| For the game market right now, no, it's not worth $99, because: 1. HTML5, and more specifically Canvas, isn't ready to deliver on its gaming promises yet. Too many slow/incomplete implementations to be fully cross-browser/cross-platform. 2. You will get an almost identical engine with a strong community ecosystem if you use Flixel and a map editor(e.g. Flan, DAME, Wasabi M). And that resulting game will be tailored for the Flash portal market. Here is a perfectly great game made for Ludum Dare 19 in 48 hours in Flixel: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview... And here is a different LD19 entry that was done with no engine at all, just raw haXe: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview... 3. In a year it is likely to be obsoleted by engines based around other HTML5 technologies(CSS and SVG make for stronger "general 2D scenegraph" technologies, and WebGL is faster). It's a feature-poor engine - the highlights are the collision system and map editor - and the existing free ones are similar. If you do buy this engine, it's probably because of ignorance, which in itself is a bad sign. There's reams of game code lying around the internet, and the most important thing isn't having the code but having an understanding of how it works. You are better served by buying a book on engine creation, reading that, and reading open source engine code, than to buy one set of documented engine code and only read that. The only time this equation differs is when we're talking about features that are not dime-a-dozen and are truly a pain to integrate properly. I would be more impressed if it had one or more of: * A tightly integrated full-physics engine(in addition to the basic platforming collision) * Scene serialization/in-game editing * More of a story for UI code - menus, settings, user profiles, keybind configuration, etc. * Networking features * Features for AI design(for example a state machine editor). |
2. flash = javascript + super vector libs + sweet IDE. it has been around for a decade+ so yes: it is better.
3.a. 3D (webgl) does not make 2D obsolete. I'm not sure you imply that?
3.b. not everyone wants a scene graph for doing games. SVG + CSS is superior if you want a scene graph but plenty (and i would argue: the best) libraries for opengl, sdl, you name it are non scene graph driven.