Add to ChromeWhen comparing Defold vs ct.js, the Slant community recommends Defold for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Defold is ranked 25th while ct.js is ranked 46th. The most important reason people chose Defold is:
Defold uses Lua, which is regarded as an easy to learn language by most.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to learn
Defold uses Lua, which is regarded as an easy to learn language by most.
Pro Collaborative
You can invite friends from the dashboard and create games together.
Pro Good combination of visual editing + code (Lua)
You can do a lot with drag and drop, but you're not limited -- the code (Lua, which is easy to learn) allows you more power than just visual editing usually gives you.
Pro Completely free of charge
Software and online dashboard are free of charge.
Pro Visual editor
Pro Easy and fast export for various platforms
Pro Very performant
Being crossplatform it is important to work on low end devices.
Pro Fast results
Going from idea to result is very important for the creative process.
Pro Great community
A very active and friendly community in forums.
Pro Hot reload
It allows you to change scripts in a game while it is running live. Common use-cases is to tweak gameplay parameters or to perform debugging on a running game.
Pro Beginner-friendly
ct.js is bundled with examples, docs, and easy to follow tutorials. Documentation and tutorials are available in a side panel on every screen.
Pro Skeletal animations with DragonBones support
You can import skeletal sprites and animations from DragonBones, which is also free. Skeletal animations are added to objects through code; developers can listen to marked events in animation, and ct.js automatically associates sounds in a DragonBones project with the game's assets.
Pro Good code editor
The built-in code editor comes with error checking, type checks, code completions accompanied with docs, multiple cursors support, and other modern features.
Pro Open source (MIT)
This means that no one will ever put any features behind a paywall and that you can reliably use ct.js in any projects without worrying about licensing. And you can hack on ct.js!
The repo is at https://github.com/ct-js/ct-js
Pro Tileset support
ct.js supports tiles in rooms, including collision checks and some extra editor tools, like bulk migration to a new tile layer or shifting by an exact value.
Pro WebGL and WebGL2 support
Starting with v1.0.0-next-1, you can now write WebGL games. WebGL support is based on Pixi.js.
Pro Modular approach
ct.js has a "Core" library that provides basic drawing functions, room and asset management, and mouse interactions. Any other functions are added to projects as "catmods", or simply modules. These modules can be enabled or disabled in one click, and can inject their code in different game loop stages, e.g. after drawing all the objects, leaving a room, or when a new object is created.
Pro Applicable to most genres
ct.js aims to be a general game engine and provides tools in making games of any genre.
Pro Dialogue and visual novel system with support for Yarn
A module ct.yarn allows developers to import a YarnSpinner project to create branching, data-driven dialogues and visual novels. An example is also bundled with ct.js.
The dialogue tree is made in a separate app, though.
Cons
Con Google account needed
You need a Google account to develop with Defold.
Con Tile editing is a chore
No live brushes with automatic corner drawing, no fills or rectangular/linear placement. All tiles should be placed by hand, with a "Shift" key to place multiple tiles at once. This will make you ragequit if you want to make sophisticated RPG scenes :D
Con No built-in particle system
Con Slower than native games
JavaScript and WebGL are fast, but they will always lose in performance if compared to native games, so it may be a bad choice for graphics-heavy games.
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