It seems like each new day brings us a new tool for game development, whether it’s an engine, a framework, a library, or any of a number of other things. Best of all, many of these up-and-coming dev tools are open source and free, so even the poorest game makers (like me!) can use them. And the quality is only going up, too. No longer must indies be content with alpha-level, code-only engines, uncompiled libraries, and NES-era assets. No, even the zero-cost level of game development is becoming packed with tools that even professionals of a few years ago wished they could have had.
The one I’m looking at today is called Superpowers, by Sparklin Labs. It’s yet another HTML5 game maker that has recently been released as open source software, under the ISC license. (ISC is functionally equivalent to MIT or “new” BSD; basically, it’s not much more than “do what you want, but give us credit”.) It’s not entirely a volunteer effort, and there are a couple of options for supporting it. Their download host, indie game publisher itch.io, gives you a donation option, but the primary way to send money is through Patreon. (There’s a link on the Superpowers main page.)
Let’s take a look
What does Superpowers bring to the table? Well, first of all, it’s an HTML5 engine. The maker itself runs as a nativized web app, and games can be compiled into standalone apps or exported in a browser-friendly format. There’s also a mobile option using the Intel XDK, but I haven’t really looked into that.
Second, and even more important, is the fact that this engine comes with a visual editor. That’s something sorely lacking in the free HTML5 arena. Granted, it’s not exactly up to the level of the editors for Unity or Unreal, but it’s much better than what we had, i.e., not much. It’s got all the usual bells and whistles: tree-based scene management, component editors (these seem a little buggy on my machine, but that’s probably just a local thing), drag-and-drop actors, and so on. For what’s technically still a beta, it’s pretty nice.
Coding works about the same way. You can attach scripts to the various parts of a scene, and they’ll know what to do. The whole thing is mostly behavior-driven, following the component style that is so popular these days. The scripts themselves are written in TypeScript, and I’m a little ambivalent about that. On the one hand, it’s an easier way of writing JavaScript (Superpowers is HTML5-based, so it’s going to end up as JavaScript eventually). On the other, TypeScript is a Microsoft project, so you never know what might happen.
One of the big features that looks interesting is the collaboration support. The Superpowers “app” has a client-server architecture, and it takes advantage of it. When you start it, it creates a server. Now, that’s pretty common in Node applications, but Superpowers actually uses it. After a little initial setup, you can have other people connect to your editor instance and work with you in real-time. I can’t tell you how well that works, since I’m just a lonely guy, but if it comes anywhere close to what’s advertised, then…wow.
There’s a lot more than this, and what I’m seeing looks very good. There’s support for prefabs (like those in Unity) in the editor, for instance, and the engine has all the usual suspects: 2D physics, multiple cameras, etc. Debugging works like in Chrome, since the whole thing runs on NW.js. (IMO, Chrome is a horrible browser, but an okay wrapper for web apps. The developer tools aren’t half bad, though.)
That’s not to say the Superpowers is perfect. Far from it. It’s early in development, and there’s bound to be a few unsquashed bugs here and there. There’s also the TypeScript dependency I mentioned above, but they’re working on that; the developers have an alpha (I think) version of the editor using Lua and the LÖVE engine. And, being on GitHub, I noticed a “Code of Conduct” file, which could be worrisome to free-speech advocates like myself. Also, there’s no online API documentation. You’re supposed to use the editor’s built-in docs. The developers’ reasoning (it boils down to “But there might be plugins!”) sounds weak to my ears. Every other HTML5 engine can do it, so why not this one?
In the end, I think the good outweighs the bad. Give it some time, and Superpowers might become one of the go-to tools for making indie games. Or it could bomb, and we’ll never hear from it again. I doubt that, though. Give me some proper online API docs, support for multiple languages (including pure JavaScript, preferably of the ES6 variety), and quite a bit more polish, and I’ll gladly put it up there with Phaser at the top of the list. For now, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.
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