Forums » Impact Engine » Impact 2.0 release date?

I'm eager to get my hands on the official node.js implementation. Does anyone know the expected release date for Impact 2.0?

When it's done

I really don't know yet when it will be ready. I'm working on several ideas and new features that all have to be combined into a release sometime.

I'm aiming for a september-ish release, but I have had bad track record in the past with predicting release dates.

@dominic is mobile one of them? I noticed X Type's gone pretty smooth on mobile safari

Cool thanks for letting me know.

wait... is node being 'fully' supported by 2.0? I am completely out of the loop on any new features, lol... I need to read the forum about it more often.

also...
@dominic - ImpactJS is EPIC... best money I've ever spent on a game engine, xP

Hey Dominic,

Do you already have any idea how hard it will be to upgrade a version 1 game to a version 2? Backward compatibility issues and so. Or is it too early to say anything about that?

Hey, would it be possible to give any kind of rough update/roadmap for 2.0? And is there any chance of getting on a beta channel?

I am going to be starting a 2d game project in a few weeks, and 2.0 makes much more sense for me than 1.0, even if it's unstable right now. I'd even be glad to contribute source fixes and such.

My game will need a node.js backend for multiplayer, and having something (anything) in Impact would help a great deal.

Additionally, since licenses are only good for major version number releases, and my game won't be shipping for months, I have no use for a 1.0 license if 2.0 is coming sometime soon.

Have no idea on 2.0...I've just bought it in 2012/05, no time to use it...
You'd better to make it cheap for v1.0 user.

I want to restart with my HTML5 at the beginning of next year, when i have more freetime.
I searched for some engines with mapeditor support, so i found impactjs (again)...before that i used melonjs with tiled...still can`t decide between this two.
but the question is here is it worth to buy the 1.x or better wait for 2.x? how long did it takes to release?

I was really hoping for 2.0 by now also. I'm sure Dominic is working on it (although he did get sidetracked with Ejecta for better or worse).

Don't quote me on this but I recall him saying that people who buy 1.x within so many months before the release of 2.x you will get 2.x also. Seems like he is losing sales being in limbo right now. Would be a good idea to set some hard dates... at least for the "free upgrade" if nothing else, if he plans on doing that.

As developers we all know its very difficult to project timelines for completion but "When it's done" is hard for customers to deal with also. ;)

Dom, I want to buy ImpactJS, but need the free upgrade to 2.0. Will you do that for us that are on the fence right now waiting for 2.0 without a clear date for 2.0?

well, don't tell anyone, but i have the 2.0, much faster and with top features ( retina support, vector graphics, improved game loop, game record/replay/ font caching / BSP tree collisions, ... ).

Yes i have all this on my hard drive : i made this myself :-)

But too bad i won't give it for free... and i am afraid i have
no right to sell it...

Now you really have to be patient with Dominic...

:-)

I think we should pay for 2.0.
It's a way for us to give our support for this great engine and Dominic's work.
We wan't him to to be able to continue working on this right?

The price on the other hand depends on the features.
We already got Ejecta for free, the goodwill is there.

And if there was more then one guy developing this, he has to pay someone to continue the development right?

Impact is good and worth the cost.

Do what you have to to. take your time.
And Dominic, have you thought about crow-sourcing?

100% agree that we should have to pay for 2.0 even if already bought 1.0

I say that as a 1.0 customer.

I bought 1.17, I would pre-order 2.0 impact has made a lot of my longterm goals achievable. I'd love to support it further.

P.S. can 2.0 have a feature that creates time? I have a lot of other resources in life, but time seems to be in high demand.

Sure, agree that 2.0 would require a new license and I support that. Multiplayer is the thing I want the most. :)

Paid upgrade for 2.0? Sure. But if I'd purchased 1.0 30 days before that, not so sure. It'd feel as if I never got to get my moneys worth on 1. Would feel cheated a bit.

FWIW if I were in dom's shoes, whence 2 was out, I'd announce it and provide the upgrade for free to anyone who had purchased 1 less than <some number... 90? 180?> days before.

btw @vincentpiel what was that all about?

Hey, just to update everyone, I just got an email response from Dominic saying that 2.0 will probably be a bit longer.

It's better not to plan on having it soon, and I wouldn't make any schedules around it.

Dominic should really be more active on this forum ;)

It's been another month, maybe we could get another update? Not saying it should be released before ready, I'd just like to know what to expect.

I've been holding off on writing the server side of my game, waiting to see what's included with 2.0.

In reference to the earlier conversation, I'd be happy to pay another $99 for 2.0 when it arrives.

This situation can be described as follow : ImpactJS is out of control.
When i looked into the code, i saw too many design flaws to report them here : Dominic applies solutions that would be perfect, in, say, C#, but are just not efficient in Javascript. ig.input or the collision are perfect examples : they create garbage on each call, whereas it is possible not to (i did it for ig.input quite easily). Worst aspect is that the root of ImpactJS itself, ig.Class, is crippled (creating closure and wasting memory).
Dominic seems not to realise that coding both the framework and Ejecta is too big a task for a single man.
Don't get me wrong : ImpactJS is a nice thing, but new features are not flowing in (1.21 is a bug-fix release), and there's no release schedule, which is not acceptable for a paid framework.


Time to wake up.

Time to wake up

A bit harsh, that.

Impact works for me, but you could always switch to another engine if this one is no good for your needs. Many kids on this block, including this free one, component-based, that I intend to try out at some point. I digress. Impact works for me, has gotten me some (paid) work, plus, indirectly, a job. Good investment, that.

Going back to sleep now. :\

I mean no offense here, but look : first post is July, 24th. The updates are part of the contract, and i am impatient to see new features in this nice framework. Lack of activity on the forum/on PointOfImpact is most likely linked to that delay in 2.0.

It's not black or white. There are good things, but there's also a real issue.

And i see no reason not to tell what's wrong.

Agreed.

I, too, have often remarked that Impact would benefit from additional help; or, at least, someone to manage the front-end: documentation, forums, sales, etc. While no support contract comes with Impact, the number of unanswered issues on the forums have risen, and it's not the community's responsibility to answer them.

I believe the core issue here is one of mis-managed expectations. Dominic started talking of Impact 2.0 six months ago, with promises of free upgrades to those who buy within 30 days. At time goes by, he may have a firestorm on his hands when Impact 2.0 finally hits and all those who purchased expecting free goodies find themselves out of luck.

I also find the Ejecta support troubling. I suspect the majority of the community do not use Ejecta, having prior solutions, a need for cross-platform support or no interest in mobile whatsoever. While Ejecta continues to see updates, the core community atrophies with no steady ImpactJS updates; and I don't know Ejecta well enough to say, but won't Ejecta need a big refactor once Impact 2.0 hits? Why dump all this time into it now?

Quote from vincentpiel
This situation can be described as follow : ImpactJS is out of control.
When i looked into the code, i saw many design flaws to report them here : Dominic applies solutions that would be perfect, say in, say, C#, but are just not efficient in Javascript. ig.input or the collision are perfect examples : they create garbage on each call, whereas it is possible not to (i did it for ig.input quite easily). Worst aspect is that the root of ImpactJS itself, ig.Class, is crippled (creating closure and wasting memory).
Dominic seems not to realise that coding both the framework and Ejecta is too big a task for a single man.
Don't get me wrong : ImpactJS is a nice thing, but new features are not flowing in (1.21 is a bug-fix release), and there's no release schedule, which is not acceptable for a paid framework.


Time to wake up.

Garbage collection is a big issue in Impact. I believe the core framework was written prior to the garbage collection info being readily available. Still, I'd expect to see a refactor 2.0.

Agree with quidmonkey. While having access to Ejecta at its present state is nice, I'd much rather see work being done on improving ImpactJS.

I wouldn't mind paying again for 2.0, but like many people here I am a bit disapointed with the "activity" that impactjs has. I was thinking that there would be much more frequent updates etc..

What kind of feature requests do you have? When you say "frequent updates" or "work on improving ImpactJS", what are you thinking of specifically?

I haven't done anything more than make small prototypes so I don't know what kind of problems I might run into farther down the road on the way to releasing a game.

I would like to see some basic interface stuff such as input boxes and tooltips.

Multiplayer support is the big one though.

Quote from drhayes
I haven't done anything more than make small prototypes so I don't know what kind of problems I might run into farther down the road on the way to releasing a game.

It's working perfectly fine for us doing a mid-scale game.

Most issues we've found have to do with the platforms where we deploy, instead of the framework itself, if we were deploying only on browsers we would have no problem at all.