Forums » Impact Engine » Packaging as binary for desktop

Has anyone done it using something like App.js or Titanium Desktop? Anyone submitted a package like this to Steam or, say, the OSX app store? Any hints or suggestions?

I haven't tried it myself, but there was another thread about this recently.

The Lost Decade guys published their game Onslaught Arena in the Mac AppStore using a custom App that just displays a UIWebView.

Okay, yeah, that's probably what I'll end up doing.Thanks!

I tried TideSDK yesterday (which used to be Titanium Desktop), but unfortunately performance was just awful. Performance was perfect with a small non-Impact game I also tested with TideSDK, but my current Impact project is totally unplayable.

I have looked at packaging an impact.js app in an air application. The problem is that impact needs to be hosted from a web server. This is due to xss protection and canvas won't load cross domains. Html air apps are the equivalent of going into safari and typing file:///path/to/impact/game/index.html. Webkit's xss protection wants http://localhost. In order for one to package it as an air app, you would have to create a simple web server and then have air load localhost. I have no clue how to do this.

Also I don't think air apps can be submitted to the MacAppstore because it requires Air runtime to be installed or something about sandboxing.

Try using something like Awesomium (http://awesomium.com/), maybe?

I'm looking in to that. What I also want to know is, if impact needs to be hosted from a web server, then how would one make an offline version? I know html5 can cash pages for offline use, but it has to load it from a server at least once. This would make distribution for the chrome web store tricky.

I was scared off of Awesomium by the licensing costs of the pro version ($2900! Yipe!). Then again, not like my "company" made more than $100k last year... so...

There are also Chrome packaged apps. Haven't played with it yet, though.

@lazer: Drat. I'll probably still try it but I was holding out hope for Titanium.

ImpactJS runs on AppJS easily, the only problem with it though is audio does not work at all. So I tried using the SoundManager2 (http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/) API with a combination of Flash 8 and OGGs and voila, Audio was working perfectly with AppJS.

HOWEVER, I have this weird issue where the system lag hovers around 30ms, and the FPS drops to 21, but this problem goes away if you resize the window (and then the FPS jumps up to 100+, with the standard impact project) but once you stop resizing the window the FPS drops down to 21 again...

What the FPS is with a standard window:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/109219137/fps_spike.png

What the FPS is after resizing a window:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/109219137/fps_normal.png

Anyone have any ideas on why this might be?

I made a new post before I saw that you responded to this post. If you want to see the new post, click here. Dominic, if you are reading, please put these tools in the tools section of the site.

Ok, through a lot of research, trial and error, and by pure dumb luck, I finally found a good way to package your impact games for any device.

Mobile
Ok so we all know about Ejecta for iOS, but there some alternatives. For those who are mainly building things using webgl 3d stuff, there is EjectaGL. There is also AppMobi, but it kinda sucks in the iOS department but is suposedly good for Android and many other platforms, excluding desktop(chrome apps don't count). I have also heard about PhoneGap and Appcelerator Titanium. The main problem I have heard about Titanium is that they have very poor canvas performance and lackluster audio support. I havent tested Phone Gap. Phone Gap and Titanium, they work on all platforms, excluding desktop. Appcelerator Titanium powers Wunderlist which has a Window, Mac, iOS, and Android port. More on that in a sec.

Desktop
The biggest issue with impact is that it needs to be hosted from a webserver due to most browsers having xss protection. This would exclude just providing an html file for a user to open with a browser. Even if we were to do this, most users would just get confused or not have a proper browser. This basically makes packaging it in an air app impossible. That said I kept looking. I heard of AppJS and awesomium. AppJS I have very high hopes for, but it is very buggy. Awesomium looks nice, but it costs money if you make over a certain amount. I have not really tested awesomium, but it looks nice. Then I learned that Titanium used to make desktop apps, this is how Wunderlist made its desktop versions. However it had poor canvas performance. Recently Appcelerator stopped development on Titanium Desktop and made it community maintained. This resulted in a fork called TideSDK. I tested it with Jump and Run and was able to get 60 FPS. It works perfectly and has access to native Mac, Win, and Lin apis.

TL;DR
iOS- Ejecta & EjectaGL.
Everything else- Try AppMobi and Phone Gap before trying Titanium.
Desktop- Go TideSDK or gtfo.

I used Tide SDK to package an Impact game as a Mac desktop App. It worked after disabling sound but was extremely slow. Does anyone else have experience with another wrapper like Awesomium or AppJS.

Ejecta works great, but can it be modified to package for the desktop?

Node-webkit works fine for packaging a executable. I'm currently using it for development and sound works just fine. (although only .ogg is supported)

Agree with Codestar regarding Node-webkit. Works great on both windows and mac, it even helps with the input lag you normally get in browsers.