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[OttoRobba]

Wow, Superpowers is already looking great! And the new interface seems to be coming along nicely! I really like those icons.

If I may suggest something, wouldn't it be better to have the scene items menu to the right, instead of clumped against the assets tree? Then the editor would be centered and there would be a clear separation of concerns.

Like this:


Also, if the tabs were a bit shorter, they wouldn't created the weird tangent with the dark title/launch bar. Ideal? Nope, but food for thought. Right now it looks eerily like the tabs should be a continuation of the dark bar and they are not.

I also centered the close, minimize and whatnot buttons in the mockup above.

Keep up the great work, I'll see if I can scrounge the money to pledge

PS: I know Sup is very much a work in progress but I thought early feedback would be nicer than when things are set and people are used to them.

[JohnWizard]

The new interface looks awesome! But as someone that works at night  a darker theme would be great! 

[zilluss]

Hi I'm curious how Superpowers compares against Game Maker feature wise. I haven't used GM but I like the way it enables less tech savvy people to make games. Since Superpowers is going to  be open source, I was hoping that it could become a real alternative to GM. Lastly, I was wondering if you're going to be at GDC Europe this year?

[SolarLune]

Earlier in the thread, Elisee posted that they're not looking into visual scripting anytime soon, which is a pretty big part of why GM allows more people to make games simpler. If you're looking into an open-source GM replacement, you could check out Enigma. Of course, I'm not speaking for him, haha.

[devMidgard]

This kind of project makes me feel like making games can be even funnier!

When I first saw the video I was like "Yeah, it's super intuitive and all, but Unity is, too." then I saw the real-time collaboration feature and I just shit my pants, really, this IS awesome.

Just wondering, as most of the big frameworks/engines for game making are free (or free to some point), will this be too? If so, as you're not charity, what is your plan for people making big games with your engine? Royalties? One-time license? Subscription?

Thanks in advance, keep the good work! 

[elisee]

Wow, Superpowers is already looking great! And the new interface seems to be coming along nicely! I really like those icons.

... snip ...

PS: I know Sup is very much a work in progress but I thought early feedback would be nicer than when things are set and people are used to them.

Thanks a lot for the mockup and the nice words! I've moved the scene editor sidebar to the right after reading your post and I think I'll make similar changes to what you suggested for the tabs bar. Great suggestions, thank you!

The new interface looks awesome! But as someone that works at night   a darker theme would be great!  

Hehe, I feel you. Most likely coming later!

Earlier in the thread, Elisee posted that they're not looking into visual scripting anytime soon, which is a pretty big part of why GM allows more people to make games simpler. If you're looking into an open-source GM replacement, you could check out Enigma. Of course, I'm not speaking for him, haha.

Oh wow, they're actually compatible with the GameMaker scripting language and it looks like they rebuilt very similar tools. Impressive stuff!

You're correct, our approach is very much to build powerful tools with a great experience for "power users" first and then we'll look at more accessible things down the road. Doing the opposite in CraftStudio ended up crippling the platform.

This kind of project makes me feel like making games can be even funnier!

When I first saw the video I was like "Yeah, it's super intuitive and all, but Unity is, too." then I saw the real-time collaboration feature and I just shit my pants, really, this IS awesome.

Just wondering, as most of the big frameworks/engines for game making are free (or free to some point), will this be too? If so, as you're not charity, what is your plan for people making big games with your engine? Royalties? One-time license? Subscription?

Thanks in advance, keep the good work!  

Superpowers will be free and open source in a few months, when we're ready to accept external contributions. We're working hard to convert the codebase from CoffeeScript to TypeScript, finish the plugin APIs, write documentation and so on. There will be no royalties or license fees.

We definitely need money to keep going though :D We're hoping to survive on a mix of voluntary donations / subscriptions, releasing cool commercial games we'll make with Superpowers and selling asset packs on a future asset store like Unity's.

[elisee]

Superpowers devlog — Update 5
The HTML5 2D+3D game maker. Extend it with plugins,
collaborate in real-time, script with TypeScript!

A little less than a month ago, we launched Superpowers Early Access. We've reached our second milestone and we're now sitting at € 930 per month from over 110 supporters. THANKS!

SUPERPOWERS v0.3

We've skipped a weekly release to be able to complete more work for Superpowers 0.3. As always, read the changelog for a detailed list of improvements, and read on for some highlights.

REDESIGNED USER INTERFACE

The redesigned user interface we teased a couple weeks ago is now available! The launcher and server browser has been redesigned too.

Custom window decorations and cleaner look.

CUSTOMIZABLE SCRIPT PROPERTIES

The scene editor's inspector has been updated with nicer look too, and the behavior editor gained support for customizing properties.

The "WeaponBehavior" class has a "boneName" string property and it can be customized in the scene.

This required a lot of under-the-hood work. When applying script changes with Ctrl+S in the script editor, the server searches your script for classes extending Sup.Behavior and then collects their public properties. Those classes and properties are then exposed in a new type of data structure called a "resource". It's a sort of project-wide asset that has a unique name and doesn't appear in the asset tree. The behavior editor, when used in the scene editor, can then access this resource to list all behavior classes and their properties. Resources will have various other uses in Superpowers, for instance we plan to use them for storing plugin-specific project-wide settings like default sprite editor settings for instance, or to allow tweaking your game's target FPS and desired aspect ratio.

NEW PLUGINS AND APIS

Various new things appeared: there's now a seedable RNG plugin, a plugin for the p2.js physics engine has been added along with configurable scene components for Cannon.js, the 3D physics engine.

A physics cylinder configured using the CannonBody component editor.

Another highlight is the Sup.ModelRenderer.getBoneTransform API method. It returns the position, orientation and scale of an animated bone. Very useful for binding weapons or gear to any character.

The sword, goggles, turtle shell and even the hair on this character are all attached with bone transforms.

SHORTCUTS EVERYWHERE

Keyboard shortcuts for many common operations have been added: Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab let you navigate between tabs. Ctrl+W lets you close tabs. F5 and F6 lets you run and debug your games in a flash. Ctrl+O opens up the quick asset switcher. And probably more than I'm forgetting!

FIRST ASSET PACK

Pixel-boy created a bad-ass space shooter asset pack including over 50 sprites, backgrounds and visual effects, as well as several tracks and 20+ sound effects. It is available for download for all our supporters over at https://sparklinlabs.com/account.

More assets are on the way! The next week: top-down shooter!

PORTING TO TYPESCRIPT

This week I've been doing a bit of accounting-related work as well as recording a presentation video (coming soon!), but work on Superpowers hasn't stopped! Bilou has been porting various parts of the beast from good-old CoffeeScript to shiny TypeScript. Ported subsystems include the core data structures, shared client-side APIs, the game engine itself as well as a couple plugins. The port will help us catch bugs earlier, move faster and provide a better development experience for everyone who will contribute to Superpowers when we open source it all! Hopefully all the remaining CoffeeScript code in Superpowers will be (source control) history soon!

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

Crazyrems has released the first Superpowers game made without any involvement from Sparklin Labs, Crystal Pong. Ralmn has been improving his font plugin, adding bitmap font support. You can find all released community plugins over at superpowers.ralmn.fr. Superpowers is now listed as a Friend of TypeScript on their official website! ♥

Crystal Pong made with Superpowers for MiniLD #58 by crazyrems!

There's been a ton more stuff happening, so be sure to check out the changelog! As always, please consider supporting us (and get early access to Superpowers!) right now over at https://sparklinlabs.com/. Cheers!

[elisee]

We just passed 1000 euros a month!, a third of our goal!    

[elisee]

Superpowers devlog — Update 6
The HTML5 2D+3D game maker. Extend it with plugins,
collaborate in real-time, script with TypeScript!

Superpowers's crowdfunding campaign is climbing up, we launched Superpowers Early Access a month and a half ago. We're at € 1050 per month from 127 active supporters. ♥

SUPERPOWERS v0.4

I'm a little bit behind on the devlog. Almost two weeks ago, Superpowers v0.4 added an "Export game" button, per-project editor settings, the ability to customize your game's target FPS and screen ratio, new shortcuts, new plugins and much more. See the v0.4 changelog for a detailed list of improvements!

Editor and game settings



Initial support for auto-completion. Will be much smarter in the next update!

GAMEDEV STARTER PACK ON ITCH.IO

itch.io, the friendly indie games marketplace just launched their bundle feature. They approached us to make Superpowers part of the GAMEDEV STARTER PACK at launch . At first we weren't sure about bundling up this early in development but we love itch.io and everything they do for indies, the other bundle participants are awesome and Kenney Studio is in alpha too so we thought it was a good fit! If you already have Superpowers, you can get the rest for just $20. If you don't have Superpowers yet, you can get the bundle for $50 and grab the pixel art animation tool Aseprite as well as Kenney's huge asset pack and Kenney Studio.

NEW ASSET PACKS

Pixel-boy crafted three new asset packs with many sprites, backgrounds, visual effects, tracks and sound effects. They can be downloaded by all our supporters over at https://sparklinlabs.com/account.

Top-down shooter, RPG and layered backgrounds!

SOURCE CODE ACCESS FOR SUPPORTERS

Supporters can now access Superpowers's source code repositories from their account page! We're not quite ready to accept pull requests and issues but we'll be open sourcing to everyone in a few months and we're already giving you folks read-only access. You can definitely send patches our way though!

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

Florent has released a new plugin, fGui, that exposes a simplified API to build HTML user interfaces. Ralmn has contributed some patches to fix a few bugs and he's volunteered to port the Cannon.js plugin to TypeScript. Thanks!

Thanks for reading! Superpowers v0.5 should come out very soon so expect another devlog update then. You can support us (and get early access to Superpowers!) right now over at https://sparklinlabs.com/ or by grabbing the GAMEDEV STARTER PACK bundle. Cheers!

[elisee]

Superpowers devlog — Update 7
The HTML5 2D+3D game maker. Extend it with plugins,
collaborate in real-time, script with TypeScript!

SUPERPOWERS v0.5

I'm catching up with a second devlog update right away  . We just released Superpowers v0.5. This two-weeks cycle was mostly about getting the bulk of the (CoffeeScript to TypeScript) porting work done (14 of 16 modules have been ported), but we still managed to ship some nice goodies. As always, see the v0.5 changelog for a detailed list of improvements, and read on for highlights.

PREHISTORIC PLATFORMER ASSET PACK

Pixel-boy crafted another asset pack. The Prehistoric Platformer pack comes with animated characters!

SCRIPT EDITOR IMPROVEMENTS

Bilou spent time adding client-side on-the-fly script compilation. That means you now get scripting errors reported as you type, even without hitting Ctrl+S to save. He also replaced v0.4's naive auto-completion with context-aware TypeScript auto-completion.

Context-sensitive auto-completion

TEXT RENDERING PLUGIN

Also new is the text rendering plugin. Partially based on work by community member Ralmn, the new Font asset type lets you import both vector fonts as well as monospaced bitmap fonts.

TYPESCRIPT 1.5 SUPPORT

We upgraded the version of TypeScript used by Superpowers games from 1.4 to 1.5. This major new version brings many new features including "for...of" loops (finally, a less verbose way to iterate over arrays!), the new block-scoped "let" keyword (to replace good old "var"), as well as "const", destructuring, computed properties, decorators, tagged template strings... We're very excited about where TypeScript is headed

Thanks for reading! We'll probably be releasing a follow-up v0.5.1 to fix a couple issues with this release. Porting is time consuming, but also error-prone so it's likely that we'll have some details to polish up. For the next major update, among other things, you can expect to see improvements to the scene editor and built-in editor documentation. We'll also be setting up a forum soon. See you then!

And don't forget you can support us (and get early access to Superpowers!) right now over at https://sparklinlabs.com/ or by grabbing the GAMEDEV STARTER PACK bundle. Every little bit helps! ♥

[Thaon]

I'd like to point out that Craftstudio had a very similar history, it started as a tool acclaimed by the crowds and just after getting lots of money from a crowdfunfded campaign, it got abandoned to work on this.
Somebody said that Craftstudio was "quite the program", Craftstudio never was, because it can't, it is still in beta, in development hell, it cannot be "quite the program" since it is not even finished.
I am guessing now that the money raised from that are now in this, and the money raised in this will eventually just go somewhere else, I am not making allegations, this is what happened, I paid for Craftstudio and therefore I am a little bitter about this, but I am sure I am not alone.
I am sure lots of people that believed in the claims of this team are still a little salty when the money they paid to support a product went in another direction.
This is not a good way of doing busyness guys, this is betraying your customers, and it is bad practice to spread salt on the ground that feeds you.

[elisee]

I'd like to point out that Craftstudio had a very similar history, it started as a tool acclaimed by the crowds and just after getting lots of money from a crowdfunfded campaign, it got abandoned to work on this.
Somebody said that Craftstudio was "quite the program", Craftstudio never was, because it can't, it is still in beta, in development hell, it cannot be "quite the program" since it is not even finished.
I am guessing now that the money raised from that are now in this, and the money raised in this will eventually just go somewhere else, I am not making allegations, this is what happened, I paid for Craftstudio and therefore I am a little bitter about this, but I am sure I am not alone.
I am sure lots of people that believed in the claims of this team are still a little salty when the money they paid to support a product went in another direction.
This is not a good way of doing busyness guys, this is betraying your customers, and it is bad practice to spread salt on the ground that feeds you.

Hi Thaon,

Anything in particular you feel is missing in CraftStudio? Do you have any projects that were held back by a missing feature that you hoped to see (assuming you're a customer)? As I mentioned in an earlier post, people should feel free to send me an email to let me know when that happens and I'll always do my best to help.

As a counterpoint to what you said, very few people have complained about CraftStudio. I believe most are very happy with what they get. And the community members I'm in touch with are very excited about Superpowers. It is going to be free and open source in a couple of months by the way, so if you feel like whatever you paid for CraftStudio didn't get you enough, maybe you'll enjoy all the cool stuff in Superpowers!

(I should probably mention this again: I've spent quite a bit of time explaining the motivations behind starting over rather than extending CraftStudio in its current form, in this post as well as on the forums. Please take some time to read it if you haven't!)

Anyway, since I'm here, I might as well share some early news right now:

Bilou started work on dynamic lighting and real-time shadows. I'm very excited for this! He also improved the 2D tilemap editor with a fill tool.

(French)

I've been improving our scripting errors reporting pane for the next update:

Errors can be clicked to jump to the location right away and it won't jump in / out anymore. I've ported perfect-resize, my HTML5 resize handle library to TypeScript and integrated it into Superpowers so you'll start to see resizable panes everywhere!

I wrote a little debugger starting guide. Chrome's dev tools are very powerful and it pays to spend some time learning them.

I've also been working on model importer improvements, especially better error reporting so that you can figure out why an import might have failed. Speaking of which, Pixel-boy is working on another 3D asset pack! More info soon...

EDIT: Oh and for those who might have missed the news, we now have a subreddit / dedicated forum at https://www.reddit.com/r/superpowers. Share your projects and questions!

[elisee]

Hey folks!

The third installment of the Superpowers newsletter is out! Click the image to read it:

Shadows, sources and scripts

[blurymind]

Great update!

Can't wait for the community to create some sort of a visual programming framework for this engine. I think partly the success of craftstudio came from it's scratch like lego coding approach that also allowed advanced users to write their own code with LUA. 

[elisee]

Superpowers devlog — Update 8
The HTML5 2D+3D game maker. Extend it with plugins,
collaborate in real-time, script with TypeScript!


Here's a link to our 3rd newsletter:

Newsletter #3: Shadows, sources and scripts
in Superpowers, the HTML5 game maker


Also, we released a new update!


Release notes for Superpowers 0.7

Improved sprite editor, fill bucket in map editor,
Error reporting pane in model importer, dynamic lights
New game and scene settings...






I redesigned our release notes to include pictures and have some nice rich formatting, so check it out


We're making good progress on Superpowers 0.8 already with much improved autocompletion,
contextual information when hovering code, much better error reporting performance
scene prefabs and more... See you soon for another devlog!

Join 250 other game developers and support
our work on Superpowers at SparklinLabs.com

[elisee]

Superpowers devlog — Update 9
The HTML5 2D+3D game maker. Extend it with plugins,
collaborate in real-time, script with TypeScript!



Hey folks! Good news...

Superpowers 0.8.0 is out!

Some highlights:



Resizable panes everywhere!



Native color picker for tinting models, sprites and text renderers



The return of debugging with source maps



Type information and faster auto-completion



Tooltip when hovering code



Redesigned game loading screen

Check out the release notes
for all the details


Prefabs had to be delayed at the last minute because we weren't sure about some aspects and didn't want to commit to them just yet.
They should be in the next release though! Follow our Trello board to see what's coming.

And if you like what you see, join 250 other game developers and
support our work on Superpowers at SparklinLabs.com

[gimymblert]

I need to subscribe even though I mostly specialize in 3D only

[blekdar]

I bought it through itch...even though I'm just now learning javascript. Looking forward to when I can actually put it to use.

Stuff looks pretty awesome though, keep it up.

Edit: Do you guys have any plans for console support in the future? I know the Wii U does HTML, maybe that could be a potential avenue?

[elisee]

I bought it through itch...even though I'm just now learning javascript. Looking forward to when I can actually put it to use.

Stuff looks pretty awesome though, keep it up.

Edit: Do you guys have any plans for console support in the future? I know the Wii U does HTML, maybe that could be a potential avenue?

Thanks for the support!

We haven't explored consoles but it'd be awesome to support some. I've heard about the Wii U's HTML5 support but I don't know how extensive it is and we don't have one so no way to test. Maybe Superpowers games already run on it? I don't know exactly if anyone can run HTML5 stuff on it or if it requires some sort of SDK?

[BomberTREE]

Just like CS, you are all working really fast! Keep it up