I bought about 10 on Desura). XNA gets it consistently right. Unreal I only have one example but it gets it right as well.

The original VVVVV and Hexagon is flash
Anodyne is Air

Nearly all the good stuff is XNA

Super Meatboy
Fez
Bastion
Spelunky
Rogue Legacy
Mark of the Ninja
Hotline Miami etc etc

@Philip_J_Reed Lol

@unrandomsam Hotline Miami was actually developed with GameMaker as far as I'm aware. But regardless, the engine or framework makes no difference. If you took a sample of 100 games built with any framework there are bound to be a percentage that get certain things wrong - no fault of the engine, it's down to developer.
The XNA games you've listed are all made by experienced developers over a lengthy period of time - Indie Game: The Movie shows Tommy discussing the great lengths he went to in getting the controls spot on for Meat Boy - inexperienced developers might not dedicate that much to it. If you compared them to a list of Unity games developed under similar conditions by similarly experienced developers then I'm sure they'd stack up. My experience with XNA games (mostly on the XBox Indie channel) shows a lot of.. well, dross.

@Corvid There are differences. Take writing a Saturn game. Or Havok (Sonic Team or their porters managed to mess up using that somehow).

Certain things are harder or easier to use well. (I have a friend who is a graphic designer who makes games commercially using Unity god knows how though I know he doesn't do any programming whatsoever though).

Some people could probably use anything. It seems rare that people have both the great ideas and the ability to implement them using anything. (Especially the stuff designed for massive teams).

This is good to hear. Very cool. Any chance anyone at NintendoLife is digging into what's going on with Wii U support for Monogame? Everyone seemed to be sharing the same story in October but I haven't heard a word about that since.

Hey,I have the free verison of construct 2. Neat!

@JustinH I have seen that loads of people repeat something but there is no source where it came from.

(Don't think Nintendo would like it though because people could use it without being a registered developer and the code would have to have knowledge about the Wii U that they seem fairly reluctant to give to people. It is different with a company because it can be NDA'ed).

Will be good if it does happen though. (As long as it is optimized and uses the cpu and gpu as optimal).
Not sure about the license and what is required of it.

More supported engines is always a good thing. Hopefully this translates into more games...

Wish GameSalad was as quick to the party. I've got an almost finished game in GameSalad, and if Construct 2 can do it with it's small dev team, no reason GameSalad shouldn't have been able to.

MechWarrior Tactics is on Unity. If only Microsoft didn't get their grubby paws on the rights,.we could possibly have seen it on the Wii U as its first free to play.

Alright YoyoGames, get GameMaker in there too!

Construct 2 is a great engine but seems very limited when compared to Gamemaker in my own opinion.

But then there's the Unity Framework. The best one out there. Now supports 2D. Nobody's using it. Wow.

I misread Scirra as Sierra and thought we'd get a game along the lines of The Incredible Machine.

@unrandomsam Gone Home was on a lot of Game of the Year lists and was built using Unity. As others have said, it is the developer of the game and not the tools that dictate quality.

I've made a full game using Construct 2. Brilliant engine, and I'm still learning new things each time I use it. With the frequent updates, it's always improving. I've applied for a Nintendo Dev license, and hope to release this month if at all possible.

@AnD4D You applied for your license in February and your game appeared in the Wii U eShop and I bought it yesterday. Your game is great and more than worth the price. Fun!

Why such a long delay?

I am a big fan of Construct 2 and have written some tutorials on using Construct 2 to create games for the Firefox Phones. Here are my first three tutorials:

http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/04/bouncing-ball-in-construct-2-game.html

http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/05/paddlefox-for-firefox-os-in-construct-2.html

http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/06/platform-game-using-construct-2-game.html

Even though these are for the Firefox Phone, it is really just HTML5 and would be very similar to the Nintendo Web Frameworks. The screen size would be the only difference.

Construct 2 is very easy to use and doesn't need any programming experience. If you want to make a game for Wii U, this is probably the simplest way to go!

@Thulfram Hi Thulfram! I hadn't made any changes to my game since March. The process with Nintendo was just slooooooow! I was accepted at the end of February, and made Internal Invasion using Construct 2. The thing is, NWF isn't really that great just yet, and my game required an awful lot of scaling back just to get an acceptable frame rate (believe it or not!). The fact that the C2 developer hasn't really supported the Nintendo side of things for months doesn't help either.

In the time it's taken to get a completed game onto the Wii U, I've nearly made a whole new game. It's bizarre really, but I'm happy with the result, and I thank you for your support! Feel free to ask me any more questions on here, or on twitter @bearboxmedia

Well, I liked the game I bought last night. I find it an interesting and innovative mechanic. I just wrote about it on the Construct 2 site at https://www.scirra.com/forum/another-c2-game-on-wii-u_t109799. So maybe you want to go over there and share your experiences. I'm sorry that Ashley hasn't been supporting the Wii U.

Is there any way to summarize what you had to scale back and what you did? The game plays just fine in its present state. Did you have any problems with "lotcheck" or other Nintendo rules and regulations?

I'm looking forward to your new game. Will you still use Construct 2 and will you (I hope) do it for Wii U?

The other Construct 2 game on Wii U seemed to go through fine. Blok Drop U and just had an update recently.

Are there any more Construct 2 games on Wii U? I am very curious about this. I've been doing Construct 2 games for Firefox Phones with no problems, but that's a different animal.