

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

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 &#38; music, handling keyboard &#38; 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
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thechangelog
I tried Crystal Galaxy and it was amazingly smooth and felt native. Nice work.

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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.

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pufuwozu
I really enjoyed the Box2D example:

<http://www.effectgames.com/effect/example.psp.html?rev=box2d>

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ErrantX
clicky link :) <http://www.effectgames.com>

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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?

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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.

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midnightmonster
Crystal Galaxy was amazing. One of the best browser games I've played in any
platform.

FWIW, sound doesn't work at all here in FF 3 on Ubuntu 9.4.

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.

~~~
itsmin
Hi there. You bring up a great point (one that we've thought about ourselves
quite a bit). I'd like to mention that we are working on a standalone
distribution package for your published games. This package can be deployed to
your own server, and runs without contacting our servers. For whatever reason,
if we go down (fingers crossed) we do not want to take you down with us.

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rationalthug
Was just browsing through the game engine code and came across this:

    
    
       // Effect Game Engine
       // Copyright (c) 2005 - 2009 Effect Games LLC and Joseph Huckaby.
       // All rights reserved.  Patent Pending.
    

Patent pending? Seriously? What aspects of your code you are attempting to
patent?

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.

What in your work is so novel that copyright won't suffice? Is it more about
the entire ecosystem/framework you've created?

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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.

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leej
congrats. one thing, though, license and usage pricing should be communicated
clearly.

~~~
CamperBob
Exactly. Lack of licensing details made me wonder what they were trying to
hide.

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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.

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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.

~~~
itsmin
Yes, we currently use Flash for audio as a fallback. We've been working on
native audio with mixed results.
[http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/news/Snow...](http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/news/Snow_Leopard_Native_Audio_Woes)
It is definitely something we're continuing to work on tho. And thanks for the
kind words!

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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).

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itsmin
Hi everyone, We've updated our policies <http://bit.ly/4NKGHm> so please give
them a read, and check here <http://bit.ly/7b4yF2> for a comment about an
upcoming feature that addresses an additional concern. And thanks again for
all the great comments!

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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.

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truebosko
Do you plan to eventually use Canvas/SVG or do you find this way works better
for the long term and overall?

~~~
itsmin
Hi, currently this is pure JS/DHTML but we are considering Canvas for the
future. We go into a little bit more detail in our FAQ.
[http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/docs/Freq...](http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/docs/Frequently_Asked_Questions)

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e1ven
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.

Further, you can provide the right meta data so that it can be added as a web-
application, right to the iPhone home screen.

~~~
itsmin
Hi. These are great suggestions! A mobile optimized version of the engine and
services are very high on our to do list so you can expect to see something in
the near term.

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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!

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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

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Pistos2
Also didn't load for me, Opera 10.10, Linux.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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...

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unohoo
great stuff ! what the biz model ? are you going to license the engine or
direct to consumer paid games ?

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nym
I appreciate how polite your title is.

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peakpg
Looks interesting. Is this taking advantage (or do you plan to) of HTML 5?

~~~
itsmin
Hi, again, this is pure JS/DHTML but we are looking at HTML 5, specifically
for audio. We go into more detail on our FAQ.
[http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/docs/Freq...](http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/docs/Frequently_Asked_Questions)

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wlievens
Can I do Isometric graphics, and will it outperform Canvas?

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narendranag
It looks very interesting!

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tectonic
Awesome work guys!

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zackattack
I am shocked and amazed. Well done. This is the future of in-browser gaming.

