GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/ct-js/ct-js" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ct-js/ct-js</a><p>I think ct.js is a hidden gem of open source game tooling. Pixi is among the most mature and popular game engines available for 2D game development, but it doesn’t have an official editor. ct.js simply layers a whole suite of graphical interfaces on top of Pixi to make it accessible to a wider audience.<p>The author is a classic “would rather spend time coding than doing PR” open source dev. I hope HN can show some appreciation for their work.
This looks really cool - there goes the rest of my weekend testing this out! The JS game world has been missing a straight-forward editor like this... there are 3rd party tools that are very powerful (like Tiled), but having everything integrated is just... fun! And that's pretty important when you're making games!<p>[Edit: if the person who created ct.js is around: I just booted it up, and it looks nice and simple - but I think I'd make the default "empty" project be populated with a minimal texture and room... you should be able to launch a game and see what this software is about instantly: like Blender's "default cube".<p>This could be disabled for experts if it's annoying to delete things, but it would really encourage beginners and tire-kickers to dig in rather than having to figure out how get started and go through tutorials]
Ct-js and Pixi.js is great, but personally I always reach for Phaser (<a href="https://phaser.io/" rel="nofollow">https://phaser.io/</a>) and the Phaser Editor 2d IDE (<a href="https://phasereditor2d.com/" rel="nofollow">https://phasereditor2d.com/</a>) first for games. There's just more batteries included with a better ecosystem if you're making an interactive game. I would use Pixi.js if I didn't need any interaction or sounds or sprite sheets.
I downloaded this and tried it out, but it seems to hide all the implementation details. What if we need to make some changes to index.html? For example, I want to make a game like Untrusted (<a href="https://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/" rel="nofollow">https://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/</a>) but to do so I need to be able to create a textbox for code editing next to the game canvas.<p>Is this possible to do under ct.js?
The collision shape editor seems quite nice and beginner-friendly indeed, I remember a game developer friend of mine in the old days telling me how many nights he wasted fixing collision boxes. I am humbled by how little of game development I understand but this looks super well crafted.
Would be nice if they took at look at the OSX build... doesn't seem to contain most of the example assets for the tutorials. Plus some kind of installer script would be even better.
Recent developments in visual editing specially for 2d games is wonderful. Wondering if there's a visual editor yet which also supports multiplayer games.