Two weeks ago I purchased the ImpactJS Engine written by Dominic Szablewski. It was $100. I'm usually not the type to spend money on something like this but I really needed something to both kick-start my interest in Game Development as well as streamline my development process. I purchased the engine through appmobi.com because they offered a packaged deal which included some of their software that makes it easy to convert your app to iOS and android. To be honest I haven't even touched the AppMobi portion of what I purchased. Instead I've been neck deep in Impact engine every night after work.
In order to jump-start my learning of Impact, I picked up the book "Introducing HTML5 Game Development" by Jesse Freeman. It was great! Not only did it take me start to finish in the creation of a game but it also provides brief fundamentals in game development. Things I would not have thought to consider on my own. I also appreciate when an author lists other books that they've found particularly useful on the topic, which he does. I certainly plan on checking them out.
Impact Engine has been cake to work with. Its clearly well thought out, and things just make sense. Features like adding background music to your game are literally a single line of code. It uses JavaScript prototyping for a class-based development architecture which I am a big fan of. One of the other things I'm really excited about with ImpactJS is that it uses the Box2DJS physics engine. This is the same engine Angry Birds was written on as well many other hit physics-based games. In all I'm very happy with my purchase and I plan to release a couple games built on impactJS.
Here's the final version of the game, which is what the book has you create from start to finish: http://coreysnyder.me/Impact/ResidentRaver/
So as of this past weekend I've finished the book. I am finding myself going through it a 2nd time, this time applying the lessons to my own game. Its coming along quickly and I'm feeling creative as ever. I'm looking forward to posting my game here soon.
If you're looking to learn HTML5 game development and you'd like to build on a strong tested framework I'd highly recommend impact engine.
If you're looking to learn Impact Engine, I'd highly recommend "Introducing HTML5 Game Development.
Thanks,
Corey Snyder
