It's unfortunate (for me) that you decided to sell it. It looks like a great engine and it does seem like the perfect way to get into HTML5 game development, but as I release almost all my games as FOSS, $99 is not in my budget.

You couldn't consider releasing a free license for non-commercial development?

I fully agree with Tommy, I never thought you were gonna sell it, I know it involves a big investigation to get that FPS on the iPhone (I have tried myself and haven't yet been able to run my games fast), but still you should consider to share your knowledge with the learners.

Ditto #1 Thanks for the heads up though, and good luck :)

Think twice!

randomtower.blogspot.com/2010/12/impact-js-only-for-money.html

I agree with Tommy. I can image that you've spend lots of hours developing the game engine but $99 is a really bad. How about a basic version, or e.g. an opensource version of your engine?

yea. pleaseeeee.

dude, if u wanna sell this game, definitely you have to think in non-commercial development.
that's the way to get the money.

I wish you luck making some sales... but you could have the next jQuery on your hands if you released this for free.

Huh, no sound for me on playbiolab.com with Opera 11 on OS X 10.6.5. Chrome works pretty good and Firefox 3.6 doesn't (same as before).

Some may try to guilt you about charging, but phones aren't free, nor are cars, taxes, medical care, etc. Money is a medium of exchange used to place value on goods and services. Unfortunate in some ways, but excuses don't pay the rent.

Good luck with the product. Biolab's a great showcase for the framework and $99 isn't very much to pay. In fact it should probably be more, in which case maybe a split with a higher commercial price and a free, limited non-commercial license might not be such a bad idea (and I'm coming from a business perspective, not a "how can I guilt this guy into releasing this for free?" one like many I expect to appear here shortly)!

OMG OMG legendary awesome.
I just got 4 licenses as christmas gifts for my family :-P

Seriously WTF guys? What's with this "it's on the internet, it's gotta be free" attitude? He has worked his Butt off to get this thing running on nearly all devices you can imagine and you don't want him to get any money out of it? Even as a developer you have to live from something and you don't live from this "Think non-commercial"-Bullshit! Grow the fuck up!

I think it's great you are going to have a go at making a business out of it. Good luck! It (the engine) seems very well thought out.

$99 dollars is absolutely nothing for a game. Art assets will cost you many times that.

If I ever end up learning Javascript, I'll buy it.

I see people's reasoning behind a free version...it'll at least promote learning the framework for a low cost (person's own time). So finding a way to offer a free version, GPL (? ala extjs.com) and charging for a commercial version would at least get you a large base of users experienced with the framework. Then when they're ready to make a money making app...they buy it.

great job by the way! I'm very impressed.

Great stuff! I will agree tough that $99 is a bit hight priced for me.

Nevertheless, its awesome! Congrats!

I think you're going to get a lot of comments like those above if you have indeed had a few thousand sign up for the "it's ready!" email. Know, however, that there are those of us who don't necessarily agree. Sure, we all like free stuff, who doesn't? But at the end of the day, if you have made something with value, there is no reason not to get paid for it.

Let me indulge in a little analogy here.

I think Impact is a lot like a washing machine. Sure, you can wash your clothes yourself, but a washing machine makes it much easier and less messy. The nice people at the department store, however, will not give you a washing machine for free, no matter how nice they are. If you can't justify a washing machine, you'll have to get your hands wet and do it yourself.

Now, I don't say this as someone who will buy it - I'm not in the target demographic. I'm a hobby developer with no ambition to make money off making games, and I think many of the above comments are from people in the same position. So to those people - well, go and get your hands wet.

As for Dominic, I wish you the best of luck.

Really great, and I was one of the subscribers :) still, I am FOSS user and developer :) and fully agree with #1, as example you could check unity3d.com/ - free until your company makes some money with it ("(b) Unity (free version) may not be licensed and used by companies, educational institution or incorporated entities that had a turnover in excess of US$100,000 in their last fiscal year")

still, it is a cool project! good luck :)

btw - I also agree that $99 is ok - just there are many devs, who just want to make quick little game, publish and just enjoy - this would increase the popularity of the engine, and being more popular means more orders from real gamedev companies (or devgroups :) )

Fully support your decision to sell it. Mainly, I'm just happy that you released it!

However, I suggest you offer one of the following:

* Money back guarantee
* Free 30 day trial
* Free or freemium HTML5 version

I would spend the $99 if I knew I liked the engine, but I have to spend $99 to just figure out if I like the engine or not. There's got to be some way to evaluate it risk-free.

This is the first time I've heard of the project, but if you're charging I'm sure it's worth the cost. Most people pay more than $99 for a steak dinner. Anyone upset with the price should take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves what THEIR time is worth.

I am perfectly cool with the price. Will there be an ability to create native iOS games with it? (I think I saw you mention that once)

I don't really mind paying if I tried it and I feel like it's worth it and pay off in the future. But I believe right now HTML5 gaming isn't something that will net you a big money. It's hard to find a HTML5 game engine, other than Akibahara, and many people just want to learn and see whether they're comfortable with it.

I'm sure many people don't mind you selling the engine. And I'm sure you've put a lot of hard work into it. However, without being able to try it, I think it's hard for me , and many people, to spend money on this and go with it right away.

Please consider having a free version for non-commercial purpose.

Anyway, I'll respect your decision, whatever it maybe. I wish you good luck with Impact! :)

Yeah, I agree with Any and m. While I would have loved it to be FOSS(or not, but free, cause I'm cheap), I can understand the work that went into it, especially the phone versions, and think that $99 is not unreasonable. Expecting that everything everywhere must be free is unreasonable, however.

I would say that perhaps you should release a "free for non-commercial use" cut down version. I guess you could even raise the price of the commercial version to something like $149 then. In any case, I am very seriously considering a license and will probably get one after christmas.

Good luck and good work!

Thnaks man, Hugs from Brazil!

Translated and reposted in russian.
Great enginge!

Awesome release! $100 is nothing compared to the amount of time and skills you have invested into this product. But I know that if you dont make a free version there will not be much buzz. You should just make a branding requirement, and offer branding removal for $100.

Translated and reposted in Germany.

Thanks..

A framework with this kind of tests "if( ig.ua.iPhone4)" (Targeting Different Devices - impactjs.com/documentation/impact-on-mobile-platforms) doesn't seem to be a very good idea.
I would have preferred a feature detection oriented framework (michaux.ca/articles/feature-detection-state-of-the-art-browser-scripting).

How does your framework will involved ?
if( ig.ua.iPhone4) will be follow with if( ig.ua.iPhone5) and after that if( ig.ua.iPhone6) ?

I'm truly envious of your knowledge base of JS.

this is quite an achievement for yourself, good job.

I plan on buying Impact soon!

I'm excited to see where you take this project!

First of all congratulations for finishing/releasing this project!
I've been looking forward to it for months. :)
I didn't expect a completely free version but something to freely test for a few weeks.
For about 50$ I'd buy a license without any hesitation, but for 99$ I'd prefer something like a full featured but time restricted version.
Anyway, I'm really taking into consideration to buy one license. This is really impressive work!
I wish you all the best and hope you will maintain this little gem! :)

Guys, $99 seems pretty reasonable if you're planning on using it to develop commercial games. If you were to develop the next million-dollar idea, $99 is nothing.

When I read it works on iOS devices fast enough, I was truly amazed and immediately had to try it... Quite an accomplishment! Human race will never forget you. :)

Your work deserves money! Let's just hope your business plan will succeed. (I hope so)

Don't listen to those kids asking you to give it away for free. It's obviously a great engine and it's easily worth its money!

Sell it now, put all the raised money towards developing version "2", and then keep selling version 2 while making version 1 free...

6-12 months and all the haters will be lovers

Woohoo! Congrats. Well done sir. I think $99 is a great price, although you might want to make a higher priced version (with x hours of support tickets) for developers who want to pay more.

Please don't be put off by the fools who will pay $1500 for a macbook, $600 for an iphone, $100 for an itunes store account but think $99 for all your hard work is too much.

:)

Bunch of whiners I would happily pay a 100.00 for this. The ad revenue potential alone is well worth it! I thought it would be $400 when I read the blog post.

I say to those who don't like it - the web is free go write your own engine.

OK, time to be a pain in the posterior. I gotta say, the licence is a bit vaguely worded, and IMO dangerously ambiguous.

Your licence says you can't build it into an app 'for software development or application development purposes'. The way I read that, for example, is that I can't build a puzzle game of some kind and offer some way for the user to create their own levels in it.

I'm also fairly sure the clause at the end about purchasers agreeing to be used in your promotional materials by name is a bit dubious, as well as the transfer of rights. I'm in the situation where I'd probably purchase it in my own name but subsequently want to transfer the ownership to a business entity that I'm looking to set up to hold all my intellectual property (with others, as a development establishment)

On that note, the development establishment would comprise of 2-4 people, with me as the primary developer. The setup would subsequently involve me extending the level editor to suit our specific purposes, and using it in-house to generate maps and so on, which by the sounds of it is against the licence, or at the very least requires everyone to purchase a licence, even if they're just designing maps for a game.


I respect your right to charge, and $99 is more than reasonable, especially as I've already seen what can be done with it, but right now I just won't be purchasing, out of trepidation for the legalities. I urge anyone else to read and digest the full licence - impactjs.com/impact-commercial-software-license-agreement - before purchasing, just so they know what they're getting into.

Maybe your business model would work for your want it free fans if you find a way for your "want it free" fans to earn a license or a 1/2 priced discount by promoting the system?

Wish you luck and cannot imagine the hours of life you've invested just getting to the level to attempt such a cool project. -dot

Just wanted to let you know that Biolab (at playbiolab.com) runs on my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S), but not with multitouch, so you can't press two buttons at once. That does make the game unplayable.

Don't give it away for free.

You worked hard for it, and $99 is far from expensive for a complete game engine. Everyone developing a game for real is able to pay $99, so keep the price tag.

Good luck with the project.

Translated and reposted in Italian. It seems like you did a very good job so $99 is a "good" price. I also second who said that you should offer a "money back" guarantee or something like that.

Pete, thanks for taking the time to state your concerns about the license.

To make the long story short: I'm just trying to protect myself; I don't want to piss you off.


For instance, I wanted to ensure that you can't simply take the game engine and editor, "re-brand" it and sell it as your own, or use part of Impact to create an SDK that essentially competes with Impact.

I have no problem with the integration of an editor of some kind into your product, like in your example with the puzzle game. I will try to re-state this clause, to make it more clear.


As for the issue with teams of developers, however, it was my intent that each developer, even if he just uses the level editor, would require a license. It is my understanding, that a game developing company surely will have to resources to buy the adequate number of licenses.


I removed the clause about promotional materials at the end. That was stupid. Sorry.

it's disgusting how cheap you people are. Dominic put a lot of hard work into this and all you people can do is ask to get it for free. Do yourself a favor and put away some of your beer money for a couple weeks then buy a license and build some freakin games.

I think that if someone is serious about releasing multiplaform game AND wanting to release something on Apple devices would definitely invest in Impact.

FOSS developers should stick to current technologies. If HTML5 proves itself a viable platform, eventually somebody will write a similar engine. Until then, games should really be just a way to express yourself. If that's the case, Flash is good enough.It does not matter if your game is not available on iPhone. Just learn ObjectiveC.

Impact should be only for serious developers.

I think that if someone is serious about releasing multiplaform game AND wanting to release something on Apple devices would definitely invest in Impact.

FOSS developers should stick to current technologies. If HTML5 proves itself a viable platform, eventually somebody will write a similar engine. Until then, games should really be just a way to express yourself. If that's the case, Flash is good enough.It does not matter if your game is not available on iPhone. Just learn ObjectiveC.

Impact should be only for serious developers.

The grand list of similar (free) projects:
easeljs.com/
github.com/biilly/doodle-js
github.com/fairfieldt/xcjs
github.com/batiste/sprite.js
github.com/mrdoob/three.js
github.com/ysimonson/canvas.js
github.com/davebalmer/jo
github.com/lostdecade/diggy
gamejs.org/
www.aframejs.com/
gamequery.onaluf.org/
www.kesiev.com/akihabara/

Charge the people who want it free $200

Whether or not you use Impact, I would strongly encourage free and open source software developers to use tools that generate html5 games rather than Flash which is very much a proprietary tool!

Man, this is awesome!
Here, you proved how awesome the modern web technologies are.

I would love to see your engine working on Firefox 4 for mobile.
I can help, feel free to drop me an email (paul@mozilla.com).

Great news but...

I'm an indie game developer since 2008 and I had work with some frameworks and engines, so I will like also that a free version allow me to test the engine before I spend some money on it.
There is not a big market for HTML5 games yet as Flash games has.
I think $99 is a nice price too.

This is an awesome project, I have been looking forward to seeing more of it. I wish you the best of luck in getting customers, so that you can have the funds required to continue your work. Cheers!

Man, don't people suck?

How dare you charge for your hardwork.

We all can't be open source commies. Seriously.

Fantastic effort ,brilliant code dude, I wont be paying for a license.

It would be nice to try it out in some fashion before laying down the $99. But I don't see $99 as such a bad price point. I know that even if I was going to make a game with it, which I would like to do, I would still have to pay someone to do some graphics work.

You put a lot of effort into this and it's awesome; only right you should get paid. $99 is peanuts in the overall budget of developing a game if you're serious about it. Even the simplest game could win that back from Apple store sales if it's popular enough.

The problem, for me, with any price is that it impedes me from seeing if I this is the engine I want to invest my time in.

Spending $99 on an engine that works well for my needs is easy. I wouldn't even blink at paying double that if I knew that the engine was The One.

The problem I have isn't the price.

Consider this simplification. You build watches for a living. I have a tool kit I'd like to sell to you that's going to make it a lot easier for you to build watches. But the box is sealed. You can't see the tools, and you only have an idea of the quality, and even what tools are included. For the sake of argument, all of the tools have a learning curve, despite the fact that you're a professional watch builder. You want to see how they'll feel in your hand and get an idea of whether or not they'll require drastic changes to fit in your workflow and toolbox.

You shouldn't have to spend $99 to determine if the tools are a good fit. And you can't know if they're a good fit until you've tried them out.

I think you'll sell more licenses if you're able to satisfy developers' needs to see if the engine is a good fit. Granted, it's easier said than done. My personal take is that you should simply have a "free to use for non-commercial evaluation" license. A small subset of people won't honor that (and are likely the same people who can subvert the $99 requirement today). A much larger group of people will be able to try your engine and feel a lot more comfortable paying $99 or more.

I am 100% behind charging for your work. Looks absolutely awesome!

You wanna rock the html5 world? Have a non-commercial free version... and for god's sake: increase the price to at least to 200 or 300$. Now is way too cheap!

I wanna write about your engine, but I can't do it without a test. And I'm not paying 99$ just for test it. Conclusion: I´m not going to write about your engine.

You looks like a fucking programming god but not really good in business.

doesn't work on chromium 10.0.607.0 (Developer Build 68819) Ubuntu 10.04

If you are looking for a free HTML5 games library, this has been under slow development for a couple of years:

mccormick.cx/projects/jsGameSoup/

Users of Firefox 3.6 an higher and Windows 7 should use the 'HTML 5 Extension fpr Windows Media Palyer Plug-in'. Could be found here:

www.interoperabilitybridges.com/html5-extension-for-wmp-plugin

Great decision to charge for it. Getting payed for hard work is nothing to be ashamed of.
But now I'll try to write my own engine ;) I have different needs for it, anyway.
Your level editor looks just great, though. Keep it up!

Hey guys. I really love the game (I beat it so fast, I wanted more levels!) and I'm excited to see the library and level editor go public. But I have to agree with what several others have said -- if you released this library for free (to non-commercial users) you really would have "the next jQuery" on your hands.

You should definitely license for commercial games, but I think the spirit behind the HTML/JavaScript community is essentially one of sharing and openness. That said, I think the work you've done is great, and I'm happy to see you getting the attention you deserve. Keep up the good work!

Very interesting. I have no problem paying for a license, but I'd expect to see some sort of roadmap or similar given that it's a commercial product. What features are planned for major / minor versions, what kind of release schedule are you aiming at?

#55 hit the nail on the head.

The price is not the issue (I would pay a lot more than $99 if I knew it was the right tool for me). The issue is not being able to try it out to know if it fits my needs before I buy.

If there was a non-commercial free license I would've hit the download button as fast as my fingers could, but I'm just a humble freelancer who can't justify paying for a commercial license before I even know if the engine is suitable for me so disappointingly I will have to pass for now.

Excellent work though, it does look great from the outside :)

Yeah there are dozens of free flash libraries out there that do this - including free isometric engines - have been around for years.

I think its hillarious that all these html evangelists are starting to see reality - you have to pay for stuff - just like flash. Except flash of course is 15 years ahead of this.

Cheers

Your doc looks like a lot what can be done with NaturalDocs though.
Below is the doc created with it for a pet javascript library project I have:

jame-javascription-animations-made-easy.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Doc/files/JAME-js.html

The game demo was very nice though!

I not a JavaScript programmer but I'm always curious about game programming. Biolab is so amazing demo that I'm about buy your engine even not know JavaScript. Seems to be a great helper to create some free games or demos and put it available to public without deployment issues.

Thanks for your work, hugs from Brazil.

YEAHHH!!!H!H!HH!H!H! 1111111111111
AT LAST! DUDE U DID IT!!!! HOORAY!
DIS IS AMAZING NEWS. i thought of it every day.
but 100$ is bad new. actually i thought it's free((
fuck.
nau i have to think and think. cuz i'ma bum. underground programmer/ i wanted to make teh game for fun. and 100$ is pretty much for me. ..
last week i started to make my own engine cuz i thought u kinda stoped / but deep down i waited for release. and nau ... i have strange feeling. like YEAH! here it is/ but WTF?

i read all comments. even Mr.Washin' Machine //
I respect all the job u did man.
I waited 2 fucking months for dis. and now at the end you say- ahahah gimme 100$. dats bad(
i think now it could b raw. i mean engine. it's good idea to make a non-commercial license just to try and play and test and whatever. And if someone will want to make money on it - he will pay you like more than 100$. it's normal policy.
More ppl will know about engine and you make it perfect. It's really good promo.

Great work !
Making a living out of it means updates , follow up, new things ...
100$ for having a full time developper on the engine of your project that is a deal !!

Or just save 100$ and develop your own \o/

It's good to see your engine is finally released. I guess I fall into the "Oh, I didn't realize he'd charge" category, but the $100 price tag is far from unreasonable. From what I've seen, it definitely seems worth it. Still, would love to see some sort of trial (not that I can think of a way to do that with an engine), or even more video on how to use, or the capabilities of the engine.

Well, maybe when I'm further into development, I can swing $100 on my starving student budget. Keep up the good work!

snap with what SpaceHorse said, i read all the comments even the washing machine fool, but wouldn't you rather have a million people using your framework or just 100? the more people who use the framework the bigger it becomes and the more recognised you become. take a leaf out of how facebook became the major player it is. get people involved first and then look to make money from it!

@#45: And don't forget

github.com/BillyWM/FlixelJS

That Biolab game has a serious Flixel or FlashPunk vibe going on, so if you like that....

You need money to develop it further, and to support your creation.
You are perfectly within your rights to monetarise your creation.
The problem with javascript is that it can't really be protected from reverse engineering.

Students very rarely pay for photoshop never mind a $99 bit of code, so I wouldn't take any sweat from them.

But seriously, I'd get an IP lawyer if you are going to keep expanding it.

Don't listen to these retards complaining about the cost.

Hi, looking through your code I noticed you havn't implimented the iphone hardware rendering trick (using translate3d).
This would speed up your app on idevices as it forces the hardware acceleration ON (rather than the software one - how your currently using)

something like:

#styled-stuff-container {
-webkit-transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0);
}

There is stuff on the web about speeding up canvas on this for the iphone.

here are some more iphone html games (puzzle)

goo.gl/zI6A


good luck with your project.

It is fair to charge for the work done. Why not. But S$99 is a bit steep. Should consider USD$20 instead.

i already buy it, when i tested it on android 2.3 and packaged it with phonegap, it was very slow (10 entities at the same time) and the audio crashing too... well for iphone its good, but how come with android phone? (sorry for my english)

Wow, you should really look at how Scirra is selling there engine, $99 is way to high if you want to be successful and might look into an investor as an alternative as well! Scirra has an investor for their construct 2 HTML 5 game engine... there's is way better than gamemaker, I would look at yours but for $99 I don't see yours doing more than Scirra's can do. You should have an early adopters price for those who would like to work with it while you build your game engine's business just a thought!

Complaining about the cost? Seriously people? $99 is a steal. In the commercial world that's 2 hours of pay for a senior engineer. I'm sure hundreds or thousands of man hours went into creating this awesome library. It's well worth the $99! You feel free to spend months building something that will save others hundreds of hours of work, then give it away for free. Meanwhile, STFU!

I am going to buy this engine. I paid a bunch for SunBurn, and got burned, sort of, so if this turns out to be a burn, I will let you know.
Somehow I doubt that this is a burn. Actually SunBurn is ok if you want to put a lot of work into using the engine with little or no documentation.
Just reading that there was an attempt at reasonable documentation is worth the $99.

I am a freshman on an IT college in Serbia and I was thinking of HTML5 game development, found this engine and got disappointed by it's price. I was saving for my 400 euro laptop for almost 3 years, I don't have this much money, and stuff like this demotivates me.
It will leak to the internet one day, you know? And it WILL get pirated. Then people will download it, try it and buy it if they like it. You could've prevented that by creating dual-license...

Are there any commercial engines that are free? dual-licence?