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Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

phoboslab.org

21–30 of 74 posts

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is comparing apples with oranges. HTML5 games are meant to compete with current flash games, not with native (and far more expensive to create) 3D games like the one in the video. Most of the succesful mobile games are created using a 2d engine. In the future, this could be done using HTML5 and its nice to see that some pioneers in the field already release engines to play around with it.

HTML5 is very much competing with native as well. HTML5 vs. Flash is just games on Kongregate etc, if that's all HTML5 does, if it even does, then its failed as a casual gaming platform.

I see HTML5 as a growing as a competitor to the native platform. When NaCl (NativeClient) is supported by the popular browsers you can shift all the computationally intensive calculations to the native code and have the rendering done in the browser window. Well, but I guess we'll have to wait for hardware acceleration too to be common thing in these browsers. With FF4 disabling something awesome like websockets by default, IMHO we are going backwards.

P.S: Again the future of IE comes into play. Will they support NativeClient or stick to ActiveX stuff.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#23
And there we go - the typical HN oh no, it costs money ($99 for an engine, mind you, that may save you hundreds of hours development time). How much do you charge per hour? Can this library save you hundreds of hours? Do the math.

I am not surpirsed at all that the average tech startup is a failure, with more than half of the people failing to get the "charge money for product/service" model everyone else in the world is using.

Oh no, it costs money. So what exactly are you trying to start that succeeds without having a price tag on it? Man, I get tired of this, really. For every spot-on comment on HN, I read 5 that make me dumber each day.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML5 is very much competing with native as well. HTML5 vs. Flash is just games on Kongregate etc, if that's all HTML5 does, if it even does, then its failed as a casual gaming platform.

I see HTML5 as a growing as a competitor to the native platform. When NaCl (NativeClient) is supported by the popular browsers you can shift all the computationally intensive calculations to the native code and have the rendering done in the browser window. Well, but I guess we'll have to wait for hardware acceleration too to be common thing in these browsers. With FF4 disabling something awesome like websockets by d…

It's going to come down to the revenue streams and whether or not models emerge that make a single HTML5 version as (potentially) rewarding as multiple native versions.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#25
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is comparing apples with oranges. HTML5 games are meant to compete with current flash games, not with native (and far more expensive to create) 3D games like the one in the video. Most of the succesful mobile games are created using a 2d engine. In the future, this could be done using HTML5 and its nice to see that some pioneers in the field already release engines to play around with it.

HTML5 is very much competing with native as well. HTML5 vs. Flash is just games on Kongregate etc, if that's all HTML5 does, if it even does, then its failed as a casual gaming platform.

As of the moment of writing, I do not see HTML5 competing with native games. Especially on mobile devices the performance problems are still to big to make it possible to write the same games as you could write natively. Also I was mentioning native 3D games, not native games such as casual/2d. It could quite possibly be that in the future it will be competing with native 3d games, but right now, this is not realistic to claim.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#26
post #20

The grand list of similar (free) projects: http://easeljs.com/ https://github.com/biilly/doodle-js https://github.com/fairfieldt/xcjs https://github.com/batiste/sprite.js https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js https://github.com/ysimonson/canvas.js https://github.com/davebalmer/jo https://github.com/lostdecade/diggy http://gamejs.org/ http://www.aframejs.com/ http://gamequery.onaluf.org/ http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/

Does anyone have any experience with one or more of the above, to help narrow down the field of viable frameworks?

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#27
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML5 is very much competing with native as well. HTML5 vs. Flash is just games on Kongregate etc, if that's all HTML5 does, if it even does, then its failed as a casual gaming platform.

As of the moment of writing, I do not see HTML5 competing with native games. Especially on mobile devices the performance problems are still to big to make it possible to write the same games as you could write natively. Also I was mentioning native 3D games, not native games such as casual/2d. It could quite possibly be that in the future it will be competing with native 3d games, but right now, this is not realisti…

Yes, Flash is the easy target. But it's also a complete non-victory - the prize for "winning" is HTML5 games will co-exist on sites like Kongregate and Armor Games, and maybe one day represent the majority of new titles.

That still leaves games being developed natively for multiple mobile platforms that are bigger markets, more rewarding, and increasingly more important than Flash for casual gaming.

The fight really isn't whether you develop:

Flash + iPhone + Android + WinMo + whatever

vs.

HTML5 + iPhone + Android + WinMo + whatever.

That nullifies the only benefit of HTML5 - not having to do different versions for each platform.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#28
post #26
post #20

The grand list of similar (free) projects: http://easeljs.com/ https://github.com/biilly/doodle-js https://github.com/fairfieldt/xcjs https://github.com/batiste/sprite.js https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js https://github.com/ysimonson/canvas.js https://github.com/davebalmer/jo https://github.com/lostdecade/diggy http://gamejs.org/ http://www.aframejs.com/ http://gamequery.onaluf.org/ http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/

Does anyone have any experience with one or more of the above, to help narrow down the field of viable frameworks?

I've been doing some tests with sprite.js. For what I want to do, it seems a bit sluggish and has some bugs. You can switch between DOM and Canvas mode, which is neat, but there are some bugs in the canvas mode that cause my sprites to disappear, and sprites with a repeating texture seem to show a seam. Impact looks quite a bit more polished.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#29
post #26
post #20

The grand list of similar (free) projects: http://easeljs.com/ https://github.com/biilly/doodle-js https://github.com/fairfieldt/xcjs https://github.com/batiste/sprite.js https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js https://github.com/ysimonson/canvas.js https://github.com/davebalmer/jo https://github.com/lostdecade/diggy http://gamejs.org/ http://www.aframejs.com/ http://gamequery.onaluf.org/ http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/

Does anyone have any experience with one or more of the above, to help narrow down the field of viable frameworks?

https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js has 900+ followers on github, by far the biggest project from my initial analysis.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#30
post #20

The grand list of similar (free) projects: http://easeljs.com/ https://github.com/biilly/doodle-js https://github.com/fairfieldt/xcjs https://github.com/batiste/sprite.js https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js https://github.com/ysimonson/canvas.js https://github.com/davebalmer/jo https://github.com/lostdecade/diggy http://gamejs.org/ http://www.aframejs.com/ http://gamequery.onaluf.org/ http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/

Sorry for the shameless plug, but my games also use a ready-to-use JS game engine entirely developed by me. They don't look as polished as Biolab, but I surely enjoyed writing them.

A demo: http://ralphgoodtimes.com/webgame_chillyzombies.html

Source code here: http://ralphgoodtimes.com/webgames_info.html

Use it for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed developing them.

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