Jump into HTML game dev with the free Construct 2

Today's Fun Wednesday project is one that's going to help you great cool games, free! These HTML5 games can be exported to Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and other platforms as well.

Construct 2

Physics

Add realistic physics effects to your games in a few easy clicks.

Special Effects

Over 70 visual effects to make your games look exceptional.

Preview over Wifi

Instantly preview your games on mobiles & tablets over Wifi.

Complete Manual

Full access to our comprehensive documentation.

Friendly Community

Get help and share your experiences with our welcoming and friendly community.

Extendible

Use our fully documented Javascript SDK to extend Construct 2.

No Programming Required

Make your game do what it needs to do in a visual and human readable way with the powerful event system.

There's no need to memorise cryptic languages. Focus on what really matters: designing your game!

It's ideal for beginners, and powerful enough to let experts prototype faster than ever before.

...

Okay, that sounds great... But how do you get started (and given that I did mention free...)

Construct 2 [Download]

The Free HTML5 Game Engine

Download Construct 2 Now

Construct 2 Free Edition has been downloaded by tens of thousands of people. Download Construct 2 now and start making your own games!

106mb for Windows XP, Vista & 7

Free Bundle Download

The free edition of Construct 2 also comes with sprites, sound effects and original music for you to add to your games!

13.1 MB - Free Music/SoundFX/Sprites

Want more features?

Unlock Construct 2's true potential by upgrading to a license today.

A license is required if you want to make money from your games!

How hard is it to create a Windows 8 App? I had my first, using one of the sample projects, in under 3 minutes...

How to make a Windows 8 app

Creating a game for Windows 8 is easy with Construct 2. If you haven't already, download the Free edition and get going with the Beginner's guide!

You might also be interested in exporting to Windows Phone 8 as well (which must be done separately).

Setup

You'll need Windows 8 (RTM or newer - it won't work on the Release Preview or older). You then need to install Visual Studio 2012 Express on Windows 8.

If you're installing Windows 8 and have never installed an operating system before, please take care during the setup. You may need to adjust BIOS settings and format or partition a disk. Making a mistake could cause data loss or result in a system that is difficult to recover. If you're not sure you should ask someone for help while setting up, since the steps involved are out of the scope of this guide, and be certain to make backups of any important data beforehand.

Development

You'll need to add touch controls. See this tutorial on touch controls for help on that.

Different devices have different size screens. See supporting multiple screen sizes.

You can add the Windows 8 object to your project to take integrate with Windows 8 specific features like snap and roaming storage.

Exporting from Construct 2

First, ensure your project has the right Name, Description and Author properties set, since these will be used in the exported app.

In the Export Project dialog, choose Export for Windows 8 and follow the next steps as you would for exporting an ordinary project.

In the export directory you will find a Visual Studio project. Note there are three image files for the app icons, app-logo.png, app-smalllogo.png and app-storelogo.png. You should replace these with your own images but keep them exactly the same dimensions.

The main project file has the extension .sln (solution). Double-click it in Windows 8 and Visual Studio should open it.

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Yeah, you read that right, the export results in a Visual Studio Solution.

I install Construct 2, created a new Space Blaster project, exported to Windows 8, set my Publisher cert and BAM! I had my Win8 Modern UI game up and playing. That's pretty cool...

Start:

Create:

Export:

Build:

Play!

Yep, you have a ready for the Windows Store game...

What kind of games can you create? Just check out the arcade, http://www.scirra.com/arcade. But be careful as you might not see the light of day for a while... there's some pretty funny games, for example the NSFW My Irrational Fear of Unicorns had me laughing out loud.

What? You want even more power and capabilities? You want to mesh this with the very cool Azure Mobile Services? Well I've got a plugin just for you...

Azure Mobile Services Plugin for Construct 2

This plugin for Construct 2 makes it easy to integrate the power of Azure Mobile Services into your games for Windows 8. Saving to the cloud is a great way to seamlessly store data for achievements, leaderboards, save games, user data and lots more!

Features:

Conditions

Data

• On Query Completed
• On Record Deleted
• On Record Inserted
• On Record Updated

Data Error Handling

• On Query Error
• On Record Delete Error
• On Record Insert Error
• On Record Update Error

Identity

• Is User Authenticated
• On Authenticate Success
• On Logged Out

Identity Error Handling

• On Authenticate Error

Actions

Data

• Delete Existing Record
• Insert New Record
• Query Table
• Update Existing Record

Identity

• Authenticate User
• Log Out

Expressions

• LastData
• LastFullName
• LastUserID

That enough to keep you busy this weekend? I think so...