[HTML5] Canvace Development Kit Thread

Hi! I'm here to announce the second beta release of Canvace (http://www.canvace.com/), a development kit for 2D and 2.5D games based on HTML5.This is how the development environment looks like:

and these are some screenshots from a test stage created with Canvace (http://www.canvace.com/demo/):

The project currently contains two fundamental elements: a development environment and a JavaScript library.Let me list some of the features we offer:

• the development environment is itself a web application: one can install it on a local HTTP server, so that several people at once can access the same resources
• not just isometric: users are free to choose a custom 3×3 projection matrix, thus being able to create orthogonal and much more
• integrated versioning system: so you have a long-term history of the changes made to your stages
• output in JSON format: for easier integration in your JavaScript code
• excellent performance: so that your games can run decently even on less powerful devices, like some smartphones are.

We'd love to receive your feedback: praises or curses, anything is welcome. We're open to all kind of feedback.

Forgot to mention: to take a quick glance of what it looks like, you can also check out our first video tutorial:

We're planning to make more videos soon - stay tuned!

looks like a nice engine. Honestly for me, developing games with flash or html5 is just not my style so many limitations. The games for browsers are way to generic for me

That's amazing. While I am a little bit (not too much, just a little) of a sceptic with regards HTML5 games, I think you've pulled it off well here.

Edited by: 8472

you guys just wait till you see an actual game made with Canvace, any skepticism against HTML5 will be gone!
PS: I'm the other developer of Canvace

Just a little update - while working on getting a 0.2.1 release out, we've prepared a speedrun of the design of a map with Canvace. You can see it growing from an empty canvas to a complete stage.

Plus, the artwork you see in this video is going to be released with free usage permissions, together with some more artwork and demo stages, in the next release.

Another update!

With the artwork shown in the video, we created a little demo "game" - which is still WIP, so for now you just have a character wandering around in the map. We need to add some virtual buttons to the game area in case the user is running on a touchscreen device, for the rest it should work flawlessly everywhere.

You can test it by visiting this URL: Canvace.com

All feedback is appreciated.
bye

Edited by: jmc-88

bump!

hi
just wanted to announce that a new minor release is out:
Canvace.com

we have been working on some cool features that make Canvace really usable to make actual games.

the new JavaScript API framework now provides state machines, pathfinding, physics and more. you can read the API reference here: Api.canvace.com
we are creating a little demo side scroller game: Canvace.com

but side scrollers aren't the only kind of games you can create with Canvace. in other words, we are not just making another ImpactJS

Edited by: 71104

is this going to be free for commercial usage? and will this support the windows8 metro apps?

Edited by: atsebak

We're still not 100% sure about this, but our intention is to make our product free to use, while offering additional paid cloud services.

About Metro style apps, not directly: our focus is on browser games, and not going native. But there are tools like PhoneGap or Titanium that help migrating to a native application.

Edited by: jmc-88

We have an update in the meantime: release 0.2.2 is out

We have worked on the installer of the visual environment (no more need to manually create a SQL database and run SQL scripts) and, most important, some core features in the API: performances and physics have been improved, the A* path-finding algorithm has been introduced and state machines along with that.

I don't know about you (and would like to know from you ) but I find that a state machine code pattern is fundamental in most game programming to control characters and their motion. So there they go:
Api.canvace.com

edit - what the lol, reading back I find I had already announced state machines
sorry

Edited by: 71104

Update: today we've been working on making the demo game work on mobile platforms.

So far, the only known issues are bad (sometimes horrifying) performances on older and slower devices and IE not receiving any input on Windows Phone (snort).

If you want to try it, just visit the web page of the game with your mobile browser.
Stay tuned!

Edited by: jmc-88

Edited by: 71104

yo i just tried the ladybug game and i got stuck in the underground you cant jump high enough to the next part,i dont know if its because you werent done it?

Yes, that part of the map currently leads to a dead end... We will probably change this soon.

Hey a few Quick questions to the developers of Canvace -

Is there out of the box support for multi player games?

Are there plans for a pay for version of Canvace?

and

Do you plan on getting any form of Forums up soon? I would love to talk to other canvace developers.

Benjamin385 wrote: Is there out of the box support for multi player games?

not yet. there sure will, although with limitations due to the fact that peer to peer communication in browser applications is not possible for security reasons (see SOP, Same Origin Policy: a JavaScript code can only communicate with the host it originated from). we will also consider implementing a browser plugin, but that will likely prevent multiplayer games from being played in mobile devices.

Are there plans for a pay for version of Canvace?

what we'll do when we are out of beta is not completely clear to us yet , but I can tell you we are aiming to make development tools free of charge and only apply fees to cloud services we will provide. such services will implement cloud management of players, social connections and online presence, achievements, virtual goods and possibly in-game advertising.

Do you plan on getting any form of Forums up soon? I would love to talk to other canvace developers.

we used to have it when Canvace was barely started and no game based on it existed. of course it stayed completely empty for long, until we decided to remove it

anyway thank you for the feedback, let's see if other people need it, we will activate it again if we see it's needed.

Edited by: 71104

Hey, 71104 -

Sounds Great - I am currently working in canvace - like right now and I am loving it.

Keep Up the Awesome Work!

Edit - forgot to ask - Do you guys plan on supporting WebGL in canvace?

Edited by: HeadClot

sorry, didn't see this post before.

yeah, 3D graphics support in planned but it is a very vague planning, as there is a lot of work to do yet...

I'd rather say 3D graphics support is dreamed

Edited by: 71104

Hello!

I'd like to signal that the latest version of Ladybug is temporarily online at an experimental address: Canvace.com

The experimental version currently features the first playable level of the game. We didn't just overwrite the game at Ladybug.canvace.com because the experimental version also features some important modifications in the underlying Canvace engine which are still subject to testing. Among those, requestAnimationFrame support when available (you will notice a wonderful performance gain in some browsers) and setInterval fallback.

Disclaimer: the spiders in the new level are not functional yet.

By the way, Canvace 0.2.4 is about to be released in days

the experimental version has taken over, the game is now available at Ladybug.canvace.com .

That is very cool.