What engine for a game making tool?

[Biggerplay]

I'm thinking about creating a HTML5 game making tool. One of the main questions is build it all from scratch, or base the renderer at least on one of the many engines already available?

[Tomas]

Hi Biggerplay

 

You can use:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=html5+game+engine

 

Tomas

[Chris]

@Tomas: I think you have to read the opening post twice before giving such great advices...

@Biggerplay: what kind of game making tool did you think of? Something like Construct2?

Building on a existing game engine could save you lots of time but will maybe give you some restrictions in the long run.

[Tomas]

@Chris you are right, sorry.

 

@Biggerplay:

RPG 

• http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/
• http://rpgjs.com/

[Biggerplay]

@Tomas: I think you have to read the opening post twice before giving such great advices...

@Biggerplay: what kind of game making tool did you think of? Something like Construct2?

Building on a existing game engine could save you lots of time but will maybe give you some restrictions in the long run.

 

Exactly this is the issue I'm wrestling with, is it better to use proprietary software or build your own platform from scratch. I think it's a particular difficult question right now involving JS because of all the innovation that is happening in the area. You have great engines such as pixi.js, turbulenz and soon starling.js that will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, but one of the great things about JS is that I don't think it's beyond the means of a lot of JS developers to create their own platform. I presume it would have to be developed in TypeScript as well.

 

Yes something similar to GameMaker from yoyogames, GameSalad, Construct2 etc.

[whirlibulf]

Writing a game maker tool is different from writing a game.

 

I think most game engines and frameworks are not very suitable for writing a flexible game maker.

 

But this depends on what kind of game maker you want to make.

Is it completely a graphical editor, where you don't need to know how to program to make a game?

Is it used for a specific game type, or should it be flexible enough to make many kinds of games easily?

 

One option is to find an entity-component-system engine, since the data-driven nature of it makes it easy to simply put a ui in front of it and update the data without requiring the user to touch any code.

This is basically how unity3d works.

 

Why do you presume it has to be developed in typescript?

[benny!]

Possible approach:

 

First, create a feature list of what your HTML5 game making tool should offer.

 

Second, do some research on existing game engines (ie. libraries) or/and create a prototype of an own game engine and test against your feature list.

 

Third, if you think you have found the game engine - think about how you can abstract the functions of the engines and wrap it into a user friendly GUI.

 

Fourth, I would also recommend to use existing GUI libraries for your tool itself (so do a requirement list and research again).

 

Needless to say - that this is an ambitious project.  

Anyway, good luck!

[Biggerplay]

Writing a game maker tool is different from writing a game.

 

I think most game engines and frameworks are not very suitable for writing a flexible game maker.

 

But this depends on what kind of game maker you want to make.

Is it completely a graphical editor, where you don't need to know how to program to make a game?

Is it used for a specific game type, or should it be flexible enough to make many kinds of games easily?

 

One option is to find an entity-component-system engine, since the data-driven nature of it makes it easy to simply put a ui in front of it and update the data without requiring the user to touch any code.

This is basically how unity3d works.

 

Why do you presume it has to be developed in typescript?

 

TypeScript seems to make life a lot easier when coding with JS, and I've been an Flash developer for many years so it fits with that.

 

I've developed many games, and have always played around with the idea of creating a game making tool and have pages of notes and ideas in regards to how I think it should be recently I've started thinking more seriously about how to make it happen. I've been developing with Obj-c for the past year, but I think a web app is the way to go with it hence looking into JS, which led me to the important issue of build it from scratch or base it on something like pixi.js etc.

 

To answer the question of type of editor, definitely more graphical based, but I think it should allow coding of a sort at least of the game logic, much of the rest at least for 80% of 2D games doesn't need coding. Much of the coding I've done over the years is pretty much variations on a theme, it's more about the data changing than the actual code, although those small changes in data can be what can turn a game which get's 10k players into 100k players per day.

 

@Benny,

 

Hugely ambitious! but aren't all the most exciting projects like that? (until they turn into nightmares that bring your life into never-ending misery ). That's the key really, it seems possible to pretty much build the entire thing on 3rd party software, so for example regarding the backend there's Parse.com (which I'm already a fan of through using it with iOS), although it's a commercial service but so much is already available, why re-invent the wheel and all that.