Forums » Help » Could I use Impact to build a simple slot machine ?

Hi

Dominic mentioned in his OnGameStart2011 conference talk that Impact wouldn't be good for graphics intensive (?) games like poker, or card games.

What would be the reason that this engine would not be suitable for card games ?
Has this changed ?
Or should I be looking at another engine ?

Could I build a slot game with Impact ? Or is that the wrong tool for the job ?

Looking forward to any advice, and/or nudge in the right direction.

You could use Impact to animate the slots, and maybe the debris particle entity for dropping coins out, but other than that, what you want to do is just going to be pretty simple javascript that doesn't require any kind of library.

Impact is best suited for games requiring 2D physics or collision detection.

But it is very flexible and people have used it in creative ways that I hadn't thought of (like Z-type)

Thanx for the reply. Z-type very cool, clever, and different.

I had recently written a quick mock-up of a slot game using basic dom and canvas.
This worked well for one some browsers, but less on others, or better on some devices than others

I was just looking for a high-level framework that abstracts from the final device, interface, browser and rendering.
There seem to be lots of ways of drawing, using sound etc.
some better than others, some depending on platform and device being used
Browser and hardware vendors keep updating/optimizing their products, supporting hardware
acceleration and new language standards
Html5 standards evolve, then javascript language/engines improve.

Also as projects become bigger they become less maintainable.

Looking for the following features (amongst other):
- animated sprites
- sound manager
- dynamic resource loading (sound, images per level/game)
- dynamic levels (being different games, e.g. slot1, slot2)
- level editor - to create basic layout for games, e.g. slot1, slot2
and which assets (images, sounds, text fields, buttons) are to be used for each game
- text display (coins won, lost, bet size, etc)
- optimized rendering depending on platform (mobile, pc browser)
- support for loadable modules
- debugging and performance analysis
- input libraries for touch and mouse, keyboard
- network libraries to support client-server interactions (socket.io + nodejs)
- ...
- model-view controller ?

Should I start from scratch, or start by adding small libraries,
or adopt a framework and start customizing.

Either way I would love to use ImpactJS if not for this project then for others.
Seems like a great framework, easy to use, well documented, enforces structure,
great tooling, large community and examples and a lot more.