Game Engine/Framework Suggestions for Browser Based Development
Hello all!
I'm onto a new project that requires me to make a browser-based game that can interface with facebook. I was hoping I could get some guidance and first hand experiences into different game engines / frameworks. I'm not interested in Gamemaker or Construct 2, I have moderate programming experience and feel more comfortable with written code. I'm not familiar with Javascript/HTML5, though I feel Javascript looks realatively easy to learn and am excited to start.
I've been looking at:
ImpactJS
EaselJS
Phaser
Cocos2D JS
Has anyone used any of these? I was hoping to have a discussion as to what the pros and cons are and how easy they are to work with. Also, prefered IDEs and other software suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks for reading!
Curt
Hi!
The only web based engine I have tried so far are Phaser and LibGDX.
Projects made with phaser:
Silly and Trashy multiplayer online game:
https://turupawn.itch.io/mmocheckerstable
Simple and deep sumo game multiplier offline:
http://turupawn.github.io/HelloPhaser/
Projects made with libGDX:
Shameful flappy bird clone
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=rosalila.flappy.guacamaya2
Phasers Pros (+) and Cons (-)
+Easy to install (it's just a javascript file)
+Easy to learn (The documentation is super super)
+Great community!
- Easy to run and share (it can be hosted by a pubic website)
- Might need some extra work to port to a native movile app (i haven't done this)
LibGDX Pros (+) and Cons (-)
+Scalable language: Java (I don't like it, but at least it has classes and objects, javascript don't)
+Multiplatform by nature
+Supports 3d
+Great community!
- Dificult to install
- Difficult to learn
-If you want to host the HTML app you may need something bigger than a plain apache server, I have tried tomcat and it works fine
From what you posted I would totally recommend to you: Phaser
I hope this helps
- Turupawn
We just lanched our greenlight campaign! Thanks for your votes!
Hi,
don't know if this threat is still up-to-date but I would like to share some experiences I recently made with MelonJS (I will introduce my project here in the near future as well).
MelonJS is "a lightweight but yet powerful HTML5 framework designed from the ground up to provide a true plugin-free 'write-once, run-everywhere' gaming oriented library".
It was easy to learn and works with the so called "Tiled map editor" which makes it very easy and fast to create game levels in a WYSIWYG manner based on 2D sprites.
MelonJS is free and open source and (what is really important in my opinion) it is well documented. Furthermore I made the experience that there is a nice community. I was able to find a solution to every problem I ran into without too much effort.
As far as I could check, games run stable in all modern browsers (tested on Windows, Ubuntu, Android) without any problems, which conforms to the official statements.
As "IDE" I use Atom, an open source text editor, that is commonly used in web development. It provides a nice and clear interface and a lot of useful functionality. If you are missing something you can easily extend it by adding plugins or different themes.
Best regards ;)
http://mbarde.de