Quick analysis of various JS gaming platforms

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

First, my criteria, in order of "most important to least important".

1. Free and open source output (the game itself, and all assets).
2. Free and open source developer tools, if available.
3. High-quality developer tools.
4. Simplicity of understanding the code.
5. Functionality on mobile devices.
6. Maturity and size of userbase.

There are *a lot* of HTML5/JS platforms popping up like mushrooms. A
number of them have shown up on Github in literally the last month.
Trouble is, too many choices can be as difficult as not enough
choices. :) Also: we must reconcile ourselves to the idea that any
choice we make might be wrong.

The ones that seemed to be most interesting:

* Impact. Clearly the most mature -- but completely non-free tools
that seem only to run on Windows, and licensing requirements around
the engine itself that are unclear.

* RpgJs. *Very* interesting, but the maps are *completely opaque*
without proper map editing tools, which, again, only run on Windows.
It's also unclear what license they've chosen; they're very early on,
and I'm not sure *they* know yet. They're certainly not advertising
their license.

And then lots and lots of other choices, in varying stages of
maturity.

So here's my take: if RpgJs were further along, and had better FLOSS
map editing tools, I would very likely advocate moving from Akihabara
to RpgJs. But as it stands right now, I don't think that's the right
choice.

Akihabara has a growing community, with lots of forks to examine for
cool new features. It's got a few good tutorials on the web. It
allegedly works on mobile, although I haven't gotten that to work yet
and it concerns me a bit, I'll admit.

Therefore: for now, I will be sticking with Akihabara and moving
forward as time permits.

--g