[Phaser][WIP] ceilfire.com - Online Game-Maker

[neon]

Project-URL: Ceilfire

 

Hi,

 

I'd like to present you my current project. The idea is to make a Platform where you can play, create, comment, rate HTML5 games or export them to mobile platforms directly in your browser. And you should be able to upload game assets (images, sounds) and share them with the community (if you like). 

 

The project is already quite old (9 month I think) but I'm still in the early stage of development. Some days ago I kicked my own renderer and started to port to Phaser. I hope it will boost the progress. At the moment I'm trying to get what I had before Phaser. It's completely in JavaScript (twitter bootstrap, jquery, jquery ui and a lot of other libs) with NodeJS and MongoDB on the server side.

 

Now I have:

- registration, login

- asset upload

- editor to create maps, layers, sprite. Events to control the game objects

 

Here are some screenshots - As soon as I port it to Phaser I will put it online, so you can test even in the early stage. 

 

The assets on the screenshots are from the game naev (GPL) and some from opengamesart. 

 

Here are two old youtube videos (without sound)

 

I will try to post my progress here. Any feedback is welcome.

[TwinTails]

Looks pretty good 

[Patriick]

This looks very interesting, you have an attractive little interface there, I would like to try this out when its available... Is there anywhere that I can sign up for updates, like a newsletter or something?

 

 

Regards,

Patrick.

[neon]

Thank you for the feedback. I have no newsletter or so, I will see if I setup something with mailchimp.  But you can follow this thread I will post all updates here

[neon]

Just wanted to tell that the project is not dead. Have finished porting everything to Phaser. The frontpage is now nice with game entries, added comment function for games with disqus. Assets are stored on amazon S3 (so you have no space limits to store and share assets, at least it can scale better than the last solution with the localsystem). What creates new problems.  Working on serialization and fixing some bugs, because Phaser wasn't made for such generic scenario but it's awesome anyway.

 

Working hard making it usable so that you can test

 

 

Here is a new front-page:

 

 

I have no way to upload game teasers yet, therefore you only see some default images. 

 

 

[neon]

Here is a new video from the project. I added soundobject and events for them. So you can define stuff like: "Play shooting sound if the user presses a key" etc. 

The serialization of games is progressing nice, you can play the made games directly on the plattform, publishing is only one click and instant.

In July I want to put it online. Then you have something to give feedback

 

[neon]

Hello,

 

I made a milestone for me and could implement Flappy Bird logic with the editor. Here is a short video with flappy bird and some other stuff. Unfortunatly I couldn't figure out how i can smoothly record fast-paced games and so it may be a little slow some times. I use camtasia if someone has a better alternative for smooth recording, please let me know.

 

 

"FlappyBird" assets are from a very, very good PhaserJS flappy bird tutorial. Click
"Coins" assets are from Glitch free assets/opengameart/freesound,"Glitch" assets.

[neon]

Made a making-of Flappy Bird video. You can see the editor in action. It's still jittering sometimes but hope I find out how to record faster videos

 

[Aegis]

Looks interesting, I'll try and follow the development of this project. 

[neon]

So, after months of posting without a testable system, now you can test the project under ceilfire.com it's still very basic and I still use like max 10% of Phaser but this means that you can have a very big impact on the project with your feedback and ideas.

 

You can test everything without an account but for uploading assets and saving games you need an account and it would be awesome if you register.

 

Ceilfire should work in firefox and chrome, but in chrome I get sometimes the cross-origin-policy errors because I store all assets on Amazon S3 (already made a thread about it in may but still couldn't fix).

 

So feel free to post your thoughts! 

 

Here is a very basic clone of flappybird like in the video in last post.

 

You can check out the first-steps tutorial to learn the editor workflow (the big blue button on the frontpage) http://ceilfire.com/docs

[neon]

Hi,

 

There are some updates with a new awesome feature

 

Changes:

- A Lot had problems with registration, I relaxed now password requirements and show detailed message why the registration fails. 

- There is a new video tutorial linked directly on the front page or you can see it here: 

- A lot had Problems with internet explorer. Sorry, although phaser is awesome and supports IE without a problem, but I have still some issues with it and don't want to spend my time on it. So now only support Chrome and Firefox.

 

Now to the new feature:

- If you click on a game now, you will see a "remake it" button. If you click on it, the editor will open with the game. You can change the game and if you save it, it will be saved as a new game. So you can test without making a game from the beginning If you have no account, you can make changes but not save them. It would be awesome if you register

 

I will try to show some game with every update. today is "drunk breakout":

- the gameplay is like breakout but if you hit a block, it will fall down and if you get hit by the flying block, you will lose.

http://ceilfire.com/p/5432ccdb9c80d4cc1909263e

 

Here is a screenshot showing the game and the "remake it" button.

 

The project is community driven, so every critics and feedback is wellcome.

[neon]

In last days ceilfire had many bugfixes but also a nice, new feature.

 

Here are some of the update:

- If you click on a game, a countdown will be started because a lot of users had problems getting the mouse in the right position fast enough

- You can click everywhere on the player to start the game

- There is a irc chat for help and so no

- Game description supports markdown syntax

 

- There is a new partner site http://ceilfire.com/partners. Everyone who has a web-project with a community component can contact me and we can support each other platform

 

- If you are not registered but wants to save a game, you can register directly in the editor by clicking "save" button without losing your game

 

 

And now the new feature:

 

The editor supports now Text-Objects. Till now text had to be embedded into an image before it could be used in the editor. Now there is an extra Text object with all properties like you know from Phaser.

 

 

As i said i want to post a new game with every update. Todays game is: 

 

This game wasn't made by me but by non-technical team-member  http://ceilfire.com/p/5436749a028dfb4833a4659e It shows the first tries how one could made educational games in ceilfire.

 

 

Here is a roadmap for the near future:

- Tilemaps support

- Particles

- Reference other objects in event rules

- Support of bigger worlds and the camera

 

Hope it was a good update

 

[mmcs]

Nice

[neon]

Hi mmcs, nice that you like it I know the maker and the platform is still basic but I try to improve with every single update. Keep following the thread, Ceilfire will become better and better

 

And here is a new update:

 

- Text-object has a fade-out action

- Added create object/spawn object action, it opens the path for the shooting-style games

- Added variables that can be created and set/incresed in actions -> nice for scores, lifes etc.

- openURL action in the game object -> nice to promote your page, starting point for ad-based games

- rotateToObject/rotateToPointer action. e.g. you can let a player turn when u move the mouse

- top-tags sidebar in the assets market

some other stuff I forgot...

 

The game of todays update is a space-invadors style game "Space Defenders". It shows you features like spawing objects and turning to mouse, variables for score 

 

http://ceilfire.com/p/544b9c77fad0705234dbc196

 

Screenshot:

 

Game-play video if you have some problems (let me know), with some other assets

 

And here is a new tutorial, its about how u can shoot objects and create e.g. shooting spaceship like in the game

There will be more tutorials in the series, so you can make a complete shooting game at the end.

 

So, hope it was a good a update 

 

 

I will make some more changes for the platform like adding custom images/screenshot based images for the game thumbnails and a better search for the assets-market.

 

[neon]

Hello, here is a new update!

Unfortunately there are no new games to show. But there are still some very nice changes!

 

Here are the main changes

1.
- Remaking of the games is fixed now. 
- added Phasers moveToPointer, moveToObject, moveToPosition actionens to the Sprite-Object. So u can implement basic mouse controls. 

2.
The properties-bar is redesigned and much more clearer now

Here is the old version:




And here the new one. 




A nice thing is that you can edit without pressing the enter key now. So your color changes etc. are directly visible while you change. Makes a lot of things smoother.

3.
There is a new property in Game-Object to define custom thumbnails/preview images. You are now not restricted to the default logo (the one with the shaped C letter and colored background)


 

 

There are still a ton of stuff to do but it's getting better, a big part is thanks to the critical user feedback.

If you already visited ceilfire you probably need to clear your cache or reload ceilfire several times to get new javascript files.

 

There are two new tutorial videos: 
1. First one is now to you editor variables to imlement stuff like player-score: 

http://youtu.be/QhrBePl-5KE

2. spawning and destroying of Objects (done last week, so with the old properties-bar): 

http://youtu.be/FtSEVIGQ210

 

 

Like usual every feedback and feature request is welcome! And register on ceilfire for support (but of course you can basically test everything without registration)

http://ceilfire.com

[chandler]

Hey, I like the updates you've made!

 

I was playing through several of the demos, and was curious if you'd take some feedback on them?

 

Would it be possible to show the mouse cursor when the game is paused (or even just let the programmer control its visibility)?  It's fine when a game is running (and something is tracking the pointer), but it was disconcerting when the mouse just plain disappeared.  I noticed this mostly with the flappy bird demo; whenever I died, it took me a minute to get over to the "reset" button.

 

Secondly, in the "choose condition" dialog, after I selected Next for "mouse button is down," it took a second or two of hard staring to realize that I wasn't waiting for something to load into the empty window.  Perhaps you could let the user press OK directly (for either the mouse up/down conditions), or maybe just reiterate the selected condition on the "next" dialog?

 

Thanks, I think your "less-programming" approach making games is an interesting one.

[neon]

Hi, thanks for your feedback! Really good points you mentioned.

 

And it's done

 

Have just implemented your suggestions.

 

1. If the condition (and action too) has no parameters the "next button" is disabled and you can only press "OK". Indeed very nice

 

 

 

2. I added a new property "Show default mouse pointer" to the Game-Objekt. So now one can control if the default mouse is shown. The standard value is "true", so now you should see a pointer in all sample games like Flappy Bird. For Space-Defender I disabled the default point to see if it works.

 

 

 

If you try and it doesn't work, you probably need to reload ceilfire/editor two times so you get the new js files. (or clear cache. btw. has somebody a solution to autotate such cache updates for the user from developer side?)

 

If you or anybody has more suggestions, I implement everything And in such a early stage, one can include really nice stuff.

 

 

 

 

Edit:

Just saw my first post in this thread and my image of the frontpage. Was nice to see how the project progressed a bit.

 

This is the frontpage from January 2014:

 

 

This is now:

 

 

Still a ton of stuff to do to reach my goal

[chandler]

Have just implemented your suggestions.

Cool, that helps out quite a bit.

 

If you try and it doesn't work, you probably need to reload ceilfire/editor two times so you get the new js files. (or clear cache. btw. has somebody a solution to autotate such cache updates for the user from developer side?)

It looks like you're serving through CloudFlare--perhaps they have some information on doing this through their service? My understanding is that there's quite a few schemes for this, but none are really that foolproof unless you're able to set the cache-control header yourself (my understanding could be wrong, of course).

 

Still a ton of stuff to do to reach my goal

What's your goal?

[neon]

Yes, I use CloudFlare and also their "purge cache" feature. But sometimes it doesn't work. But I think it's normal for frequent web updates.

 

 

My goal is to have all-in-one place for the compelete casual game-development process (for not/less programming developers). This is why I have a "assets-market" from the beginning on, so you don't have to go around and look for assets if you want to make game, But take one from the community. So that making games is as easy and fun as drawing pictures on http://www.sumo.fm/. This also includes export possibilities for Android and iOS. The maker still lacks a lot of feature for making nice games, a lot of usability changes needs to be done, and way more good tutorials. But it's getting better  and most problemts are now user-workflow problems thanks Phaser  The editor is in the browser and not standalone (there are good offline makers like Construct2, Game-Salad) because it enables very seemless integration of all parts, so that you can have immediate publishing with one click without waiting till your game is approved for the arcade (and repeate the process for every change). 

[chandler]

My goal is to have all-in-one place for the compelete casual game-development process (for not/less programming developers). This is why I have a "assets-market" from the beginning on, so you don't have to go around and look for assets if you want to make game, But take one from the community.

I thought this was a nice touch. Have you thought about having a library for sharing objects and their associated code (in addition to what you have with pictures & sounds)? Then someone could just drop (for example) a spaceship onto the screen and have it fly around.

[neon]

Yes, this would be a very nice addition. As intermediate step I thought to have predefined rules. Like you don't have to make 4 rules, everyone with one condition and one action: in total 8 steps to click through dialogs  for a simple WASD-movement but simply assign to the object predefined WASD-RuleSet/Behaviour that one can tweek.

 

The behaviours could also be added to the market. So you can have complete objects, small behaviours, images and sounds. 3 different abstraction levels in one place.

[Paskuda13]

Really nice idea. Good luck, man!

[neon]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm still in the process of making the features I wanted for this update, but it's already 3 weeks since last post, so I will post the current status.

 

- Added "Ceilfire Academy", a simple blog where I will post detailed

Updates and Tutorials  http://info.ceilfire.com/

- When you resize a sprite and hold ctr button, the aspect ration will be preserved

- Fixed the mapsize and camera, so you can make now bigger maps. Drag the canvas to scroll in

the map

 

And the new awesome feature:

- Added predefined "behaviors". So if you have a sprite you can simply add a "jump&run" behaviour to your player and "collider" behavior to your floor sprite and u can walk and jump around with the arrow-keys

without the need for creating many control rules. 

 

Currently there are 4 different predefined behaviors "Keyboard Movement",  "Collide", "Jump&Run" and "Periodic".  Will soon add a tutorial to describe all of them.

 

 

after clicking on "add new component" button you will see

 

 

 

I'm in the process of making an example jump&run game, but there are still little things missing.

 

Btw, now you have 4 different ways to follow Ceilfire progress

1. Register on ceilfire.com with checked newsletter box https://ceilfire.com/users/register

2. Put your email-adress into the newsletter input on ceilfire.com frontpage

3. Follow ceilfire youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/symplatonix/

4. Subscribe to the RSS feed of "Ceilfire Academy" http://info.ceilfire.com/

 

 

 

I'm always looking for new demo-game ideas, if you have some easy games that one could remake in ceilfire and so improve the feature-set, let me know

 

 

http://ceilfire.com

[neon]

Hi, just wanted to inform you about Ceilfire progress. It has been a while, but from this post on, I will really try to post my progress reports every two weeks.

 

There are a lot of small changed and design changes, but in last time I was busy integrating tilemaps support to Ceilfire. The result is:

 

 

Now Ceilfire supports tilesets. You can mix them with normal objekt, like in Tiles editor. Layer contains new properties for tilesets. How to use them in Ceilfire you can read in the new tutorial:

Link to  the Tilesets Tutorial .

A simple example with a tileset map you can try here: Tilesets Test-Map

 

I also fixed the embeding of Ceilfire games into external pages, all games have a "embed" link on the play page. How the external embed looks like, you can see here: 

http://sufryd.com/ .

You can also create Facebook apps from Ceilfire games (similar to embeding), how it's done I will show you in the next tutorial.

 

The project has also a Facebook Page: Ceilfire Facebook  If you like the project, and would like to somehow show it. You can like it in Facebook.

 

There is also a new Ceilfire forum, if you have any Feedback/Suggestions/Critics you can post it here or in the Ceilfire Forum. 

 

Thank for your attention, I hope I didn't forgot something. Any feedback/critics/suggestion is always welcome!