mobile jQuery, EaselJS, GMS or Phaser

[plicatibu]

Hi. First of all, let put it clear that I don't want to start neither a flame war nor insinuate Phaser is not a.good tool. I just want help to understand both advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

I'm brand new to HTML and I am still confused about so many frameworks available.

What's the advantage in use mobile jQuery instead of Phaser and vice versa?

What's the disadvantage to pick them?

For instance,

- which one generates smaller size code?

- considering the same game developed with both tools, which version will run smoother? Which one consumes less resources?

- which one is more productive (considering you're versed on both)?

- which one takes care of repetitive repetitive tasks?

- it seems that there are much more documentation regarding mobile jQuery than Phaser. Who about phaser tutorials and books?
Are there available for phaser? Could you point them to me?

Tutorials are a must for me because I learn more by reproducing steps in tutorials.

Any thing I missed is very well appreciated.

Regards.

[mariogarranz]

There's absolutely no point in comparing jQuery with Phaser.

 

Phaser is a "HTML5" game framework. It provides common models and methods used in game development so you don't have to code them again, and can focus just on your own game.

 

jQuery is a library focused on simplifying frontend web development, that is, DOM elements management. It is not aimed at videogame development.

 

Of course, you can develop HTML5 games using jQuery and canvas, just the same way you could develop HTML5 games using plain Javascript without any libraries. But that's not the objective of jQuery, and would not be a very productive way to develop any game.

[plicatibu]

Thank you for replying.

 

I saw a book named jQuery Game Development Essentials (released on April 2013) and I thought it as a viable tool (when I say viable tool I mean a tools that handles the boring and repetitive tasks in game development)

 

So a comparison between EaselJS and Phasor or GameMaker Studio and Phasor would be more appropriated, right?

 

Do you have any experience with them to help me pick one of them?

 

Is there a Phasor's book you can point me? Or some good tutorials (The hands on are better for me)?

 

I changed the post title to be a more appropriate stuff.

[mariogarranz]

Well I have used jQuery for some frontend development before, but haven't touched it for a year or so.

 

If things haven't changed much, jQuery was targeted towards DOM elements. You can make web games with DOM instead of Canvas or WebGL, but that's for another kind of games.

For example, Cookie Clicker, as far as I know, is based on DOM elements.


About the rest, the 3 of them are focused towards game development. I haven't tried EaselJS, so I can't talk much about it. As far as I can see on their website, it seems like a Javascript framework focused on canvas rendering, it doesn't seem to have tiledmap or physics support integrated, so it looks less complete than Phaser, talking about game development, of course.

 

As for Game Maker Studio... Well it is a powerful tool. I have made a couple of games with it. I just don't use it because:

 

A ) It is not free if you want to export for HTML5 or mobile platforms. And right now I don't make money out of my games.

 

B ) Code organization is pretty messy for me. I am used to work with classes, attributes, methods. GML is not object oriented, and you can't handle code in different files, you have to write each piece of code inside the event you want. That makes me feel uncomfortable. For people with few programming experience, though, it can be quite a powerful tool. You can make awesome games without spending months learning how to code.

 

 

So, about Phaser... it really saves a lot of work. You can build a map with Tiled and have your game working in a few lines of code. You can also extend that code if you want, and make your own classes or extend the ones given if needed. It is free. It is open source. And, as you may have already seen, it does have a great support forum, Rich labour is really commendable. And hopefully will be fully documented this week

The only "bad" thing I could say about Phaser, for what I have seen in a couple of weeks working with it, is that it seems to perform a little slower on my smartphone (Galaxy S2) than other engines I've tried like ImpactJS. On more powerful devices it just performs great.

 

 

 

Hope that helped

[plicatibu]

And hopefully will be fully documented this week

Hope that helped

 

I really hope there will be plenty of documents ASAP.

 

Your answer helped me.

 

Thanks.