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[jmc]

Hi! I'm here to announce the second beta release of Canvace (http://www.canvace.com/), a development kit for 2D and 2.5D games based on HTML5.

This is how the development environment looks like:



and these are some screenshots from a test stage created with Canvace (http://www.canvace.com/demo/):



The project currently contains two fundamental elements: a development environment and a JavaScript library.
Let me list some of the features we offer:

• the development environment is itself a web application: one can install it on a local HTTP server, so that several people at once can access the same resources
• not just isometric: users are free to choose a custom 3×3 projection matrix, thus being able to create orthogonal and much more
• integrated versioning system: so you have a long-term history of the changes made to your stages
• output in JSON format: for easier integration in your JavaScript code
• excellent performance: so that your games can run decently even on less powerful devices, like some smartphones are.

We'd love to receive your feedback: praises or curses, anything is welcome. We're open to all kind of feedback.


P.S.: to take a quick glance of what it looks like, you can also check out our first video tutorial: http://youtu.be/YLix6o0gFgk
We're planning to make more videos soon - stay tuned!

[Skomakar'n]

Wow. Great idea, and most importantly, even greater execution. Looking forward to seeing more of this. The projection freedom is much appreciated, since I pretty much never make isometric games.

[jmc]

Thanks Skomakar'n!

A little upgrade for this, since we've recently uploaded to YouTube a sped up recording of the painting of a stage with Canvace:

http://youtu.be/Q-haBMqdnQ4

The artwork in that video is going to be released, with demo stages, in the next 0.2.1 release.

[jmc]

Another update!

With the artwork shown in the video, we created a little demo "game" - which is still WIP, so for now you just have a character wandering around in the map. We need to add some virtual buttons to the game area in case the user is running on a touchscreen device, for the rest it should work flawlessly everywhere.

You can test it by visiting: http://www.canvace.com/demo2/

All feedback is appreciated.
bye

[71104]

Hi!

I'm passing by to announce a new minor release, Canvace 0.2.3.

There have been a few improvements in the setup process, UI and API, along with a new* handy feature, an import wizard that allows to import existing tile sheets into Canvace.

* That isn't new actually: it was present up to a couple of releases ago, where a major refactoring forced us to temporarily dismiss it. Welcome back, Import Wizard.

Looking for your feedback, as usual.