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Game Engine Recommendations


wetfrog
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Hi all,

 

Glad there is a forum for this! And I hope to get to know some of you guys.

 

I've done Java (for android) and Javascript for a while, but no games. But I've made a game in AS3 Flash.

 

Now I want to make something in HTML5, do you guys have any recommendations on a good engine to use?

 

I want to make a one-button/touch game, and in something that portals or sponsors can use. Do I need to be aware of any serverside issues or anything like that that will make them not want my game?

 

Thanks!

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The most common engines are:

 

Paid:

ImpactJS

Construct 2 (not writing JavaScript)

GameMaker (not writing JavaScript)

 

Free:

MelonJS

LimeJS

enchant.js

TreSensa

Quintus

Crafty

 

We did all of our games with in-house stuff, so my experience with each is pretty minimal, but a lot of the folks here have good backgrounds in each.

 

For a more in-depth list, see: https://github.com/bebraw/jswiki/wiki/Game-Engines

 

An interesting project trying to get versions of breakout in each game engine for comparison: https://github.com/city41/breakouts

 

Just about every game that is developed purely for sponsors/licenses doesn't have anything server-side, just everything on the frontend. Again, others here have much more experience with the licensing side of things, but I don't think publishers are picky when it comes to the tools used.

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Hi all,

 

Glad there is a forum for this! And I hope to get to know some of you guys.

 

I've done Java (for android) and Javascript for a while, but no games. But I've made a game in AS3 Flash.

 

Now I want to make something in HTML5, do you guys have any recommendations on a good engine to use?

 

Hi,

 

concerning the choice of engines - I think Austin already gives a good list of available engines. Especially if you want to make a simple one button game - all engines should work for you. If you have something special in mind - I would suggest to check your requirements (e.g. mobile device support) against the engine's feature set.

 

I want to make a one-button/touch game, and in something that portals or sponsors can use. Do I need to be aware of any serverside issues

 

No - in general - you should not have to care about the server side. You might be asked to implement anjavascript API by the portal/sponsor though.

 

... or anything like that that will make them not want my game?

 

Thanks!

 

 

Some general tips:
 
- Make sure you don't have any bugs in it
- Try to have polished graphics
- Most sponsors want to show ads within your game - so keep this in mind while creating the UI
 
Just my 2 cts.
 
Best,
benny!
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Just my 2¢. I tried MelonJS, and while it was good i found it to be not mature enough for my needs at the time. 

 

Cocos2d-html5 is shaping up really nicely! As well as having the benefit of using it on top of Cocos2d-x for native performance if you go through the App stores.

 

Plus lots of tools support the sprite sheet format, animation format, and bitmap font format. eg: TexturePacker, SpriteHelper, bmGlyph.

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I've done Java (for android) and Javascript for a while, but no games. But I've made a game in AS3 Flash.

 

since you seem to be familiar with Flash, I'd recommand CreateJS (formerly Easljs) , it's sponsored by Adobe witch provide a flash plugin that can export flash to an HTML5 code using EaslJS library.

 

since I'm not familiar with adobe Flash I never used this for a real game, but a collegue of me use it and told me that it's best choice for flash developers to move to HTML5.

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Hey guys, I'm the one doing the Breakouts project. Just signed up for these forums.

 

I also wrote an article that compared Impact, Crafty and Lime pretty closely: http://buildnewgames.com/game-engine-comparison/

 

I've been a fan of Impact for quite a while. It's a bit specialized, but is a well done engine. I am also finding that MelonJS seems to take a lot of cues from Impact (intentional? I don't know), and am probably going to give Melon a shot with my next game.

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I would also recommend Monkey, especially if you are coder. One of the main benefits is all the platforms you can export your game to native code (including HTML5) without having to re-code everything all over each time. It's my definite "engine" of choice right now considering its functionality, although its not really an engine but basically a language all on its own. As far as the game engines itself, there are many framework modules to available for you to choose from. I'm currently using the Monkey Flixel framework right now since Flixel is one of the popular flash engines for platform type games (Canabalt anyone?). 

 

Definitely worth checking out. The Monkey language itself is easy and lightweight, and very familiar to those coming from a C#/Java background. Not to mention extensible (yep, you can easily hook in native code also). The free version already allows for exporting to HTML5.

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  • 1 year later...
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As coders/developers, do you find it more rewarding to actually code or games, or would rather use an engine where you do less coding (and probably as a consequence develop more quickly)?

 

For me personally using tools like Construct 2 or GameMaker is not an option as I'm coming from the Front-end / JavaScript world where I was building websites for a few years now. I'm making games, but for me it's also important to train my JavaScript skills, so I prefer engines like ImpactJS or Phaser where I can code something on my own in pure JavaScript if I want to.

On the other hand I understand that using Construct is easier and faster and I'm totally ok with people choosing that, whether they don't have time, enough programming skills or just pick it because it's the best tool for them. You can use whatever tool you want and every road is ok if you know what you're doing.

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