Choosing a game framework/engine

[magnus]

Hello,

I am a co-founder of a startup, right now we are two people working on developing an app for brain training using a sensor that can measure brain signals.

It is a desktop application written in JavaScript using Electron.

We have decided that we would like to have a game working inside of the application, that can take incoming signals from the sensor and use them to control the game.

For example it could be increasing speed or height as the signal increases.

We have been looking into game frameworks/engines to do this. Since we are using JavaScript we would prefer to keep working with that. Electron uses a chromium 

browser so it also needs to work with HTML5.

We have a lot of other things to focus on so preferably we would like to be able to build games quickly and easily, my co-founder prefers not to code so much so

we have been looking into drag-and-drop GUI based ways of building games. Like Construct 2, Buildbox, Game Salad, Gamebuilder Studio and lately Qiciengine.

 

We really liked Qiciengine as it is open source and completely JavaScript and HTML but now we found out that it is no longer being developed. I am already

getting errors running it with the latest Node version so it does not seem very promising to use without any further development.

 

The game itself can be quite simple, we are thinking 2D and having some character fly in the middle of the screen, going up or down as the signal increases

or decreases and receiving points/bonuses based on some score system.

 

I have been a bit concerned with using GUI based drag-and-drop game engines to generate the code as we need the game to integrate well inside of our

application and we also need to send in values to control the game, that makes me think that a more code-based framework like Phaser may be a good choice

for us as it would ease integration and allow us to have one codebase. On the other hand it may take longer to develop as I would have to write all the code.

 

That said is there anyone who can recommend us how we could develop this game?

Would it be ok to use the qiciengine even if it will not be developed?

In general do you think it would be hard to integrate a drag-and-drop solution that generates code into our existing application?

Would it mean more work in the end as we would have to keep separate code-bases/projects synced?

 

 

[mattstyles]

Super exciting sounding project you're working on!

27 minutes ago, magnus said:

Would it be ok to use the qiciengine even if it will not be developed?

Depends what your aversion to risk is, I'd say using an undeveloped (and thus, presumably, unsupported) engine sounds like a real minefield. Of course, you could fork and make any changes you need, but then you'd have to learn not only consuming the library but also how it works so you could make fixes when (if) you need.

28 minutes ago, magnus said:

In general do you think it would be hard to integrate a drag-and-drop solution that generates code into our existing application?

Probably not, as a worst case scenario you host that bundle somewhere and iframe it in, although you could probably inline it into your code base, keep it as a module you can include and it probably just needs a div in the DOM to work against which might take a bit of integration work to get right, depends on what the solution generates i.e. does it generate everything? including the HTML? is that HTML a full-formed page? etc etc

29 minutes ago, magnus said:

Would it mean more work in the end as we would have to keep separate code-bases/projects synced?

You wouldn't have to. Your game code can be totally separate and just consume your data endpoints to work, any syncing or versioning work would be in keeping in place with your api (for access to your brain scanning shizzle), you presumably already have a solution in place for this.

You then either include the whole bundle into your code or bring it in as a module. My first impression would be just to iframe it in, or, at least, create the HTML inline in your page and just include another script to your 'game bundle' which would then run in your page (rather than iframe).

Your game code is naturally separated from your project code anyway, you either ship a version of it in your bundle or request it remotely (if you're aiming for full offline capacity then this might not be an attractive option for you, but, bear in mind that if you do keep it remote you can update/amend/fix the game independently of requiring a new download/patch of your project executable).

[magnus]

Alright, I think forking the qiciengine would be too much work for us and so end up counter-productive since we want to speed things up (but it would be nice if someone else did it ).

It is good to know that it may be possible to integrate these drag-and-drop solutions. How it is done depends on each case I suppose and what files they generate...

We aim for offline capability so can't request anything remotely but I think we can ship it with the rest of the app and to update it remotely when the user has internet access.