Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

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Enemygator
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Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by Enemygator »

Hello, im new here. At start i wanted to sya that im impressed with this site and community.

Im looking for good way to write an web browser based mmo. I watched hallsofvalhalla tutorial - he advised to use node.js, socket.io and impact.js. Is it good way to use impact engine? Last update of that engine was almost year ago. Im little scared to spent a 100$ for thing that may not work properly in some months.

Im not new in web development, i worked as ruby on rails programmist, know node.js, javascript and other stuff needed to develop applications, especially web apps. I know well Java too.

What kind of engine would you recommend me to use to make the development time as short as possible?


I will work on that game with 4-6 persons. We want to use node.js, socket.io
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hallsofvallhalla
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by hallsofvallhalla »

Enemygator
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by Enemygator »

I checked and cant find anything about mmo support. May i write connections/multiplayer from scratch?

What about my question about impact.js? Is it worth to start working with it? I love the world editor - it seems to save a lot of time with world building.

Today i start to write something simply with phazer, ill describe my experiance here :D



I have one more question... How many players can handle phazer, node and socket.io with good quality, comprehensive, reforged code?
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hallsofvallhalla
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by hallsofvallhalla »

isogenic is the only one that has built in Networking but it still uses Nodejs. You can implement that yourself if need be. All 3 are great engines. You just need to explore each one and decide which one is better for you. Phaser is free.
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Jackolantern
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by Jackolantern »

Phaser doesn't have to specifically support MMO features, since it is all Javascript. You can simply add your Socket.io calls right in your Phaser game code where you need them. It does mean you will have to figure out how to setup the multiplayer aspects yourself, but it doesn't get much easier.

Like Halls said, you could take a look at Isogenic engine. It is much more complex and deeper than doing it yourself with Phaser and Socket.io, but if you want real-time, twitch-based multiplayer, it is the best way to go since you will end up having to recreate much of what Isogenic already offers. Isogenic's network code is modeled after Valve's Source Engine if I remember right.

I can't suggest against Impact enough. It is absolutely not worth $100 today because it has been neglected by the developer, like you pointed out. HTML5 game engines have been moving at the speed of light the last couple of years, and there are a couple of major changes that Impact doesn't support. The biggest is obviously WebGL, which when used for 2D games provides massive performance increases over Canvas. Phaser support WebGL out-of-the-box, and will intelligently choose on its own whether the browser can support it or whether it has to silently downgrade to Canvas. Another biggie is Tiled support. Tiled blows away the map editor included with Impact, and it has become the go-to tile map editor for HTML5 games. Again, Phaser supports it out-of-the-box. Phaser is open source, but its primary maintainers are professional, independent HTML5 game developers who use Phaser everyday and are constantly getting requests for new technology, techniques and genres from their clients. They roll this new tech into the engine, with updates coming all the time.
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by Enemygator »

Ok, thanks. I decided to use Phaser, i think it will be enought for me right now. What is important - as you said - updates for Phaser coming up all the time. It will be huge advantage for me - with my speed of getting new knowledge and techniques :D

Im getting used to the Phaser right now and setting up the node.js server. I used node, socket and express framework.

I have problem with loading assets by express layout.jade file :P Is it important to use express.js with node and socket.io? Can I skip the express? I saw Valhalla's video in which he used those three tools, and im not sure what i should do.

My experiance with web development is: ruby on rails - few applications and some parts of huge, commercial apps in dev teams, many websites, dedicated scripts in js and many many little things. My usage of node.js is very poor and i never touched the socket.io. It makes me sick right now that i have so annoying and trivial problems with loading assets. But i completly understand usage and mechanics of phaser. Can u advise me what path i should choose to improve my skills and get better with technologies needed to make what i wonder to make? :D
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Jackolantern
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by Jackolantern »

You definitely want some kind of web framework. Without Express or another web framework, Node is basically Ruby without Rails. It is of course possible to forgo it, but you would have a ton of work just to get the files to serve correctly.

Can you tell me what the folder structure of your site is, and include your main app.js (or server.js, or whatever you called your Express app entry script)? I want to make sure you correctly setup the middleware to serve static content, such as images, scripts, css files, etc:

Code: Select all

app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
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Enemygator
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by Enemygator »

Script is exactly the same as that you have pasted.

Structure of files:
(project catalog)/public/stylesheets/style.css
in index.jade i have:
href='/stylesheets/style.css'
on mozilla debug tool:
<head></head> - is empty. Do not load any of my js, css or anything. What more - i implemented socket.io with digitalocean.com tutorial and at last step it should write on terminal "new user has connected" and its not appearing anywhere. On terminal i just see something like this (when im goin on localhost:3000): GET 300 121b - everytime i get on localhost new line with that 'GET' request appears.

I think that not only css and js are not loaded but also socket.io script.
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Jackolantern
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by Jackolantern »

You have to reference the public directory, typically like this:

Code: Select all

href="./public/stylesheet/style.css"
Node follows the Unix convention that a dot at the start of a path references the application root folder, and then you can drill down into the public folder and to your asset from there.
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Enemygator
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Re: Impact, tree, isogenic? What i should choose?

Post by Enemygator »

I just resolved the problem. I think that tutorial was too old, and i made everything by myself with doc from each page (express, node and socket page). Now i can load styles and other stuff. When i install correctly socket.io i will start things with phaser. Thanks for help!
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