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clyde

Html5 and WebGL exporting engines.

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I'm looking into game-engines that can export small file-size html5 and WebGL games.

-Processing seemed really promising but I can't find much information about audio implimentation in combination to Processing.js 

I might just be confused about that, but audio is very important.

-TyranoBuilder isn't well documented yet and I keep on running into problems when using some of the features like image buttons and the javascript stuff.

I can probably figure out work arounds for what seems like inconsistent loading on the browser exports, but I don't want to right now. 

-Construct2 costs $130

-GameMaker costs a good amount for html export and I've also read that it isn't really optimized for it. From what I understand it's another asset loading problem thing, but I only read a little bit about it.

-PlayCanvas' editor is browser based. This seems so crazy inconvenient to me that I'm not even going to try.

-Unity's WebGL game downloads are enormous. I want something that can result in file sizes more similar to 10mb.

 

So to summarize what I'm looking for:

-basically it should not require a plugin and work on all browsers.

-audio is really important to me.

-responsiveness of controls (immediacy of feedback) is very important to me

-I'd rather have the entire scene/level/whatever preload than have it partially load and start hitching or misplace audio-timing while the game is being played.

-Expense is always an issue, but if the results look really promising, then I'll consider that again.

 

 I don't really know much about this stuff, so feel free to explain anything about it that might be useful.

Anyone know of a game-engine I should look into?

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Is there a reason you're not considering using a javascript library or framework, rather than a full-on engine? I feel like that's probably gonna be the easiest way to nail what you're looking for. It's something I've been thinking about more recently, ever since I discovered that Kongregate requires you to upload WebGL builds of Unity games.

 

There are a ton listed here, I haven't personally used any of these, but pixi, Phaser, and Impact have all been recommended to me in the past.

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Is there a reason you're not considering using a javascript library or framework, rather than a full-on engine? I feel like that's probably gonna be the easiest way to nail what you're looking for. It's something I've been thinking about more recently, ever since I discovered that Kongregate requires you to upload WebGL builds of Unity games.

 

There are a ton listed here, I haven't personally used any of these, but pixi, Phaser, and Impact have all been recommended to me in the past.

 

I just don't understand what that would mean. I looked around the EaselJS website, but I have no foundational knowledge of what a javascript library or framework is. 

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Godot has an export to Html5 feature. It uses emscripten to compile c++ into javascript. It's been broken since the release of 1.0, but I believe it's back with 1.1. Maybe something to keep your eye on.

 

**edit:** Was just on IRC asking about and it apparently isn't fixed on the master branch yet. If you feel brave, you can find out who is waiting for the pull request and compile their fork to try it out. I might do that tonight for you and report back, perhaps even compile it for you if you're interested.

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Godot has an export to Html5 feature. It uses emscripten to compile c++ into javascript. It's been broken since the release of 1.0, but I believe it's back with 1.1. Maybe something to keep your eye on.

 

**edit:** Was just on IRC asking about and it apparently isn't fixed on the master branch yet. If you feel brave, you can find out who is waiting for the pull request and compile their fork to try it out. I might do that tonight for you and report back, perhaps even compile it for you if you're interested.

 

The idea of having to wrangle the insides of an engine is very intimidating to me and just not really what I want to spend my game-dev time on. I'm not sure if that's what would be happening here, but that's what it sounds like. I'd rather have something very stable.

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I guess the main difference would be that the stuff you're looking at all use built-in editors, while a js framework is gonna be used with whatever web development environment you want to work in (I mostly just use Sublime Text). So rather than running the game engine, you just include whatever javascript files you want in a normal HTML page with a script tag (<script type="text/javascript" src="whatever_framework_file.js">). Though actually it seems like a lot of these engines use node which'd be a whole other level of weirdness...

 

I guess this stuff is probably pretty intimidating if you haven't done any web dev before, and it'll definitely be more work up front. But long term, that straight up js/html5 knowledge will be more transferable and useful in general.

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I'm interested in trying that out Dinosaursssssss, but I'm not sure where to start. Would EaselJS be a place to start with that? Or should I look up something else?

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I poked through the docs and Easel seems pretty straight forward and well documented, and it doesn't require node.js or a webserver or anything, so it seems like a decent place to start. They have a ton of interactive demos that you can live-edit which I'm also a big fan of. Now that I've been looking at this I kinda want to do a little html5 thing for the next jam I do...

 

Anyway I'll warn you once more that going down this road will, in some ways, definitely be more frustrating than an existing engine. I think it's probably worth it in terms of your goals, but I always found web dev to be a massive pain in the ass for dumb reasons (browser caching, cross-browser issues, web server permission issues, everything related to CSS, etc). So uh your mileage may vary, I guess.

 

I'd love to hear if anyone else has thoughts on this, but that's my 2 cents.

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The idea of having to wrangle the insides of an engine is very intimidating to me and just not really what I want to spend my game-dev time on. I'm not sure if that's what would be happening here, but that's what it sounds like. I'd rather have something very stable.

 

The engine itself is stable, html5 export is finnicky. There are fixes people have proposed, but if you want to make something for web now, perhaps you should try something else.

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Also for what it's worth, with Chrome blocking the webplayer I have to imagine Unity is working real hard to improve the WebGL stuff, so it might get better very soon? I donno.

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whoa

 

edit: I personally avoid using anything based on Flash/Actionscript, since it's generally not supported on mobile (or wasn't; maybe this has changed?) and also the main IDEs for it are expensive Adobe products (FlashDevelop is the only free one I know of) AND it uses a proprietary scripting language. That said I donno anything about Edge and I haven't touched Flash in a few years so this is all anecdotal.

 

double edit: I think a lot of my hatred for Flash comes from needing to support a legacy tool built in FlashDevelop for a couple years. I skimmed your twitter convo and alienmelon is probably a much better resource than my anecdotal/out of date opinions.

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I just read Construct2's explanation about sound and music files in browser games. I'm starting to see the limitations of browser games. Now I can see why I was having trouble with audio in TyranoBuilder. Unity spoiled me. I like not having to worry about when to preload sounds and such. I'm starting to think that the accessibility of browser games without downloads might not be worth it to me. I guess it really depends on who the intended audience is. I think Unity is probably still the closest thing to what I need even though it requires a plug-in and non-Chrome. If anyone really wants to play my game, they'll download the desktop version. I just thought I could have it all if I knew which engine to use. I don't know. 

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