ImpactJS vs Unity 2D

ImpactJS has an active user community that busily produces tremendous resources including videos, books, tutorials, walkthroughs and more. There are also comprehensive class documentation available.

Impact provides 2 types of collision detection; static and dynamic collisions. Both of which are easily integrated into game development.

Many plugins are available, including one called Impact++ which adds features like pathfinding and dynamic lighting.

Built-in map editor with support for tiling, collision layers, and actors.

Works with Box2d physics library, comes with all worthwhile elements for actors built in.

Extending the reach of a game developed with ImpactJS is easy due to the cross-platform nature the framework. There are Considerations around performance, resolution and audio, however all can be appropriately addressed when in development. Works in the browser via Canvas, even on mobile. Easily translatable into a packaged app.

2D game creation was a major feature request from the Unity community and was added with version 4.3. 2D is provided in both the Pro and Free distribution of Unity.

Mecanim brings state machines and blending to 2D bone animation. The state machine editor allows for designers and programmers to visually create a Finite State Machine (FSM) to control when animations should play. Mecanim also allows for blending so an animation can transition smoothly between two states without the need of in between frames made by an animator.

Both types of 2D animation for game development are supported in Unity’s system and can be used interchangeably in the timeline.

Usually used for character customization, programmers can change any sprite in a bone animation at runtime easily by referencing the bone and loading the new sprite from the resources folder.