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Comment by alexanderh | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I totally follow. Just because HTML5 was used as the "rendering surface" instead of say, a DirectX Window handle, its not a "game engine"?

It may not be a legitimate "rendering engine" but I'd say it sure as hell is a "type of game engine". What exactly makes it not a game engine? Is it because its lacking tools and/or level editors or something? From what I see, it is a proof of concept RPG built on top of an HTML5 RPG game engine.

Having said that though, this seems to have been released rather prematurely. Its extremely rough around the edges and clearly hasn't been tested in every platform and browser.

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A game is built on top of a game engine which is in turn built upon an API. So gears of war is a game built on the unreal game engine which is built upon the API of directx or openGL( plus whatever for sound, OS windowing, and input).

In the HTML5 world, impact, construct2, craftyjs, and limejs are all game engines. You use them to make games, rather than writing your own routines to deal with canvas rendering, audio, and input.

I guess coming from the web world I would call those Game Frameworks, not necessarily engines. Just because he hasnt laid out a proper API doesnt make his game "run" (as in engine) any less... its still a working game. And it could be used as the engine to power similar type games, even though time and forethought hasn't been put into making that easy (like in the case of a Framework API). So in my mind its still a game "engine". But I see your point, definitely.

I never really knew "engines" implied API's and abstraction, but I guess that does make sense.

Just the fact that its running in a browser on Webkit kind of implies its an engine of sorts in my mind.

Thats just how my train of thought works when thinking about things in the context of javascript/the web world.

I think the parent commenter's point is that this isn't merely a game engine, it's a game. I was interested because I was curious if I could use this in Ludum Dare[1] next weekend, but it seems that it's not just an engine; separating the engine from the game wouldn't be a simple task.

* [1] http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/

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