Impact HTML5 Game Engine released • Hacker News Board

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#41

Post by marcusbooster » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 6:39 PM UTC

savoy11 wrote: post #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 worl…

If I had a penny for every time I've read an open-source vs. proprietary software thread in the past 2 decades I might have enough to buy this framework. But then I wouldn't benefit from the contributions of other users and the freedom to modify the source code to fit my own needs.

And there are plenty of pricing options beyond the actual code.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#42

Post by dstein » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 6:42 PM UTC

I'm not sure if it's technically feasible, but there is probably a huge market for a game engine that can export JS/Canvas code to a native app code.

I think now that Apple lighten up on their developer rules this is now a possibility.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#43

Post by catshirt » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 6:48 PM UTC

savoy11 wrote: post #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 worl…

What do you mean by "the typical HN oh no"? Not for nothing, but I see literally only 3 comments that could be considered "negative", and they're all pretty mild.

That out of the way, I can't help but think you're missing something else. Who exactly are you assuming is the likely purchaser of this product?

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#44

Post by patrickaljord » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 7:01 PM UTC

SingAlong wrote: post #21

benologist wrote: post #10

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…

Chrome is disabling websockets too.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#45

Post by _pius » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 7:12 PM UTC

A little OT, but where do game designers here tend to buy their artwork? Is there an equivalent of ThemeForest/GraphicRiver for sprites and other game assets?

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#46

Post by ido » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 7:15 PM UTC

_pius wrote: post #45

A little OT, but where do game designers here tend to buy their artwork? Is there an equivalent of ThemeForest/GraphicRiver for sprites and other game assets?

www.wayofthepixel.net isn't bad for finding artists looking for contract work.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#47

Post by cosgroveb » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 7:29 PM UTC

kj12345 wrote: post #15

steveklabnik wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webgl http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/examples/geometry_minecraf... Not there yet, but it's a start.

I wrote a little WebGL last week, and it seemed like a really solid API. Auto-compiled shaders right in the page as scripts, conversion between js arrays and GL buffers is easy, etc. The only major problem in Chrome 9 beta at least is 100% pegged CPU even on a simple scene...

Try starting Chrome with: --enable-accelerated-compositing

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#48

Post by Twisol » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 7:42 PM UTC

rufo wrote: post #33

joakin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone 4 here, smooth and addictive despite the 20 secs it took to load ( wifi )

It's a bit choppy on my iPhone 4, but it does work just fine for me. Choppy, but playable.

Considering the last three parent comments are using an iPhone 4, the diversity of performance reports astounds me.

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#49

Post by clyfe » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 8:06 PM UTC

charlesju wrote: post #29

mcav wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I watch (follow) three.js on github for a while and I see frequent activity (commits, pull requests) on the project. Compared to most of the other (2d, simple stuff) frameworks this one is a full blown 3D engine albeit it does only rendering (no collision detection etc).

Re: Impact HTML5 Game Engine released

#50

Post by wtracy » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 8:11 PM UTC

benologist wrote: post #27

tomh- wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Zynga is worth more than EA now: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-26/zynga-tops-elect...

Like it or not, casual games are becoming a much, much bigger market than "hardcore" games.

Bejeweled is one of the most profitable game franchises right now. If I were writing that game from scratch today, I would do it in Flash or HTML5. That gets you every desktop that matters, and the number of mobile devices that support those technologies is still growing.