Clockwork Chilli - Wade Game Engine Forums

Gio December 15th, 2013

Hi everyone

We're starting to move towards our 1.0 release, and I think it's a good time to ask you which features you would like to see.

We see WADE 1.0 as an important milestone - calling it 1.0 means that we feel it's a complete, stable solution that can be used to create great, high-quality 2D games of any kind.

Obviously we will still add more features after 1.0, but the focus will be more on plug-in's, additional components and visual editors after that point.

Just to be clear, here I'm just talking about basic features that should be part of the main WADE engine - so don't say things such as "physics" or "isometric view" or "a particle system", because those will be additional plug-in's. A good example is something like "the ability to flip or mirror a sprite", or more input events, more draw functions, and so on.

In other words, please suggest small features that you would end up using in any type of game - if they're big features, or specific for one genre, please feel free to suggest those as well, but they're likely to end up in a plug-in rather than in the base engine.

We want to make sure that WADE 1.0 has everything that you may need. We have some ideas and a list of planned features, but it's possible that we're missing something that you want - so lets us know!

hermes December 15th, 2013

I have one suggestion, this is something that has been bothering me for a while now.

I always need a way to see if an object is overlapping another object. I know that you can do obj1.overlapsObject(obj2), but this means that I have to test obj1 against all possible objects, and it is slow. I would like to do obj1.getOverlappingObjects(), and wade internally could find a quick and efficient way of doing this without testing every possible object in the scene.

Elliot December 15th, 2013

To me the main thing that sets wade apart from the other html5 engines, is its really strong performance on mobile browsers. If I were you, I would focus on optimizing mobile performance (if possible), so it remains the fastest html5 engine.

In terms of new features, I'd really like some easier ways to control camera movement. At the moment you set the position directly, but there is no way to say camera.moveTo() for example (unless I've missed it).

drockon December 15th, 2013

Well to me it seems 0.9 is already realy solid engine for 2D, But i will agree with Elliot on camera contorls. Easier camera usage.

Camera.moveTo(x,y,speed);

And resulting events for this:

onCameraMove();

onCameraMoveComplete();

Next one is not really "important" but still would be good one;

Camero.Zoom(z,speed);

onCameraZoom();

onCameraZoomComplete();

And Maybe more Sprite control;

There is removeSpriteByIndex() and to me it would be intresting to have addSpriteWithIndex() or evene replaceSpriteByIndex();

Gio December 15th, 2013

All excellent points, please keep suggesting :)

Taddeus December 15th, 2013

I agree about the camera.

I think also we need a easy way to use the canvas composite operations, like you do when you do sprite.drawToImage(), but not drawing to image, drawing to the screen.

(sorry for my english, i am not good to explain it... I hope you understand anyway ).

drockon December 15th, 2013

Oh, i missed a thing, do we have native simple functions to draw? Line, Rectangular & so on?

And Taddeus do you mean a layer wich will be far behind the scene to wich we will draw? or ?

Well guess i would like to have an ability to draw to a background canvas and a gui canvas wich could be over every other level but gui realization is some other thing (guess plugin, not 1.0))

Gio December 15th, 2013

Drockon: sprites are essentially rectangles, if you set a draw function that draws a solid color (instead of drawing an image), it fills the rectangle with that color.

sprite.setDrawFunction(wade.drawFunctions.solidFill_('red'));sprite.setSize(100, 100); // draw a 100x100 red squaresprite.setSize(150, 1); // draw a red line

There is also a draw function that draws the border only.

Having a way to draw complex lines (such as a graph or chart) would certainly be nice though! But it can potentially be so complex (with there being many types of graphs) that it may become an additional component.

Unless I misunderstand what you mean about having a GUI on a separate canvas on top of everything else, you should be able to do that with the base WADE. When you create the GUI objects, put them on a separate layer (with a lower number than the "game" layer), and it will appear on top. Also, be sure to call wade.setLayerTransform(guiLayerNumber, 0 ,0) so the GUI doesn't move with the camera. Or you meant something else?

I completely agree that there needs to be an easier way to create GUI's in general. There will be a visual editor, and several GUI components (such as scrolling lists, input boxes, etc). We've got some of them almost ready, but they will be released after 1.0.

Taddeus: do you mean just an easy way to set an HTML5 globalCompositeOperation? If so, I think that's a very good idea, and should be really simple to implement.

Taddeus December 15th, 2013

"do you mean just an easy way to set an HTML5 globalCompositeOperation..."

Yes, that exactly

Elliot December 15th, 2013

Here's another one from me:

I used to use the Torque Game Engine, and in their scripting language (which wasn't as cool as javascript, but still quite good), you could do object.setTimeout(....) which is basically the same as doing setTimeout in javascript, the difference being that it's tied to an object, so when that object is removed from the scene, the timeout function is automatically cancelled. In javascript, I can do that, but then I have to remember to cancel the timeout myself.

I think this is quite handy, and possibly the only feature of the language that I'm missing here. I think it's possible to do this in javascript, and add this type of funcionality to Wade SceneObjects?

hermes December 15th, 2013

This is all well and good, but I think in reality wade has already MORE than what you need to make a decent 2D game. The real problem is that it's hard to find the information you are looking for, most of the time.

We have been using it for some time, and we know that it's got lots of features. But someone who is just starting I'm sure will be quite confused. You need better documentation that's easier to search, and more tutorials. I would concentrate on that rather than new features.

Gio December 15th, 2013

You are right hermes, and we are working on a new website (which should launch soon) with lots of info and learning material for WADE. Like you say, it will have the option to search (for samples, demos or documents) so it's going to make it easier to find what you need.

By the way, we have done some of the camera stuff for WADE 0.9.1, which was released yesterday. Any feedback would be appreciated.

drockon December 15th, 2013

Wow, Seems pretty good update on camera movement) Will try tomorow how it works out.

Elliot December 15th, 2013

The new camera system is great, I think it's the most flexible I've seen in any 2D engine. I like the fact that it's straightforward to use if you just want basic movement, but it's flexible enough for you to do some really advanced stuff with not much effort.

hermes December 15th, 2013

Great job with the camera indeed. Looking forward to the new website too... how soon is soon?

Gio December 15th, 2013

It's sooner than you think :)

Gio December 15th, 2013

We are finalizing the list of things that will go into the next version (0.9.2), so if you have any "urgent" requests shout now an we'll see if we can do it.

Regarding 1.0, in addition to (most) of your suggestions, we were thinking to add support for gamepads and accelerometers, but also a local database (for browsers that support indexedDB), which could be useful for non-game apps.

We can't think of any more major features that are missing, but maybe you do? If you do, let us know!

Taddeus December 15th, 2013

Please I need way to rotate objects gradually, like sceneObject.moveTo. Maybe sceneObject.rotateTo ?

arwinmargallo January 19th, 2014

Hi, I'm quite new here. The engine is great and the tutorials are easy to pick up. Can I request for a tutorial for a preloader bar or even a preloader text. Thanks!

Gio January 19th, 2014

Sure, I've just added a simple snippet that shows how to display a loading image here.

You could add a progress bar by loading data asynchronously (with wade.preloadImage for example) and setting a callback to update your progress bar when each image (or sound) is loaded.

It may be worth adding a couple of functions to WADE to make it easier to create a progress bar... I'll keep that in mind for version 1.1

arwinmargallo January 20th, 2014

Thanks! that would be very helpful :)

Elliot January 22nd, 2014

I've just thought of one little thing to add that would be nice: at present, when you create an animation and add it to a sprite (which doesn't have any animations yet), you have to set the size of the sprite manually with sprite.setSize(). If you don't do that, the sprite doesn't show up because its size is 0.

It would be very convenient if wade could set the size of the sprite automatically when the animation is added.

nicoX February 12th, 2014

I would like to add another vote for a progress bar!

echar June 6th, 2016

I would like to add possibilty to open 2 scripts :

echar July 12th, 2016

Request for Writing Augmented Reality Applications using Wade and JSARToolKit.