Forums » Impact Engine » Impact - is it still worth it?

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I don't know a thing about Phaser, but ImpactJS is still being developed. The creator is active on these forums and responds to feedback, and additions/extensions are still being developed and shared on the code forums here and elsewhere.

Impact is definitely a solid platform for development. You can probably get things done regardless of your framework. Phaser does seem to be newer, so it might be somewhat more "glamorous" than Impact, but I don't see any mention of a built-in level editor for Phaser, which ImpactJS comes bundled with. That alone might be a good reason to go with Impact.

I think you can make very complex games in Impact.

I just rebaked a game of mine from 2012 using impact-node, and it worked without any changes, so even though Impact doesn't seem to be updated much, it is solid and works great with new technologies like Node.js.

You can also make simple prototypes very quickly, and learn better JavaScript while you're at it. That helped me in regular web development. If you are making games for iPhone or iPad, your Impact games are very easy to package using Ejecta.

There are some plugins for packaging sprite sheets if you want to use Texture Packer or other more traditional methods for your sprites. But I actually like Impact's simple way of using sprites without software like Texture Packer.

As for Phaser or other HTML5 game engines, I haven't used them so I can't compare.

If you want to work with a more modern library with a large active community and regular updates, then go with phaser. If you're wanting to make smaller games then go with impact. Impact is great for making games quickly because of it's structure, but you'll end up rewriting most of it as your game grows in complexity. I've learned that the hard way.

Quote from Codestar
...you'll end up rewriting most of [your game code] as your game grows in complexity.

What makes you say that and how would another engine be different?

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This comes up a lot. Seriously, a lot. A LOT.

I know Impact much better than I know Phaser. But I've been obsessively reading the Phaser docs (they got much better recently!) recently and given myself a bit of time to convert the game I'm working on to Phaser.

My newish, slightly updated perspective on Phaser vs. Impact:

1. I really don't like Tiled, the sort-of industry-standard tilemap editor you're going to have to use with Phaser. Since it's more generic it doesn't have the deep tie-ins that Weltmeister has with Impact. Then again, there's a team working on a game editor for Phaser. I haven't played around with it much because, honestly and perversely, I like typing code myself.

2. The tilemap integration in Phaser is so-so. I like how the collision/physics stuff is architected and separated; e.g. you explicitly call collide on the things you want to collide – if you don&039;t want them to collide, don't call the #collide function.

OTOH, the collision system is too simple for tilemaps. If it's not a completely rectangular tile then you can't collide with it without custom code in Arcade physics. Or you have to use Ninja physics which is kind of the red-headed stepchild and isn't fully fleshed out. I haven't played with P2 yet.

3. I think the amount of custom code you'll end up writing for a complete game is, on the balance, smaller for Phaser. Unless you're using Impact++ with Impact (which is all someone's custom code, BTW), you're going to have to write a bit of UI framework for your menus, a particle emitter probably, some kind of tween functions, some kind of layered drawing so that this sprite always draws behind everything else without sorting, maybe adjust the physics system so it does more than AABB with rotated sprites (Joncom's brilliant Box library comes in handy here), maybe something to tint sprites or do more complicated font handling (again, nod to Joncom)... etc.

Phaser's got a lot of that already in place. ¯\(ツ)/¯

4. I find the HTML5GameDevs community, on balance, less helpful than this one. They're not unfriendly, but questions are more likely to go unanswered there or get unsatisfying short answers than here. For all that Phaser might be "beating" Impact, I don't see a lot of information out there about large-scale, completed Phaser games and how they were architected and maintained.

Meanwhile, ansimuz posts here a lot about Elliot Quest, for example.

5. OTOH: WebGL. Phaser has it with deep support, Impact doesn't. That might matter to you?

Performance is my biggest hang up on Impact(as well as the lack of WebGL support)
http://www.radicalfishgames.com/?p=1725

Don't get me wrong, larger games are being developed with impact (crosscode, elliots quest, Olympia rising ), but in the case of cross code, they had to re-write a lot of the core impact code to conform to a more ECS friendly approach.

The biggest problem is polymorphism. The "simple inheritance" approach is not optimization friendly and will result in you having very large javascript objects the more that you extend them.

@Codestar

Impact allows you to inject a class in place, you are not forced to use simple inheritance (it's actually quite simple, and you can inject several mixins, you are not limited to one)

ig.module(
	'module.path'
).requires(
	'base.class',
	'mixin.class'
).defines(function () {
	'use strict';
	ig.ClassToBeInjected = ig.BaseClass.extend({
		//stuff
	});
	ig.ClassToBeInjected.inject(ig.MixinClass);
});

PS: I do understand what you mean about polymorphism tho, but that will happen with all JS based engines.

I make games professionally, and have used both Impact and Phaser for commercial projects. Each framework has its pros and cons. To answer the specific question as to whether Impact is "still worth it, " -- yes, especially for tile-based games. I made both Bugs on the Run and Outer Space Molecule Chase with Impact. For the Phaser projects I work on, I frequently miss the editor and tile map features that Impact has.

Tom

Try Phaser Editor :)

Try to do it, thanks)

Quote from Fravio4
Try to do it, thanks)

@Fravio4: Try to do what?