What skills are required for Phaser development?

[Apollo14]

Hi guys!

I've been working as a web developer during last 5 years (the reason I quit: webdev/SEO is extremely overcrowded).

I'm good at photoshop/html/css web design.
Javascript: intermediate, just read some cookbooks, created some basic scripts.

What skills are absolutely mandatory before jumping into Phaser? Should I improve my JS or HTML5 Canvas skills first?
Or should I already start watching Phaser newbie courses asap?

What courses do you recommend by the way? I see only zenva/udemy/lynda (and all of them most likely are too superficial)
I wonder why so few courses on Phaser? The industry is still not overcrowded, waiting for me to conquer and dominate?

[mattstyles]

Phaser abstracts most canvas api away from you, although it doesn't hurt to start there and understand how canvas works before plunging in to a library/framework.

JS skills. The framework is very well designed and makes many tasks easy so its easy enough to get going, many question posts we get here aren't about fighting with Phaser to get it to work in a certain way, they're general JS questions. So, yeah, if you'd say your JSing is only around beginner/basic level work spent upping those skills will be extremely beneficial (and equally so if you end up moving back to web dev, with the abundance of JS libs most decent web dev jobs are JS coding jobs, and there are now backend JS jobs piling up ready to be filled by competent developers).

A lot of the time you can probably brush up/improve your JS skills alongside learning Phaser.

I learnt how to code by being lucky enough to sit next to competent developers and learning how to stalk OSS projects on Github but that's very very hard to do when your JS skills aren't already decent. Tutorials tend to be very variable in quality, but search around, if you find an author whose style you like follow them and read their stuff as there are so so many trash JS tutorials/articles out there that its very hard to know who to believe!

[AntonBel]

25 minutes ago, Apollo14 said:

I wonder why so few courses on Phaser? The industry is still not overcrowded, waiting for me to conquer and dominate?

If some area is overcrowded it means theres is alot of money in there.   HTML5 game development area are  almost empty.  Guess why. 

[Apollo14]

4 hours ago, AntonBel said:

If some area is overcrowded it means theres is alot of money in there.   HTML5 game development area are  almost empty.  Guess why. 

OMG! Guys, it seems I'm totally misinformed!

So Phaser is not a right choice for MOBILE apps?

I was misguided by course titles:
"The Complete Mobile Game Development Course" - Zenva
"The Complete Mobile Game Development Course with Phaser" - Udemy

[mattstyles]

Phaser is a great choice for writing games targeting any device, desktops or mobile. You can, however, argue that writing in JS and targeting mobile devices (via Cordova etc) is a bad idea.

I totally agree with @AntonBel.

It's an extremely good time to be a JS developer if you don't mind building websites/apps.

It's also an extremely good time to be a JS game developer, technically at least, its significantly harder to earn a solid crust being a JS game dev.

Do a quick job search for JS dev roles reffing React/Angular/Backbone/etc vs Phaser/createJS/etc, its probably 100:1 or more.

[Apollo14]

I did some research for few hours... still I'm confused. Yep, developing web-services is well-paid now, and Javascript is the king with all his frameworks.

But if my goal is to develop Android/iOS games, then probably I should go straight to Unity Engine?

(learning basic C# syntax is not a problem, anyway I'm not advanced at Javascript yet, so I have nothing to lose)

[mattstyles]

That's a bigger question (and I've no idea how big companies create multi-platform games, unity would sound like one solution, the other is they have enough resources to have 2 separate teams writing apps in the way designed for the platform, I don't consider JS solutions to be robust enough for complex native applications...yet).

If you want the same code base across platforms then you're always going to be at the mercy of transpilers or some other mechanism, this is always a performance overhead, and as gaming is very performance heavy this can be a problem.

The best iOS apps are written using swift/obj-c, languages designed for the platform. The best android apps are (and I know less here) presumably java.

That's not to say that Unity apps or JS-based apps in wrappers (or even using something like React-Native which does spit out native code) aren't going to be good enough for what you want to do.

I think there's big pros/cons to each approach, or learning swift/java for app development.

[Andy R]

Using JS based apps in wrappers will give you more market, i mean one dev can be exported on multiple plateforme (which is Cordova's objective). For unity there's wrapper for sure.

But i agree with mattstyles, wrapper means lower performance, so it depends on the games you'll make. Anw 70% of mobile games can be runned using wrapper, so i'll go with a wrapper-based app.

Also, i do think that in a near future (~3/4 years) with the exponential evolution of mobiles & js framework, js based game would make all of the current games. Eg: Check for react-native which is, imho, the best solution for building multi-platform app (not game).

 

[Apollo14]

12 hours ago, mattstyles said:

That's a bigger question (and I've no idea how big companies create multi-platform games, unity would sound like one solution, the other is they have enough resources to have 2 separate teams writing apps in the way designed for the platform, I don't consider JS solutions to be robust enough for complex native applications...yet).

If you want the same code base across platforms then you're always going to be at the mercy of transpilers or some other mechanism, this is always a performance overhead, and as gaming is very performance heavy this can be a problem.

The best iOS apps are written using swift/obj-c, languages designed for the platform. The best android apps are (and I know less here) presumably java.

That's not to say that Unity apps or JS-based apps in wrappers (or even using something like React-Native which does spit out native code) aren't going to be good enough for what you want to do.

I think there's big pros/cons to each approach, or learning swift/java for app development.

Guys, I am going to create very simple 2D games. Something like this at the beginning:

https://www.truevalhalla.com/blog/buy-html5-games
http://m.blackmoondev.com/

Later on I wanna make some simple replayable games, with simple upgrade system, loot, etc.

16 hours ago, AntonBel said:

HTML5 game development area are  almost empty.  Guess why.

But what about Facebook? Is there some bad obstacles? Definitely it has enough money and audience. Or is it overcrowded already?

[Ninjadoodle]

Hi @Apollo14

If you want to make games mainly for mobile, I would definitely recommend Gideros.

Giderios uses Lua scripting, and exports native games - it is extremely easy to get started and make games, and since it's not a drag and drop game maker - you get all the flexibility in the world.

You can even export to HTML5, if you'd like to offer a demo of your game for the web. Note that the HTML5 in Gideros is emulated, so its not as fast as a dedicated HTML5 framework (like Phaser), but if the web is not your primary target, this should not matter.

As for experience, I don't think you need any ...

Pick a very simple game, jump in and try to make it.

You will learn everything you need along the way (by searching forums and dealing with problems as they arise).

Hope this helps

[Apollo14]

Thx, Ninjadoodle!

Now I'm choosing between Unity 2d and Construct 2.

Gideros looks good, but I'm worried about tutorials. For Construct 2 there are plenty, for Unity there are hundreds, if not thousands. And I've read that all publishers love Unity very much.

[mattstyles]

You should probably add GameMaker to that list to evaluate too (if you haven't already). I've never seen it or used it but I know its a popular way to make games.

[Ninjadoodle]

Hi @Apollo14

Yeah tutorials with Gideros are a little sparse but to be honest, I've learned everything I need to know just by going through the forums and asking questions - it's that easy to pickup! Gideros has one of the most supportive and friendly communities you will find - I really mean that.

I've used C2 / C3 for several projects and they are awesome tools, but I think that if you are looking for trouble free native exporting, you will run into the same problems as with Phaser.

As far as Unity goes, I've always found it to be unnecesarilly powerful if all you are making is 2d games. I can setup something simple in Phaser/Contruct 3/Gideros about 10x faster.

Whatever you choose has to feel right to you

Good luck!

[Rudrabhoj Bhati]

Give a try to Haxe/OpenFL, if you want a language something similar to JavaScript, but ability to export native iOS and Android games. OpenFL also support HTML5 export. If you find OpenFL too low level, try HaxeFlixel.

[blackmoondev]

On 8/12/2017 at 3:21 AM, Apollo14 said:

Guys, I am going to create very simple 2D games. Something like this at the beginning:
http://m.blackmoondev.com/

We've made most of those in C2, which is pretty cool for small-middle size web games. 
It's a bit of a pain to make it iOS/Android "native", but still doable. 
We don't really go that way, as appstores are super-totally-extremely-overcrowded. 

On 8/12/2017 at 3:21 AM, Apollo14 said:

But what about Facebook? Is there some bad obstacles? Definitely it has enough money and audience. Or is it overcrowded already?

Facebook Instant Games are promising, but so far Facebook only chosen two dozens developers to add one game each (and they all get bazillions gameplays a day or so I've heard), but there's no way of making money on that (yet) and there's no way for anybody to join the club (yet). 

Hope that helps:)

[Apollo14]

On 12.08.2017 at 11:11 AM, Ninjadoodle said:

I've used C2 / C3 for several projects and they are awesome tools, but I think that if you are looking for trouble free native exporting, you will run into the same problems as with Phaser.

As far as Unity goes, I've always found it to be unnecesarilly powerful if all you are making is 2d games. I can setup something simple in Phaser/Contruct 3/Gideros about 10x faster.

I decided to try C2 and Gideros, and later on check how people develop similar stuff in Unity. I'm playing with C2 now, video tutorials are of great help. I guess when I'll learn and understand basic concepts of game development, it won't be a big problem for me to switch to another environment (I don't see any reason to stay with C2 longer than 2-3 weeks).

Guys, I have some new questions now:

1) There are plenty of gamedev software: Gamemaker, Construct, Godot, etc.
Is Gideros a unique gem among all of them?There is no other game constructor with similar functionality for making NATIVE apps?

2) @Ninjadoodle, it seems Gideros doesn't have lots of plugins&extensions. Do you miss them in any way? Or it has pretty much everything that's necessary?

3) Do you know, if Gideros is a really good choice for multiplayer android/ios 2d game development? Or some essential multiplayer functionality is missing?

Android multiplayer games are total wild west, there are lots of really, really poor multiplayer games that gain millions of installs.

On 14.08.2017 at 2:30 AM, blackmoondev said:

We don't really go that way, as appstores are super-totally-extremely-overcrowded. 

Quote

Can you please tell, what way do you go? What is not overcrowded?

I don't know, I did some research, it seems that Google Play is still a "wild west" in many cases.
There are lots of really poor stupid apps that gained over 1 million downloads even in 2017. (poor apps like religious holidays calendars, or apps with bikini girls photos from the internet, or yet another 10000th bejeweled clone, etc.).

[Apollo14]

By the way, guys, can you please help me with downloading Gideros? https://github.com/gideros/gideros/releases

Please upload it to some decent file hosting like https://mega.nz/

I've tried like 20 times to download Gideros.exe from Github redirecting to amazonaws, but few minutes after start I see this sh*t every time:

AccessDenied
Request has expired
300
2017-08-17T01:45:29Z
2017-08-17T02:04:16Z
5E52E829101F1711

GnyiSC+RTk/HqcVfsr/PHXxSwGgq07OGf4RekGSV4LQmlLx1rsx2vJkfwN/VTneJHPtefLFwvVQ=

[Ninjadoodle]

Hi @Apollo14

Yup I believe that Gideros in indeed a gem for making native games. It has a really tight and awesome community - many people don't even know about it.

Your question will be answered very quickly (if you ever have any issues) + you can find most answers on the forums.

In the last year or so, Gideros has really streamlined the App publishing process and does automatic exports.

Here is an extract from the post about the latest release ...

Quote

Guys, it's worth noting that this release is a milestone in Gideros history.

You can now completely automatically export to iOS and Android, including these plugins:

- Gaming (log people in, save highcores, awards and cloud saves)
- Ads (support for all/most ad formats, including rewarded video ads, for Admob, Applovin, Unity and Chartboost)
- Firebase (support for Google's huge backend that ties all their services together)

This is a BIG DEAL. The time that was spent configuring Android Studio and Xcode (let's face it, it takes days) can now be spent making a better game.

For more info, check out this post ...

http://giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/7010/gideros-2017-6-released#Item_10

I'm personally working on and testing on a real device and I'm not missing anything I need.

For more info about multiplayer, you should go to the Gideros forum and ask questions there. People will only be too happy to help!

Same going for your download problem - if you post on the Gideros forum, someone will help you

****

I'd just like to note that I LOVE Construct 2 and 3, and I'm using it for my web games. You get awesome HTML5 performance. Getting the games to mobile as an APP (with all the trimmings) seems to be another case tho. Saying this however, you will never know until you try it your self.

****

As far as the stores being overcrowded - This is very true, BUT, who is to say that if you focus on a quality game and publish it - you won't be noticed by a bunch of blogs or Apple for that matter and get featured (even if this is only for a couple of days).

Too many people focus on making stupid clones with ads stuck all over the games, making most people quit before they even try the game.

You might also have to release a few Apps before anything happens and can't let the lack of downloads etc. discourage you.

Do what you love and the rest will follow.

Hope this helps

 

[blackmoondev]

On 8/17/2017 at 4:47 AM, Apollo14 said:

Can you please tell, what way do you go? What is not overcrowded?

I don't know, I did some research, it seems that Google Play is still a "wild west" in many cases.
There are lots of really poor stupid apps that gained over 1 million downloads even in 2017. (poor apps like religious holidays calendars, or apps with bikini girls photos from the internet, or yet another 10000th bejeweled clone, etc.).

We publish the games on web (self-publish as well as with licensing/rev-share/subscription partners) and the results are way, way higher.