Through Construct's website visitors can run Construct 3 in the browser. Construct 3 allows anybody at any level, from 12-year olds to fully-fledged designers, to make their own computer games on Windows, Linux and Android.
To build Construct 3, Construct needed to invest significantly in its web infrastructure. To support, it chose Microsoft Azure, backed by Fanatical Support, from Rackspace to host the website, design and build the Azure infrastructure, and manage and maintain the cloud deployment. With the website now hosted in the cloud, Construct can now easily deal with infrastructure demand by deploying more resources.
A quickly scalable website is crucial for a product like Construct 3, with increasing traffic, bandwidth and demand coming with success. Construct sometimes had to serve over 300gbs of bandwidth on a single day – in peak hours this could rise to three page views per second. Stability of the website was becoming a concern, and a managed cloud service provider was becoming a necessity.
Rackspace supported Construct in installing additional infrastructure in CloudFlare’s Railgun server, which means the website is now optimised for its growing user base. This means the Construct 3 website is more reliable, with better error reporting and monitoring. It’s also highly responsive, with high DPI images and new architecture that allows the rapid development and deployment of new features.
Construct Director and co-founder Tom Gullen said, “Naturally the website has gone through a complete redesign. In the first hours of launching Construct 3, we had 10,000 users in the first 24 hours.
“During development, the Rackspace team proved themselves invaluable, exceptionally talented, and always available to help when something goes wrong. Server administration expertise is something we’re lacking in the company. We view Rackspace as an additional employee.”
With nothing to install, all users need to do to use Construct 3 is visit the website. Easy to pick and play, Construct allows users to create a game in minutes, but offers the possibility for designers to build complex puzzles, platformers and action games – without the need for any programming knowledge. They can then publish the game on platforms like Steam, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Facebook and Xbox One.
Gullen added, "We started working on Construct 3 over three years ago. We believed it was highly important for our business to have a product that works and runs on the latest web technology, such as HTML 5. We are at the bleeding-edge of technology, built now and for the future."
Darren Norfolk, MD of Rackspace said, “As a fast growing, online brand, Construct needs a cloud service that allows it to easily scale as necessary. By partnering with Rackspace, we’ve been able to help them to spend more time innovating and improving the tools they provide, while we manage their cloud. As the gaming sector goes from strength to strength, we’re looking forward to building this partnership and helping them develop their tools further.”
