Forums » Help » Impact.js for social games?

Hello. I am new to this technology.

Would like to know can impact.js use to build games like social games like cityville and so?

What are the limitations?

Can the game code easily decode? Since it is just html5, javascript and css though.

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

Impact can indeed be used to make social games. There are several examples/plugins using node.js, faye, socket.io, etc for multiplayer interaction. Many can be found here: http://pointofimpactjs.com/plugins.

HTML5 gaming and Impact is all relatively new and a lot of the limitations of it are yet to be found. Not to say that it is limitless but the technology improves with every release of modern browsers and it is already a very viable platform to work with.

Impact is pure Javascript and Javascript is client-side. This means that anyone can view the source. It can be minified (and should be) and obfuscated but neither of those should be considered secure. It's best to augment your code with server-side checks and processing to prevent cheating and whatnot.

There's no such thing as a strongly protected source when you give it to the client. Flash, Java etc. are NOT secure, it's only how much effort it is to decode, and it's only slightly easier to do that to JavaScript than it is for Flash and Java (speaking from experience of having had to reverse engineer both under specific circumstances)

Thanks for the reply! Since it is hard to decode then I would say it is good enough.

If something can be encoded, it can always be decoded.*

Also, if you're doing a social game, the logic is going to be likely done on the server-side which won't be available to people trying to copy your game anyways ;)

*Assuming no information loss - And even then there are a lot of cases where context can fill in the missing parts.