Overview

Effect Games provides a suite of developer tools for creating and publishing web-based video games. The software is free, and includes an asset manager, level editor, sprite manager, environment editor, and publishing tools. The source code is released under the MIT License.

At the core of Effect Games is the Effect Engine, a JavaScript game engine which uses built-in browser technologies to render graphics. Currently the engine uses classic DHTML, not the Canvas element nor WebGL. For audio we use HTML5 whenever we can, but fall back to Flash where necessary (which is unfortunately a lot of the time). The Effect Engine supports most browsers including Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 3+, Safari 3+, Chrome 2+, Opera 9+, and all major platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux.

The Effect Engine was developed by Joseph Huckaby in 2005. He was dissatisfied with existing web game technologies that relied on 3rd party plugins, and set out to create a pure JavaScript game engine that would run in any browser. A designer by training, Min Chang provided a necessary creative perspective to the development and use of Effect Game's tools. They are currently working on their next venture over at GoldCartridge.com.

Installation

Please see our Installation Guide.

Legal

Effect Games Engine and IDE v1.0

Copyright (c) 2005 - 2011 Joseph Huckaby

Source Code released under the MIT License: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

Please observe the folllowing additional licenses from software or media that the Effect Games IDE relies on, and ships with. Please note that none of these are used in the actual game engine, only the web IDE.

md5.js

A JavaScript implementation of the RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message
Digest Algorithm, as defined in RFC 1321.
Version 2.0 Copyright (C) Paul Johnston 1999 - 2002.
Other contributors: Greg Holt, Ydnar
Distributed under the BSD License
See http://pajhome.org.uk/crypt/md5 for more info.
Note: This is only used in the IDE, not the engine or your games.

color_picker.css and color_picker.js

DHTML Color Picker v1.0.3, Programming by Ulyses, ColorJack.com
The following license is on the latest version from:
http://www.colorjack.com/opensource/dhtml+color+picker.html
This color picker is dual licenced under Creative Commons & GPL.
Note: This is only used in the IDE, not the engine or your games.

ZeroClipboard.swf and ZeroClipboard.js

This is my own clipboard library which is released under the MIT License:
http://code.google.com/p/zeroclipboard/
Note: This is only used in the IDE, not the engine or your games.

ZeroUpload.swf and ZeroUpload.js

This is a Flash based file upload engine I wrote, and will soon release to Google Code.
It will be released under the MIT license.
Note: This is only used in the IDE, not the engine or your games.

webcam.swf and webcam.js

This is actually an early, unreleased version of my JPEGCam Library,
now available on Google Code and released under the MIT License:
http://code.google.com/p/jpegcam/
Note: This is only used in the IDE, not the engine or your games.

Silk Icon Set

This is a wonderful set of 16x16 icons avaialble free from FamFamFam.
http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Note: This is only used in the IDE, not the engine or your games.

Default User Icon

From the KDE Crystal Icon Set
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Crystal+Clear?content=25668
License: LGPL
Note: This is only used in the IDE, not the engine or your games.