When comparing Phaser.io vs SFML, the Slant community recommends Phaser.io for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Phaser.io is ranked 8th while SFML is ranked 35th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Built-in Arcade Particle system
Pro Great community resources
Pro Very active development
This is one of the most developed frameworks right now.
Pro WebGL and Canvas rendering modes
You can choose WebGL or classic HTML canvas element for game rendering.
Pro Good tutorials, courses and books
There are plenty of great learning resources available for Phaser.io.
Pro Super-simple loading of assets
Pro Excellent tools for sprites
Pro Support for Arcade Physics, Ninja Physics and p2.js
Pro Easy to learn
Most tasks are done just using 2 or 3 lines of code.
Pro Very fast to develop with
If you're browsing Slant, you probably already have a JavaScript enabled browser, which is most of what you need to get started learning JavaScript. The requirement to run a server locally on your computer while developing might make things a little more difficult
Pro No install required
All you need to do is attach Phaser script to a HTML page even without installing any extensions.
Pro Easy to understand if you have used flash
Phaser provides a similar approach as to that of Flash games, where you can load assets and place them on a stage, and even improves upon the shortcomings of actionscript. It is very easy to shift from flash to HTML5 development because of this approach.
Pro You can run it in the cloud
You can use it in popular online editors like replit, codandbox, etc.
Pro Animating is easy
Pro Has separate versions maintained by developer and the community
The creator of phaser(photonstorm) has given the older(Phaser 2.0) source code to the community for their own maintenance, and has made Phaser 3.0 with a different style and approach, trying to make it easier for beginners to learn.
Pro Very efficient and usable
Pro Zlib/PNG license
In short, SFML is free for any use (commercial or personal, proprietary or open-source). You can use SFML in your project without any restriction. You can even omit to mention that you use SFML -- although it would be appreciated.
Pro Can be combined with OpenGL
If you hate something about the way SFML handles graphics, you can just combine it with OpenGL. It's completely smooth and works as expected, without any additional dependencies.
Pro Active community and wiki
You can ask questions on their own personal forum which is full of users, and their wiki is constantly being maintained. They even have an IRC.
Pro Works on every platform
SFML 2.2 brought forth Android & iOS functionality, and SFML games work on Linux, Mac and Windows out of the box, since SFML is written with OpenGL.
Pro Great documentation
SFML is very well documented, even with short examples of use for many functions and modules. Furthermore, there are books like 'SFML essentials' and 'SFML for game development' which teach you how to use this library to its fullest.
Pro Good for OpenGL
If you are thinking about using OpenGL, look no further, you can open a window, and handle events in less than 15 lines, and it provides input, time, and even networking, plus alot more. It has become my favorite c++ library :D
Pro Great library
SFML is a collection of modular, well designed libraries you can implement an engine or game on top of. The API provides tons of good documentation and is very straightforward to use. You can get a game up and running with SFML quite quickly and with minimal effort.
Pro Clean code
An SFML project's code-base is usually clean and easy to read. All public SFML classes are under the namespace "sf" so it is easy to tell which code is yours and which belongs to SFML (of course you can stop this by typing using namespace sf;
).
Pro Available in many languages
There's support for many languages besides C++, current supported languages are: C, .NET, Crystal, D, Euphoria, Go, Java, Julia, Nim, OCaml, Pascal, Python, Ruby and Rust, and this list is constantly growing.
Pro Beginner-friendly
SFML is extremely beginner friendly and even provides pre-built libraries for your IDE of choice on Windows. Besides the fact that it's extremely well documented, they also have a set of tutorials that walk you through every module.
Pro Modern C++11 implementation
SFML is one of the few good C++ frameworks out there to actually make full use of the language. It's extremely well optimized and it plays well with anything you throw at it.
Cons
Con Using Cordova to Export for Mobile
To export to mobile games you need to use cordova.
Con Official documentation is not so good
Con Poor performance
As long as your map is not larger than 600*400px, everything is fine.
Con Extremely many bugs
Con Developer ignores community needs
Con Relatively slow
Compared to SDL2, GLFW, it is slow.
Con No GUI editor or IDE
Does not include any IDE or media editor. It's purely source code.
Con May take longer to learn and understand
Con Messy sprite management
Sprites retain all of the operations applied to them, whether that be a new position or a rotation. This makes sprite management somewhat annoying.
Con Not specifically a 2D game engine
It isn't really an engine, more of a collection of modular, well designed libraries you can implement an engine or game on top of.