Forums » Impact Engine » benefits of ImpactJS

Hey,

I'm looking at ImpactJS (found it through indiegames.com), and I was looking for some kind of feature matrix/sheet? At first I was going with Moai, I would like to compare with ImpactJS but outside tutorials there doesn't seem to be a "selling points/features" page. I mean, if I'm buying something I would like to know beforehand if it is worth it. Is there some kind of information like that floating somewhere that I have missed or a trial version?

Thanks in advance,
dfuse

There's no trial, no. But if you don't like Impact for whatever reason, I can you your money back within the first month of your purchase. That's easier for me to handle than a separate trial version.

I've never worked with Moai, but my understanding is that it's a "native" SDK that compiles to apps and runs LUA for your game code. So, no browser support.

Impact's primary goal is to run in browsers - desktop and mobile. Bundling Impact games into native apps can be done (e.g. with iOSImpact), but if you only need native apps and no browser support, you're probably better of with another game engine.

If you're looking for an easy to use, straightforward game engine for tile based games (Jump'n'Runs, top-down RPGs...) that runs on many platforms, by all means go with Impact :)

Thanks Dominic for the answer,

I'm not too concerned about the target platform but more about what the engine offers. I have almost no experience writing games, but I am an experienced (Java) programmer and have experience with stuff like scene graphs, OpenGL etc, although never in a game setting. What I'm looking for is an engine that will put me on the way so that I don't have to find out all the basic stuff like the game loop, loading resources, input etc. It's information like that I was trying to find, maybe I have to read the tutorials first to get an idea what the engine offers?
Anyway, after reading the forum I think it may be better to wait for the imminent 2.0 release, else I would have to pay twice...

@dfuse you're going to have to learn about game loop, loading resources, input/output in any game engine, be it ImpactJS or Moai. It's really easy to pick up with ImpactJS. If you're the type who likes seeing how the game engine works behind the scenes, go with ImpactJS.

Thanks fugufish, yes I'm that type :)
I first looked at Construct 2 to start writing games, but when a tool is hiding too much internals I'm not that interested, I feel too constrained (although it probably is a very fine tool and I would get very far with it).
I think ImpactJS will be a bit easier to understand, given it is just html5/javascript, whereas Moai runs the Lua game logic in it's own engine to translate it to the target platform. I also already have some experience writing mobile apps with Phonegap and JQuery mobile, so the bridge to game developing will be smaller than starting with Moai.