Hi Everyone,<p>This is the first time that I've submitted anything here, but I lurk and read HN daily. My partner Joe and I just launched a suite of tools for building 2D web games with pure JavaScript and we'd really love your feedback. <p>http://www.effectgames.com<p>Briefly: we're a web developer and designer who are both very heavily into video games. While trying to avoid any negativity around Flash, we thought standard and open web tech would be a better basis for creating games (plus we're more familiar with JavaScript).<p>We have been working on this off and on for over four years, and now we're ready to release the "Effect Engine" -- a pure JavaScript / DHTML framework for displaying and animating game graphics, playing sounds & music, handling keyboard & mouse, and performing sprite collision detection. It smoothly renders multiple layers of parallax scrolling tiles and sprites without requiring Canvas or SVG (so it plays nicely with all modern browsers).<p>Right now, we're working on expanding some of the available game demos to full blown titles (for example: http://www.effectgames.com/effect/games/crystalgalaxy/1.0b), but that doesn't mean that the engine is done.<p>We're planning on launching a slew of new features in the coming months, but we've gotten to a point where we'd really appreciate some feedback for improving Effect.<p>As excited as we are about finally getting to create the games that we've had in our heads for years, we're even more excited to see what our friends on HN can do!<p>Min and Joe
This is really wonderful! The games play quickly on Chrome, how well do they preform on IE?<p>The Mario demo was great, and the Platformer demo really expanded on that to show it supports modern techniques.<p>Just FYI, in Chrome, <a href="http://www.effectgames.com/effect/games/crystalgalaxy/" rel="nofollow">http://www.effectgames.com/effect/games/crystalgalaxy/</a> shows alert boxes complainigna bout unloaded resources.<p>I didn't see it mentioned on the site, but what is your revenue model for this? Advertisements? Charge for the devtools?<p>Do you deal with multiplayer at all yet?<p>Best of luck with this project!
I really enjoyed the Box2D example:<p><a href="http://www.effectgames.com/effect/example.psp.html?rev=box2d" rel="nofollow">http://www.effectgames.com/effect/example.psp.html?rev=box2d</a>
I've had a look at your website and am not sure exactly what proposition you're offering. I also don't understand your EULA, which says:<p>"The API consists of Javascript that allows You to use the Effect Game Engine on your website, subject to the limitations and conditions described below. The API is limited to allowing You to use the engine only, and does not provide You with the ability to access or modify the underlying code"<p>This is incorrect terminology, because an API is just an interface; the code OTOH is a library. Given that JavaScript is distributed as source, how can I use your library without accessing the underlying code. Do you mean you've obfuscated the source?<p>Furthermore if the Effect Game Engine is on my website, presumably the *.js files containing your libvrary are also hosted on my website, meaning I've copied them.<p>Later on the EULA says: "Effect Games reserves the right to release subsequent versions of the API and to require You to obtain and use the most recent version."<p>How do I "obtain" something without "accessing" it?
Crystal Galaxy was amazing. One of the best browser games I've played in any platform.<p>FWIW, sound doesn't work at all here in FF 3 on Ubuntu 9.4.<p>I know you're working on terms, and I haven't dug into it very much, but just FYI, if my games depend on your company's ongoing existence and good pleasure to run, I won't even start using your system, no matter how good it is. I would certainly consider paying for a license (and it could be a larger amount if there's some kind of provision for low-traffic/revenue use being free or cheap), but you'll probably have to just trust me to some extent, because (here I am repeating) if my games depend on you to run on an ongoing basis, I'm much more locked in with you than with Flash, and I just won't do it.
Was just browsing through the game engine code and came across this:<p><pre><code> // Effect Game Engine
// Copyright (c) 2005 - 2009 Effect Games LLC and Joseph Huckaby.
// All rights reserved. Patent Pending.
</code></pre>
Patent pending? Seriously? What aspects of your code you are attempting to patent?<p>While I'm sure you've pulled off many cool JS tricks in creating your product, is a patent necessary? The problem for every one, once your patent issues, if it does, is the temptation to chase down every smart programmer who has done something cool with browser based game programming.<p>What in your work is so novel that copyright won't suffice? Is it more about the entire ecosystem/framework you've created?
I was literally amazed by how well this played - everything was really well done even under the slower internet explorer javascript interpreter. What I really loved was that the smoothness difference between this and say a flash game is hardly noticeable.
Looks awesome!<p>Without necessarily being negative about Flash-based games, I think your homepage should clearly mention that users only need Javascript enabled. Seems like a very strong selling/marketing point for developers.
Wait, you say its a pure Javascript/DHTML engine, but it still using Flash for audio? I noticed your game is using <a href="http://www.effectgames.com/engine/audio.swf" rel="nofollow">http://www.effectgames.com/engine/audio.swf</a><p>Is that because there is no browser support for playing audio? I have only a passing familiarity with current state of HTML5 browsers.<p>Though overall those are the highest-quality mostly-JavaScript games I've seen yet.
Awesome, I was thinking of doing a custom engine, since JS performance is reaching the point where it can compete with flash, and I have no desire to learn ActionScript. Big kudos for doing this and sharing it with everyone.<p>Crystal Galaxy performs very well on Mac Chrome, and feels more responsive than any flash game I've encountered (though it sometimes stutters a bit on some of the explosions).
Hi everyone, We've updated our policies <a href="http://bit.ly/4NKGHm" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/4NKGHm</a> so please give them a read, and check here <a href="http://bit.ly/7b4yF2" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/7b4yF2</a> for a comment about an upcoming feature that addresses an additional concern. And thanks again for all the great comments!
great system!<p>we need to get rid of flash already and replace it with something that does not destroy resources<p>how about the multiplayer aspects of games? have you any ideas about developing this?<p>I am very interested in competitive games where we can play versus others in the same js style environment.
It does seem to run on the iPhone 3gs, albeit it slowly.
One suggestion I might make is to detect iPhone/Android devices, and offer a popup control.<p>Further, you can provide the right meta data so that it can be added as a web-application, right to the iPhone home screen.
The engine should load assets in the background. For example, in the mario game, when I descend into a pipe, it pauses while it loads the level. Likewise, the Crystal Galaxy game should load assets while I am on the menu screen, rather than waiting for me to press Start.
Looks great! absOrb is the only demo that doesn't load for me, os x / safari webkit nightly. Here's the console error:<p><pre><code> TypeError: Result of expression 'this.yH.gk' [null] is not an object.
engine-0.12b.js:52</code></pre>
This is great! I've been toying around the idea of a game in my head for a while now, but every JS game engine I come across is terribly slow. This definitely seems like a leap in the right direction, congrats!
Doesn't work in Opera. The background image appears and the music starts playing, but that's it. In FF i noticed a loading progress bar and it proceeded to a welcome screen and I can play it as expected.
It worked very well for me in Chrome v 3.0.195.25. Impressed! Just a short observation, down the line you may wish that your pages are indexed by the search engines, by generating in js they will not.
Great work! I have been thinking about something similar to this for a while, but it's nice to see that now I probably won't have to go to the trouble!<p>Demos run very smoothly for me on FF 3.0.15!