Forums » Impact Engine » Impact vs. ... questions about "why Impact"

Hey guys,

I'll keep this short and to the point.
I'm not an Impact user (yet), and am looking for a javascript game development framework. I've got to admit, Impact looks fantastic, but since there is no free trial I would like some perspective from current users on why I should shell out the $99 instead of using the other free alternatives.

As much as I would like to just buy it, I think this is worth asking as money is currently not in abundance (at least for me :]).
I would like to hear what you guys think.
Currently, another alternative I'm looking into is the CraftyJS engine. I've been messing around with it for the past few days, so if some of you know it and can make direct comparisons that will be appreciated as well.

Thanks a lot!
Xaan

Another thing... Is there an advantage of getting Impact from here (the official site) over getting it from AppMobi as a part of the bundle?

hi,

i also tried a few other frameworks before...

...

lets talk about impact :-)

- documentation is so much comfortable and helps in nearly every problem
- very active forum, dont know if there is any problem that didnt get solved
- impact is very easy to extend for your own needs with inject or the plugin api
- in comparison to other frameworks, i think the performance in impact is the best
- very nice debugtools

i use impact for browser only for now, so i cant say anything about appmobi.

100% worth the money

AppMobi: Last time I had a look at their site and what I have heard you can use Impact only for 5 games and you have to use them up in one year's time otherwise you lose the not used ones.
Impact (here): You can use it for unlimited amount of games and unlimited amount of time.

It's also more complex than that regarding AppMobi, because they have multiple XDKs, one of which is $99/year (with 5 Impact licences inside that year), but they also have a free one that doesn't come with Impact, so you'd have to buy your own but you could leverage the functionality to do cross building and so on.

Thanks for the replies. I would definitely like to hear more opinions.
I have another question about the (Weltmeister) editor:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the editor was not created by dominic, but came from the community. Am I correct? I've been looking around and it seems (unless this changed) that it only supports square tiles (many of my games would require triangle collision tiles, which is why I'm asking.) Assuming that's true, is it possible for me to add my own code to make it support triangle collision tiles? This is what I've been doing for the past few days with the CraftyJS engine, I would like to understand how flexible Impact is in that sense.

Keep it coming :)
Xaan

Before I bought impact, I looked pretty extensively at every single game engine on this list. I ultimately chose impact because

a) the code was better written than anything else I found
b) it's actively developed
c) weltmeister (which does include 45deg and 33deg angled collisions tiles, fyi)
d) it's easy to extend
e) i am building a top-down RPG and it seemed to be the best engine to accomplish this type of game.

Going back to point a) - there are a million ways to write javascript, and 999,997 of those ways suck. The framework/class system dominic uses blows away the code of any other game engine I've seen.

I'm not a fan of spending money when there are decent free solutions out there, but in this case $99 seemed like a drop in the bucket when I considered how much time impact could save me.

I think if you do your homework on the other game engines out there, then look through the documentation, examples, and tutorial videos on this site, the choice becomes pretty easy.

IMHO, of course.

@Xaan dominic made the editor too. We helped with some bug fixes/feature suggestions.

Dominic works closely with the developer community and does a great job listening to the wants and needs. The addition of the sloped tiles to the engine is an example of a high demand feature that Dominic took the time to develop, and did it very well. There are many more occasions where small suggestions, fixes and additions from the community have been included into Impact.

$99 is a small price to pay for a great, well documented, evolving engine. If you are serious about game development... this is a great investment.

Very interesting.
One last question - how well does Impact work with networking?
I'm talking multiplayer, social games, and even MMOs?

no networking off the bat, you have to hook it up with other plugins/services, such as NodeJS-Impact, Pusher, etc

Yes, with nodeJS - there's a plugin for impact? That is great news.

I agree with others on this thread. I looked at several engines, and I even have a game made using Cocos2D for iPhone, and the iPhone Game Kit using Objective-C.

So after working with different engines and libraries, Impact seemed like the best of all things I've used. Simpler, more efficient, and I learned that JavaScript, when properly used, is actually a powerful language.

Impact allowed me to rapid-prototype very quickly. I don't know about Weltmeister doing other than square tiles, however.

As far as appMobi, I like the idea, but I haven't had time to really get it figured out.

Impact is definitely worth it, and you will get better at JavaScript by seeing it used in an advanced way.

It really helps to see other people's source code if possible, just to see how flexible Impact is. People use triggers creatively, and there are lots of little plugins being shared.

The drawbacks might be limited sound support, but that's the fault of the browsers, not Impact. Also I'm not sure about OpenGL-type effects like colour transform, or support for Texture Packer and other existing sprite sheets, and type and fonts are limited.

appMobi's pretty powerful if used properly. DirectCanvas is just insane fast.

sound for the web can always be compensated with soundManager2

sound for mobile web is still in the works, by phone manufacturers

openGL ( webGL ) is pushing the boundaries. Look at the top games on the Chrome Web Store , they're all webGL enabled.

Took the plunge, I'll let you know how I like it soon :) doesn't mean the comments have to stop though, I love hearing your opinions.

Welcome to the party. Be sure to get on FreeNode IRC channel #impactjs for some live help, http://www.pointofimpactjs.com for a growing number of resources for developers and of course the forums. ;)

Thank you very much :)