As a continuation to my last post, here is a rundown of some of the newer, or at least actively developed Javascript game engines & libraries out there on the wide wild interwebnet.
EntityJS
Entity is an awsome all new javascript game engine. It focuses on flexibility, reusability and robustness. To make this happen Entity utilizies the entity-component design where all logic is implemented in components and entities are created from adding or removing components. Its supported on all major browsers and will be coming to mobile devices soon.
CraftyJS
Crafty is a JavaScript game library that can help you create games in a structured way.
Collie
Collie is a Javascript library that helps to create highly optimized animations and games using HTML 5. Collie runs on both PC and mobile using HTML 5 canvas and DOM.
Collie can stably process multiple objects using rendering pipelines and supports useful features including sprite animation and user events. Stably supports iOS and Android, and renders with an optimized method for each platform. Also easily responds to retina display.
lycheeJS
lycheeJS is a JavaScript Game library that offers a complete solution for prototyping and deployment of HTML5 Canvas, WebGL or native OpenGL(ES) based games inside the Web Browser or native environments.
enchant.js
enchant.js…
Quintus
The Quintus engine is an HTML5 game engine designed to be modular and lightweight, with a concise JavaScript-friendly syntax. In lieu of trying to shoehorn a standard OOP-game engine structure into an HTML5 JavaScript engine, Quintus takes some cues from jQuery and provides plugins, events and a selector syntax. Instead of a deep single-inheritance-only model, Quintus provides a flexible component model in addition to traditional inheritance to make it easier to reuse functionality and share it across games and objects.
Every few months I like to check in on the current state of Javascript game development. During today’s browsing, I happened upon the Game Closure DevKit. It purports to be a 100% Javascript powered game engine capable of achieving native speeds on IOS and Android phones and tablets, in addition to producing browser based targets. It uses a fairly liberal license requiring no payments, merely inclusion of a splash screen and a requirement to contribute any engine changes back into the project. Once I’ve had a chance to tinker with it I’ll report back with my experiences.
source: http://www.gameclosure.com/
I’ve been tinkering with the fabulous ImpactJS game engine lately, and having an absolute blast. The man behind it, Dominic Szablewski, is a great guy, and he’s done a terrific job with Impact. My latest creation with it is Pipewalk, a puzzle/board game where you attempt to supply green ooze to a board full of pipes by rotating them until they are all connected. Its actually a take on a common linux game called Netwalk. It uses canvas, so it’ll only work if you’re using a browser which supports it. Other than Impact, I also used jQuery/jQuery UI and the excellent Absolution jQuery UI theme by Michael Vanderheeren, as well as Uniform for styling form elements.
Link: http://www.sevrd.com/code/pipewalk/
The friendly and talented chap behind Impact JS, Dominic Szablewski, has implemented the lovely hqx scaling algorithm in javascript. It uses a temporary canvas to render the source image and scale it up without pixelation or blur by modifying each pixel of the graphic. The processed canvas can then be drawn on to other canvas instances using drawImage or even rendered to a URI for use in displaying the image using an img tag. The code is freely available on github. Cheers, Dominic!
Source: PhobosLab.com
Snippet is a jQuery Syntax Highlighter plugin which allows you to apply syntax highlighting to blocks of code. It currently supports 15 languages, including C/C++/C#, PHP, CSS, Javascript, Ruby, Python, Perl and more, and ships with 39 color schemes. The plugin itself looks to be lightweight and easy to use. The next time you find yourself needing syntax highlighting, this would be an excellent way to go.
Source: Snippet :: jQuery Syntax Highlighter
I recently participated in 4DRL, an event where developers attempt to crete a working, playable roguelike in only four days. I teamed up with a fellow programmer, Ido Yehieli, and together we created a game called Cardinal Quest, a somewhat arcadey Gauntlet or Golden Axe inspired game made using onlt HTML, Javascript, and CSS. We made heavy use of HTML5 features, such as the canvas and audio tags, so you’ll need a modern browser to play it. Works best in Firefox and Chrome. It was an intense, fun experience trying to develop a working game on such a deadline, and it teaches you a lot about editing, refining your scope, and how and when to cut corners.
Click here to play Cardinal Quest.
Edwin Martin of bitstorm.org brings us an impressive JQuery plugin which extends the javascript api du jour’s animation capabilities to include manipulation of the CSS3 box shadow property. Make sure to check out the demos in the link; the ‘click me’ example in particular is quite a gem!
Source: Shadow animation jQuery-plugin.
jsdo.it, a hot new web service by KAYAC inc. is a collaborative, community based code playground where users create code snippets using Javascript, HTML5 and CSS. These creations can then be ranked, forked and commented on by other users of the site. Stats found throughout the site give readers a listing of the hottest posts for the day as well as overall, and also the most highly ranked authors. I’ve already managed to find some extremely cool bits, such as this trippy swirl demo and this impressive particle display.
Source: jsdo.it – share JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS.
Chris Vanrensburg has put together an impressive demo depicting the use of various easing functions in animating the dimensions and rounded corner properties of a div, which goes to show how some creativity and simple math can produce some great results.
Source: Animate Size in JavaScript | JavaScript Examples | UIZE JavaScript Framework.
Scott Schiller, the best moustache-d frontend engineer around, has updated his awesome SoundManager library. The latest SoundManager 2 version now comes with free HTML5 Audio support which makes it a HTML5 Audio()-capable JavaScript Sound API, backwards-compatible via Flash fallback for MP3/MP4 formats. Existing SM2 API seamlessly uses HTML5 where supported, currently experimental; and of course… works on iPad.
Source: Ajaxian » SoundManager2 now with HTML5 Audio.
