How friendly Phaser is ?

[aladine]

Hello everyone, 
3 months earlier i wanted to start learning HTML5 game development and somehow i found myself turned into unity3D and to be honest i don't regret that at all, i've been involved in the game development field for almost 4 years now and i never finished a single game which is something that i proudly did  with unity3D, and i guess the reason of that was 1st my knowledge of the C# language, the tools available inside the unity engine and the super helpful unity community. because of these reasons i wasn't able to only finish my first game, but i actually had 4 offers to work as a freelancer for mobile game development and for the first time in my life, i have made some decent incomes from game development. 
Now the question is, as someone with Java background, a unity3D developer with C# and NEVER made a HTML5 game, how helpful Phaser would be for me ? and why should i choose it instead of one of the many available html5 engines and framework out there ?
 
PS :
currently am reading the Phaser's getting started documentation and later i will give this tutorial a try : Making your first Phaser game

so maybe i could answer the previous question myself, but i thought this is a topic that can be useful for anyone later, so, thank you for your help 

 

have a nice day 

[rich]

I would say right now that one of the biggest reasons for picking it would be the community. The girls/guys in this forum totally rock, are constantly helping each other out and creating some really nice things with it. If you look at all the great html5 game dev tools you'll see it's usually the ones with strong communities that prosper (Construct2, GameMaker, impactJS, Phaser). Combine that with the rate at which Phaser is evolving and getting stronger with every monthly release, plus the growing range of examples and tutorials and I don't see a reason why you shouldn't give it a go. If you don't like it, or it doesn't do what you need, then at least you'll know that from your own experience rather than just guessing and can use something else.

[plicatibu]

Now a days I'm using openfl and I'm learning Phaser. For sure 99% of all problems I am facing is because my poor knowledge of JavaScript.

It's a real pleasure to develop with Phaser and from my own experience I assure you that its community is awesome.

The only drawback (for me) is that I cannot generate flash games with it.

[aladine]

this seems very promising, i just finished the getting started process and i was looking into some examples and to be honest am very excited to start playing with it,

sooo... finger crossed  

i will provide a review by the end of this week and tell how good i felt working with Phaser. 

 

Off topic

 

The only drawback (for me) is that I cannot generate flash games with it.

am sorry but why do you need such a thing ?

even Adobe are supporting HTML5 export for their new Flash Professional CC, this only confirm (again) that Flash (the plugin NOT the framework) is slowly fading away, so why do you want to export swf with something that can give you html5 ?

the only reason that i see is because with flash you only have a single .swf file that is easy to deploy anywhere ? 

 

 

thank you all 

[gaelbeltran]

this seems very promising, i just finished the getting started process and i was looking into some examples and to be honest am very excited to start playing with it,

sooo... finger crossed

i will provide a review by the end of this week and tell how good i felt working with Phaser. 

 

Off topic

 

am sorry but why do you need such a thing ?

even Adobe are supporting HTML5 export for their new Flash Professional CC, this only confirm (again) that Flash (the plugin NOT the framework) is slowly fading away, so why do you want to export swf with something that can give you html5 ?

the only reason that i see is because with flash you only have a single .swf file that is easy to deploy anywhere ? 

 

 

thank you all 

I think it's because of the flash sponsorship market.

 

By the way, try Phaser, it's a really great framework and the community it's awesome.

[Introvert Studios]

I have just started to use it myself and currently finding it fairly good!

 

Everything was easy to find and play with, while providing a good amount of features.

[plicatibu]

@Aladine I have an arcade site and my flash games are a way to bring traffic to it.

[rich]

Yup, Flash still does the numbers when it comes to desktop plays, that's for sure.

[aladine]

i just finished the 1st phaser tutorial and honestly am IMPRESSED!!  seriously, big ups for the guys from photonStorm, everything was super smooth, easy to follow and to understand, the only little issue that i faced is finding a good editor, for now am giving sublime text 2 a try, but i don't like the lack of customization of it, i want to be able to create shortcuts and code templates easily like in Eclipse or NetBeans, also another suggestion that if the Phaser team do it, i believe it will make their framework A LOT  more popular and easier to use, am talking about a codeigniter specially made for Phaser, so for example if we wrote

 

game.add.sprite

once we open the parentheses, the editor will automatically show something like this

(float x, float y, String asset_key)

so it's like we have an integrated documentation, i am very sure that this will make our learning path a lot more easier and encourage us to dive more into the Phaser library and just start trying new stuff. 

 

thanx a lot !!

 

----------

off-topic

@plicatibu, seems legit ^^ 

@rich, that is because the number of Flash games made through the last decade is SO BIG compared to the new born html5 right ?? 

[rich]

Aladine - code insight is notoriously difficult to do for JavaScript, but it is something we definitely want to look into more next year. You may be interested to look at TypeScript if that sort of thing is important for you (as I know it is for some devs) as it covers it really well.

 

re: Flash stats, I think it's just because desktop as a whole does such big numbers! When there's such a tidal wave of traffic it's pretty easy to surf, right?

[agmcleod]

Sorry for off topic, Aladine you can do things like custom shortcuts in Sublime: http://docs.sublimetext.info/en/latest/customization/key_bindings.html

 

It actually has the ability to customize a lot, it's just usually done through config files & plugins.

[aladine]

Aladine - code insight is notoriously difficult to do for JavaScript, but it is something we definitely want to look into more next year. You may be interested to look at TypeScript if that sort of thing is important for you (as I know it is for some devs) as it covers it really well.

 

Am really looking forward for that, and i don't want to go with TypeScript for now, am a little bit familiar with JavaScript and i choose to keep learning it.

 

re: Flash stats, I think it's just because desktop as a whole does such big numbers! When there's such a tidal wave of traffic it's pretty easy to surf, right?

I don't understand why you relate "desktop" to flash ? i mean, if it's about "desktops" then html5 is present in almost all of them today, cause i don't think the number of desktops who didn't update their browsers for 5 years is big right ? 

 

Sorry for off topic, Aladine you can do things like custom shortcuts in Sublime: http://docs.sublimetext.info/en/latest/customization/key_bindings.html

 

It actually has the ability to customize a lot, it's just usually done through config files & plugins.

i don't like the idea of making the only option is "config files & plugins", what if i just want to change the auto-format command ? it would be better if there is an option to do that easily like most editors do, and in my specefic case, all that i need is :

auto-format command

and

run-in-chrome-under-local-server command  

which i cannot find, 

am using Aptana Studio 3 now, it's based on Eclipse which make it a lot more friendly for me, i can use all my old shortcuts that am used to in other editors, and it automatically run your html file in a local server  which i think PhotonStorm team should add this Editor in the 4th section of the Getting started page, or even as a note in the 2nd section of the getting started page, cause if you use Aptana Studio 3, you will not need to follow section 2  neither 3, another feature, is that Aptana Studio 3 support Git just like Eclipse do.  

[rich]

When I say desktop I mean in the game market sense. I.e. there are thousands of Flash gaming portals, millions of players, game seeding, easy traffic to be picked up and well established ad systems too. This isn't there for html5 yet really.

 

The features you mention for Aptana are all possible under Sublime btw.

[aladine]

The features you mention for Aptana are all possible under Sublime btw.

 

lol how ??

Am trying sublime text 2, and if i found it good enough (i know it is, i mean good enough for me ) then i will purchase a key for it

 

thanx 

[rich]

The true power of Sublime is to be found in the extensive array of packages available - aside from being an amazing editor (with MULTIPLE CURSORS! I will never use an editor again that doesn't have this feature )

 

Install a package manager and the world is your oyster: source control, formatting, live reloading, jshint, terminal, etc. So many useful things.

[aladine]

okay i'll try that 

thanx

[fatalfluff]

Even without using Phaser.. I must say I drank the sublime koolaid. I withstood for a long while, because of the pricing, the "how dare they charge 70 bucks for a text editor?!?!", a general unease with commercial editors etc.. but at some point I caved in and have not looked back ever since.

[woratana]

A little off-topic here, but it would be helpful if you guys can give some lists of useful sublime extension to use with Phaser game development

[rich]

Here this is a great start:

 

http://scotch.io/bar-talk/best-of-sublime-text-3-features-plugins-and-settings

[alex_h]

The true power of Sublime is to be found in the extensive array of packages available - aside from being an amazing editor (with MULTIPLE CURSORS! I will never use an editor again that doesn't have this feature )

 

Funny to see you are an advocate of this feature. I've found that for me this is pretty much the only thing that has put me off using Sublime Text, after using it otherwise happily more or less daily for several months. I think it must just be that I suffer from clumsy finger syndrome or something but I just kept on finding myself accidentally editing the file in more than one place at the same time. It was incredibly frustrating, and despite lots of google searching and posts on forums I was unable to find a way to disable the multiple cursor feature. In the end I bought a license for WebStorm instead.

 

[Edit] actually if I am honest I generally still have sublime text open while I code in WebStorm, just to make use of its excellent side bar folder tree feature - so useful to be able to add and remove folders to the project so easily when I need to quickly browse for a related file!

[rich]

Multiple cursors is fantastic! I fail to see how even the most clumsy fingers could accidentally hit Ctrl + Shift + D! The speed it affords me when editing code is second to none.

 

Also it has the best looking themes of any editor, and great tools to easily create more: http://tmtheme-editor.herokuapp.com/#/Monokai%20Bright

[alex_h]

Now I see where the problem has come from. I always set up a duplicate line shortcut in my code editor as CTRL + D.... so every now and then shift happens to be still down when I use the shortcut!

I suppose the simplest solution for me without disrupting my familiar workflow would have been be to reassign the multiple cursor feature to some other shortcut that I'm less likely to hit by mistake.

 

Incidentally have you found a sublime package to enable jumping to a variable declaration when you control click? That's one feature I really like about WebStorm, and FlashDevelop back when I used to use it. I think I tried one or two plugins through the package manager but never found one that really seemed to do the job properly, one in particular I recall just informed me that it couldn't find the declaration for whatever variable I clicked on.

[rich]

There are a few, but none are that reliable - it's just the way JavaScript works, it's easy in AS3 because its strongly typed, WebStorm tries to guess it and mostly manages, although it's still super easy to fool it otherwise. I like WebStorm, has some nice IDE level features like the source control integration and built-in jshint, but where it falls down (and where all other editors fall down) is in the area where you actually use them the most: typing in and modifying code, and I've never found anything that allows me to do that as quickly as Sublime does. So I'll happily forgo some trappings to maintain that speed edge.