Forums » Impact Engine » Impact 1.18

I just wrapped up Impact 1.18. Main new feature: a fancy Debug Panel. More details in the blog.

It has been a while since the release of Impact 1.17 - and I want to apologize for the lack of updates lately! I had some other projects and Real Life Stuff™ going on - the usual excuses.

I already expected an angry mob with pitchforks (or plasma guns, depending on your preferences), so thanks for your patience! I hope the next version wont take as long.

Next up (1.19): slopes!

Great news. A couple of questions:

The debug panel is impressive. Especially how you can make your own additions. This game engine is getting better all the time and rivals those in other more low-level languages. Very professional and well-made. You've done lots of planning and thinking about how to make Impact extensible.

1) Are you going to continue work on on iOSImpact for making iPad apps? I'm glad to see the accelerometer is now supported in 1.18.

2) Does Weltmeister ver. 1.18 work with Safari 5.1? It breaks weltmeister ver. 1.17 (entities list doesn't show up)

3) I had a suggestion about a variable name in Entity but I don't know if this will break backwards compatibility (I think it would).
http://impactjs.com/forums/impact-engine/standing-suggestion-for-next-version

4) The debug panel is excellent. I have a game that won't load on the iPad in the browser. I think it runs out of memory (huge level) because the progress bar never finishes loading, and for this, I don't think the debug panel would load either.

Slopes in 1.19 is also going to be a huge feature.

Keep up the great work.

1) Yes. Also, AppMobi's direct canvas may be a nice alternative to iOSImpact. Though I haven't seen myself yet.

2) Yes. This was a problem in the CSS. It's fixed now.

3) You're right, the var name "standing" is pretty ambiguous. "grounded" is better, but could still be confusing if you're developing an RPG with a top down view for instance. I'll probably change this with Impact 2.x, because - as you said - it breaks backwards compatibility.

4) The debug panel actually works perfectly on the iPad. It also loads on the iPhone but is too cramped to be usable.

Are you trying to load any sound files? iOS still chokes on that. See here.

really like the debug panel!

yep, the iOS (possibly Android) integration would be awesome

This is a huge update.

The new debug is amazing. How did we live without it?

I disabled sound on my game and it still won't finish loading on the iPad. It loads in the iPad simulator, but Activity Monitor says Mobile Safari is using 880 MB of RAM. Even with preRender = true in background-map.js

The first generation iPad has 256 MB. My level is so big that it's going to have to be broken down into different regions.

However, under Lion and Safari 5.1, it uses much less RAM (desktop Safari), the debug mode shows it's hardly using any processor at all. That must be the hardware acceleration.

Simply amazing!! I love the debugger, it's insanely helpful.

@stahlmanDesign

Direct Canvas will support iPad when we come out of Private Beta ( we already made 2 demos of ImpactJS games working on the iPad).

hmm am having some issues with bind() keys

they don't work for the keyboard numbers [ 1 to 9 ]

for the regular keys (x,c,left,right,up,down) they work perfectly

ah okay, i checked the difference between input.js in 1.17 and 1.18

appears that in 1.18, the notation has changed to '_0' , '_1', '_2' , etc

so for 1.18, we got to use this

ig.input.bind( ig.KEY._1, '1' );
ig.input.bind( ig.KEY._2, '2' );
ig.input.bind( ig.KEY._3, '3' );

also, if you have a smaller screen (like my 13" ), might be a bit annoying to see the debug panel below your game canvas.

you could set the z-index in debug.css to 1000, so it appears above game.

i also noticed that FPS wise, when I view the performance panel, the game loses about 15 FPS. But when i switch to another panel tab, it goes back to 60.

seems like the debug panel itself is another html5 canvas. Running two canvasses at the same time will slow the game down.

HOLY CRAP THIS DEBUG PANEL IS SICK!!!!!

Awesome!!

This is amazing. Didn't expect the release to be this good! Especially like Show Collision Boxes and Velocities in the Debug panel.

Btw, nice that you actually added sortEntitiesDeferred()! :)

@fugufish: Sorry about the number key thing - forgot to mention it in the blog post (updated now).

Yes, the Performance Panel takes a bit of processing power itself, so the fps might drop. The time taken per game frame should still be the same though.

The z-index in the CSS for the Debug Menu is already the first fix for the next version. Thanks! :)

Nice work, dominic.

In the Entities portion of the debug panel, when you select "show Names and Targets", how are you doing that as far as fonts? It looks like you are using a regular HTML font and not the Impact font. I'm interested is adapting that for my game so I can display foreign characters and more easily change font colours etc.

It would nice in the next version if you could see under Background Maps how much memory is being taken up by each. That way you can see what's causing the lag or what is hogging memory.

iam looking forward to slopes they are quite importent for us

great work with the debug pannel, i love it !

I got the accelerometer working. Very simple. It's amazing to see this working just like a packaged app.

The new problem is device rotation. In landscape mode, the ig.input.accel.x & y are reversed. Is it possible to detect device rotation to either prevent rotation, or to change the x,y values?

@stahlmanDesign - what device are you developing on? could you provide the model?

Really nice looking! Love it already...clean and useful!

Sephi-Chan made me aware of a problem with ig.log() today in IRC: it didn't work with Chrome or Safari. At all. I just uploaded version 1.18a to fix it. Sorry about that.

AAAAAAWWWWEEEESSSSOOOOMMMEEE!!!!!

Days like these make me feel that I did not waste these $99 :D

hmm appears that ig.log() still does not work in Chrome for v1.18a

the code for log:function seems to be empty:

// the following code comes from lib/impact/impact.js

	// Stubs for ig.Debug
	log: function() {},
	show: function( name, number ) {},
	mark: function( msg, color ) {},

a quick fix would be to add the following to the empty log function in impact.js

	log: function(arguments) {
		if(this.console)
			console.log(Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments));
	},

ig.log() only does something when the debug module is loaded. Otherwise it's just an empty dummy function. See the debug article.

Is there any ETA on the 1.19? I would really use the sloped tiles :)