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Ask HN: Please Review My Project (JS Game Engine)

103 points by itsmin ↗ HN
Hi Everyone,

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. 

http://www.effectgames.com

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).

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).

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.

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.

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!

Min and Joe

52 comments

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DanHulton
Huh. Very neat. I was actually kind of planning on messing about with Node.js and a javascript-only client to make a multiplayer game...
thechangelog
I tried Crystal Galaxy and it was amazingly smooth and felt native. Nice work.
e1ven
This is really wonderful! The games play quickly on Chrome, how well do they preform on IE?

The Mario demo was great, and the Platformer demo really expanded on that to show it supports modern techniques.

Just FYI, in Chrome, http://www.effectgames.com/effect/games/crystalgalaxy/ shows alert boxes complainigna bout unloaded resources.

I didn't see it mentioned on the site, but what is your revenue model for this? Advertisements? Charge for the devtools?

Do you deal with multiplayer at all yet?

Best of luck with this project!

itsmin
First off, thanks for the kind words! You shouldn't be seeing a significant difference in performance on IE (6-8). We'll look into the alert boxes, are you in Chrome on Windows? We currently don't charge for use of the services. And, absolutely looking at dealing with multiplayer in the future.
teach
I did see a pretty significant slowdown on IE7 (XP service pack 3) in the Crystal Galaxy demo in the section where there's a wall down the center of the screen and a big mass of the "bubbles" both above and below. By the end of that, it's really chugging.

Firefox 3.5.4 is really smooth, though, and IE7 is surprisingly smooth even then.

bbq
Just tried Crystal Galaxy out on IE7 (at work) and it works great. I actually didn't expect it to work at all but I was impressed.
itsmin
We actually support IE6 as well. It won't perform quite as well as browsers with optimized JS engines, but it should load, run and be playable.
simplify
Looks great! absOrb is the only demo that doesn't load for me, os x / safari webkit nightly. Here's the console error:

    TypeError: Result of expression 'this.yH.gk' [null] is not an object.
    engine-0.12b.js:52
itsmin
Thanks for this! Looking into it.
Pistos2
Also didn't load for me, Opera 10.10, Linux.
lpolovets
Looks awesome!

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.

yannis
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.
ericd
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.

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).

jokergd
great system!

we need to get rid of flash already and replace it with something that does not destroy resources

how about the multiplayer aspects of games? have you any ideas about developing this?

I am very interested in competitive games where we can play versus others in the same js style environment.

leej
congrats. one thing, though, license and usage pricing should be communicated clearly.
rufo
Indeed. I'm really impressed and intrigued, but I'm a bit wary about doing much of anything serious since I don't know what the terms are, what licensing might be like, etc. Even though it says in the EULA I retain rights of code/assets/etc. I'd really hate to develop something and then have it taken down over payment, or for some other reason.

But from a technical standpoint, it looks very cool - nice work!

itsmin
We're updating the EULA and policies to be more open. Once it's up, I'll post a message on the site. The absolute last thing we want to do is keep people from trying Effect out.
CamperBob
Exactly. Lack of licensing details made me wonder what they were trying to hide.
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aarongough
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!

Demos run very smoothly for me on FF 3.0.15!

cabalamat
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:

"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"

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?

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.

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."

How do I "obtain" something without "accessing" it?

itsmin
Hi, we're revising our EULA and privacy policy to be clearer. Also, I'll be posting an article on our site so please watch for that in the coming days. fyi, we provide an embed function for posting a game to your site (via iframe), so copying isn't an issue. Thanks for the specific input! Again, we'll have updated policies that are much clearer up soon.
unohoo
great stuff ! what the biz model ? are you going to license the engine or direct to consumer paid games ?
zackattack
I am shocked and amazed. Well done. This is the future of in-browser gaming.
timb
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.
itsmin
That is a great suggestion! We actually have an option available to the game developer to opt to preload each level - Essentially, they can choose to preload everything at once. There are some performance implications to this tho. In any case, we'll definitely look at an asset streaming option. Thanks for the input!
nym
I appreciate how polite your title is.
fnid
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.
itsmin
Hi, which demo were you trying? and what version of Opera and FF?
fnid
Everything is fine in FF. It was the Galaxy demo, but I tried the others too and they aren't working in Opera either. The Mario one does work, except the space bar Pages Down, so it isn't playable.

Opera info: Version 10.10

Build 1893

Platform Win32

System Windows XP

Java Sun Java Runtime Environment version 1.6

XHTML+Voice Plug-in not loaded

Pistos2
Confirmed; the platform tutorial is unplayable in Opera 10.10, Linux. This has been an issue for years, where web devs develop for all other browsers, which have extremely sparing keyboard controls. So web devs think they can just hook onto single keystrokes willy nilly. Well, these things never work fully in Opera, because Opera has assigned browser functions to single keys for years (since 4.x, I think, at least?).

FWIW, Opera has a preference to disable single key hotkeys, but that still didn't help in the platform game, because pressing comma in Opera activates the search-as-you-type.

Maybe you need a way to let people remap. But it would be worth mentioning at the outset that Opera users will run into these issues.

ElliotH
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.
flipgimble
Wait, you say its a pure Javascript/DHTML engine, but it still using Flash for audio? I noticed your game is using http://www.effectgames.com/engine/audio.swf

Is that because there is no browser support for playing audio? I have only a passing familiarity with current state of HTML5 browsers.

Though overall those are the highest-quality mostly-JavaScript games I've seen yet.

dannytatom
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!
itsmin
To you and all the great commenters on HN, thanks! We're really looking forward to seeing any games you create.