Xc.js - a Javascript framework for 2d games. Backends for HTML5 canvas and iOS | Hacker News Reader

Xc.js - a Javascript framework for 2d games. Backends for HTML5 canvas and iOS

notenoughminerals.com

101 pointsAntiRush11 comments

This looks promising, but the site[1] is a ripoff of the LÖVE one[2].

1. http://www.getxc.org/ - http://www.getxc.org/css/xc.css

2. http://love2d.org/ - http://love2d.org/style/style.css

Look at the #menu style rules, for example.

That is ashame if the developer did not ask for permission to use. Otherwise, I think both sites have a nice easy on the eyes interface. Good spot.

Yep it's a pretty close replica of the love2d site. I have been in contact with the love2d people and, although the actual author of the site has been sick and away from the internet, the group as a whole seems ok with it.

I wasn't trying to be sneaky or anything - it's obviously a variation on the love2d theme.

I read the source some on github to try to figure out what the "iOS backend" is, but couldnt find any. Is it a native code layer to render canvas faster? like: http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2010/10/impact-for-ios

I initially tried just that. Implementing the canvas drawing api turned out to be too slow with the Spidermonkey js engine, which is what I had to use. If I could use a jit version of Spidermonkey or iOS's native Javascript engine it likely would have been fast enough. Apple doesn't let you run jit compilers though, or link to their Javascript engine.

After finding that out I moved to implementing a higher level api. It's similar to the cocos2d-iphone(http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org) framework and, indeed, is a layer on top of cocos2d.

iOS backend is here: https://github.com/fairfieldt/xc_ios

Yep, that's it although the repository isn't up to date. I need to push a lot of changes.

Direct link to the source:

https://github.com/fairfieldt/xcjs/tree/master/src/

Very cool, I've thought about doing something similiar to this as well as making a node.js (with an OpenGL binding) canvas implementation.

I considered node as a platform for a desktop version. Unfortunately it doesn't run easily on Windows, which is a pretty big detractor for a game framework.

The iOS backend uses Spidermonkey which could easily be used in a desktop version. Another option would be to use V8 directly.

Can you explain a bit more what you are hoping to do with node canvas? Sounds cool.

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