Before I buy, does iOS exporter work properly?

Hi all

I'm a new member here, but I'm a very old user of MMF, used it since it was called "Click & Create" by Corel :)

I have abandoned the software very long time ago due to its very slow (nearly non) updates.

But two days ago My jaw really dropped when seeing the new MMF 2.5 and some very cool games that made with it (on Youtube).

Now, my question is: I'm willing to pay for the software, but my main focus is iOS market. So does the exporter really do its job right?

I've took a quick search in the forum and saw nothing but complains and bug reports, specially with iOS 7.

I don't want to be fooled by the claims that MMF 2.5 can do iOS games. I want the truth only. I need a good performing games on iOS 6, 7, 8 etc.

Your input on thins is highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

I'd say yes, it does work. BUT, if you want to create a complex project, you have to be smart about things, no lazy programming or your game can have performance issues. Most bugs in the runtime relate to small features (like an action might behave differently than expected) these are generally fixed very quickly (with the new bug tracker) There are loads of Fusion made games on the App store that work across Apples suite of devices/os'.

Check out Slayin', Mega City, Manos, Awesome Land, Pocket Ninja etc. All commercially successful (depending on your measure for success I suppose) and all made with Fusion.

There have been a LOT of updates, while it still was MMF2, several builds were released that fixed bugs and sometimes added new functions.

Like Davey said, try games made with MMF to see what it's capable of doing, other games to check out: Odd Planet, Pollyroll, Clash Force, Ba-Bomb, etc.

One problem with iOS7 is that it uses more RAM and processor power than iOS6, so some games (not only MMF made games) that used to barely run on iOS6 may not work now, this is a problem with iPhone 4 mainly.

A good test might be to check out some of the commercial games in the Apple App store that are powered by Fusion.
Then you can judge if your game would be about the same as those or not.

You can find a bunch of them linked here
http://www.indiegamecreator.com/

And more here:
http://community.clickteam.com/forums/267-iOS-Released-Games-amp-Apps

Thanks Dave, Oruga and Jeff for the explanation and examples.

Frankly I'm hesitated between MMF 2.5, GameSalad, and Construct 2.

GameSalad: is aimed mainly to iOS, so I have no worry of getting my games to work in iOS devices. But really I don't like its yearly subscription, and its way of doing game logic (no events sheet). So I might drop it from my list.

MMF 2.5: is great, but aimed mainly to Windows, and you need to pay more to get your games be exported to other platforms through special exporters. So this is a negative for me.

Construct 2: Frankly I don't have much knowledge about it, But it seems like very similar to MMF. I wish that if someone can shed more light on it for me and others.

In addition, I'm planning to get Unity 3D in my production arsenal to develop more advanced, more visually polished 2d and 3D games. But still I feel I need a tool to allow me quickly draft and produce a working 2D games / prototypes.

Waiting for your input on this dilemma :)

Regards

Some additional questions please:

1- Does MMF 2.5 has a particle system?
2- Does it has visual effects / blend modes / shaders?
3- Does it support iAds and IAP (In App Purchase) for iOS? If yes, is it easy to implement them? or it needs some expert knowledge to do it?
4- I saw a very cool feature in Construct 2 where you can create several event sheets, each sheet has its own events list. That's very nice to reduce events clutter. Does MMF has such thing?
5- Regarding plugins, how can I know which one will work in iOS and which one won't?

I hope I can find an encouraging answers with you guys.

Thanks in advance.

As far as I know -- The other tool like ours (well a copy of ours - I refuse to say their name) uses a wrappers system around an HTML5 file.
If you do a little looking on their forums it seems this runs really badly for a lot of people. I have also heard from some other people but I don't know for sure, the wrapper technology they use isn't supported anymore or free or something ... I don't know and I don't want a discussion about it here.

I have no real input on the other tools you mention.
Unity is certainly a pro level tool but you have to write syntax -- Its completely a different class then the other tools in your list.

You should wait till Fusion Free version comes out hopefully in a couple weeks and see.

Like a user I can say the name X)

I used Construct 2 in past...It's a great tool to make games just for fun.....dont dream to think that you can make commercial games for iOS and Android with Construct 2....it's a very poor performance

1- I'm not sure exactly what you're after.. I make my own particle effects, there are also at least a couple of particle spray extensions.
2- yes, most of the effects are best suited to the windows runtime though
3- yes and it is easy if you know how to follow instructions
4- I don't think this exact feature is here, but all objects can have their own separate event lists and you can use groups and sub groups to keep things even more organised as well
5- in the extension manager it's clear which extensions are supported and which aren't.. you might have to wait for the demo. Or just send a message to the CT staff and they can give you the info

The broader point.. Unity and Fusion are different animals, you can put a game together in Fusion in less than a week with no complex coding required.. it's apples and oranges. Unity would be more powerful+flexible but at a >huge< cost of increased time spent achieving things that could be done in minutes in Fusion, it depends what you want to achieve.

Construct can only export to HMTL5 - it does not have a true iOS/Android exporter.. apparently games run very slow because of this.

5.- here's the list of the extensions that are supported (It could be missing some) by the iOS exporter http://www.clickteam.com/ios-export-module-details

I made a game on Construct 2, the actual program seemed very poor to me, like if it was a wrapped application running on top of some runtime. the performance was really bad (I have an old computer running Win XP SP3 but no problem running F2.5), didn't seem like a native Windows program and working on that was hell.

It has some pros like how it handles events separately from frames, so you can reuse events and use multiple events in a frame, but that's about it. No path movements (creating this manually is hell too), etc. As mentioned, the apps it creates are wrapped HTML5 apps and the performance is really poor. You can download some to try them and compare, most I downloaded would not run on my device, and the one that did, ran at about 20 FPS. At this time I would not recommend it over MMF2 or F2.5.

Thanks to everyone for your contribution on my topic.

I'm ready now to purchase Fusion 2.5 developer. But is there any current bundle to save some money?

Also, does Fusion 2.5 support importing sprites from "Spriter" software? (http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm)

Thanks again for your grate help to me and to others.

Or if you know some better software to do sprites please share with us.

Thanks

There are no bundles, if you are short on money you can buy standard version and upgrade to developer later. (check what you would be missing first).

You cannot use sprites in Spriter format, but maybe (I'm not familiar with Spriter) you can export your Spriter created graphics to bitmaps and you can import those bitmaps into F2.5.

There has been talk of having an extension for spriter and skeletal animation in general, but there is no official support. You can search the forums for "spriter" to see some of the discussion. I believe you can still use the program, but you have to export to PNG and then import the frames.