Game Engine for HTML5 Canvas requested - Requirements inside

[OpenGG]

Hey guys, my first post here
 
I tried Unity5 days ago and worked out this demo : http://opengg.me/940/spaceshooter-simple-unity3d-game/
 
Unity5 turns out to be an outstanding game engine to develop a WebGL Game, the problems are:

• The code size is still too large, 19MB of JavaScript code, taking too much time to generate, load and execute.
• WebGL on mobile is still a mess, making any game built by Unity5 not available to a majority of mobile web browsers.
• Even on the best performing mobile devices like Nvidia Tegra K1, an Unity5 WebGL build still takes too much performance cost, FPS below 30, making it less appealing than the native builds.
• Unity's 2D games cant make use of 2d context of html5 canvas, they use WebGL context, same as 3D games, so still suffer the problems above.

So, I want a more mobile-friendly game engine, requirements including:

1. Mobile-friendly: I can use 2d context of html5 canvas whenever I want, and the final builds should be less than 10MB with an empty scene.
2. Productive: An editor/ide that somewhere near the Unity Editor, with features like spritesheet editing, scene hierarchy/inspector, animation controller/finite state machine. I just cant go back to handcraft everything again.
3. Well-performed: Not just 60 FPS on PC browsers, a rogue-like tile game or a srolling space-shooter game should be jank-free on mobile chrome, 30FPS above.
4. Physics: Simple colliders and rigibody support is good enough.

Is there a game engine that meets these requirements?

[rich]

Requirement 2 means you've two choices only - Construct2 or Game Maker. I can't think of anything else that has a fully integrated visual editor.

[SkyzohKey]

PandaJS + Bamboo !

[AshleyScirra]

I just checked, and an empty Construct 2 project exported and zipped excluding the optional icons is 79kb.

[Bilge Kaan]

I am using Construct 2 and my mobile game codes are genarally max 500kb. If you make pixel art and optimize your sound. You can have hole game at 1-2 mb.

[elvin]

Are you interesting in web apps only or you are considering packing the game and publishing on the app stores?

If you allow packaging option, you can pack the game and publish it and this will solve the problem with loading big amount of data from the web. Intel XDK can pack app for you and you can even point to use Crosswalk WebView on android instead default one, that will increase the performance.

 

On the other hand, this all might be used with other game engines. If you are familiar with JavaScript, I would recommend you a cocos2d, the MoonWarriror looks very close to the demo you pointed in the first message. If you are not familar with JavaScript the Construct2 can be a choice. The problem with Construct2 - if you have a lot of events handlers in the game, this will be unpacked heavily in the memory and you don't have any control over it. That might be a problem on weak devices with low RAM.

[OpenGG]

Requirement 2 means you've two choices only - Construct2 or Game Maker. I can't think of anything else that has a fully integrated visual editor.

I've heard of construct2, never had the chance to try it, will give them both a try, thank you.

 

As to me, a good game editor like Unity Editor is every productive, I can make a game with mouse draging around in several hours. But with hard coding, it can take me double effort and time.

[OpenGG]

PandaJS + Bamboo !

I've taken a glance at there forum, both the engine and the scene editor are  in active development. Thank you for recommending, will try.

[OpenGG]

I am using Construct 2 and my mobile game codes are genarally max 500kb. If you make pixel art and optimize your sound. You can have hole game at 1-2 mb.

All the js, with both game engine and game code combine, less than 1MB? Impresssive. That's even smaller than cocos2d-js engine itself!

 

So you have being using it for real projects. Cound you share some opinions on Construct2, about its productivity and performance?

[OpenGG]

Are you interesting in web apps only or you are considering packing the game and publishing on the app stores?

If you allow packaging option, you can pack the game and publish it and this will solve the problem with loading big amount of data from the web. Intel XDK can pack app for you and you can even point to use Crosswalk WebView on android instead default one, that will increase the performance.

 

On the other hand, this all might be used with other game engines. If you are familiar with JavaScript, I would recommend you a cocos2d, the MoonWarriror looks very close to the demo you pointed in the first message. If you are not familar with JavaScript the Construct2 can be a choice. The problem with Construct2 - if you have a lot of events handlers in the game, this will be unpacked heavily in the memory and you don't have any control over it. That might be a problem on weak devices with low RAM.

After publishing as apk app, my spaceshooting Unity demo performs prety well on Android, 200FPS on a mid-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 8064 device before I set a FPS cap to it. I consider Unity5 as the most productive and portable game engine.

 

But the WebGL build is far less performed on mobile Chrome, somewhere near 10FPS, making this game horrible and impossible for people to play on mobile browsers. That's why I want a mobile-browser-friendly game engine.

 

I am familiar with JavaScript, but tired of hand coding everything, because a lot of hard work can be solved with a good editor. I tried cocos2d, good documentation, acceptable performance, relatively popular, but the file size of the minified engine itself is around 1MB , could lead to long waiting on cellular networks. I'm looking for engines with relatively light-weight, with minified sources less than 500KB.

[Bilge Kaan]

All the js, with both game engine and game code combine, less than 1MB? Impresssive. That's even smaller than cocos2d-js engine itself!

 

So you have being using it for real projects. Cound you share some opinions on Construct2, about its productivity and performance?

 

It is easy to use, cheap and the performance is not bad for a HTML5 game engine. You can try my mobile games here: http://td2tl.com/ and decide whether you like the engine or not.