Even though Construct 2 has great support for various mobile platforms, exporting to these platforms won't be easy. You still need to download additional software called development kit from each platform holder and use it to build your mobile game. The easiest way to publish for mobile is, perhaps, to export as an Open Web App and submit the game to the Firefox marketplace, only supporting mobile devices.
Note
If you want to read a lengthy tutorial on it, there's one on Scirra's website at https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/74/publishing-and-promoting-your-construct-2-game.
Another way to export a game for mobile platforms is to use the PhoneGap export option. PhoneGap is a framework that builds your HTML5 game to be ready for the three major platforms: Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. It also has a service called PhoneGap build service that builds our game in their cloud server; we only need to supply the HTML5 files.
So, just like usual, we'll export our game, but this time, we will choose the PhoneGap option for the platform to export to. Just like we did when we published an Open Web App game, we need to fill out the description, ID, and version number in our game's project properties before continuing; after this is done, click on Next. The export options here are the same with most target platforms in Construct 2; after you're done, click on the Next button.
The next window is the PhoneGap export options; this is where you'll set several things for your game, such as the following options:
- Supported devices: This feature sets whether your game is for handsets (smartphones) only, or tablets only, or both (universal option)
- Permissions: This feature is used to ask users to allow your game to use some in-game features; these in-game features are:
- Geolocation: This is to find out about the user's location
- Camera: This is to use a camera from the user's device
- Vibrate: This is to make the user's device vibrate
- Media: This is to use microphone input from the user's device
- Minimum supported OSs: This sets the lowest version of iOS and Android that is supported by your game. Older mobile OS versions have poor support for PhoneGap apps, so it is advised that you stick to the recommended option.
After you're done, click on the Export button to start exporting. If it's finished, you'll have all the files needed to be uploaded to the PhoneGap build service.
Note
The PhoneGap build service won't export to iOS if you're not an Apple developer. You must be registered as an iOS developer to build iOS games with the PhoneGap build service.
Becoming an Apple developer requires you to pay for $99 a year, and for students, their school has to participate in the Apple University Program. More information on this can be found at https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/72/how-to-become-an-ios-developer.
First, open the folder with your exported PhoneGap game files and add them all to a .zip file. Just like you did when zipping the Open Web App, you must zip all the files in the folder and not the folder itself. After that, we can go to the PhoneGap site.
To use the PhoneGap build service, you need to go to https://build.phonegap.com/ and register an account.
After that, you can create a new app; don't forget to select the Upload a zip file option. This is where you select the previous .zip file and upload it.
Now, you just need to wait for a few minutes while the site is building your game. After it's done, you can download the files for each platform to your computer. Your game is now ready to be published on various application stores!
There are many more export options available in Construct 2, such as the Chrome web store, Kongregate, Blackberry 10, Tizen, the Amazon Appstore, and the Windows Store. For more information on this, I've provided a link at the beginning of the Publishing to mobile platforms section.