Is Playcanvas a good engine to build HTML5 cardgames in? I want to build a card game like this one http://www.patienceklondike.com but I think especially the animations of the cards should be improved.
This game is made in Phaser3. Would Playcanvas be a better solution and why?
Not sure if it would be ‘better’ but it can be made in PlayCanvas. One advantage in PlayCanvas is that the sprites can be rotated and transformed in 3D space.
And if course you get all the other features of the PlayCanvas Editor too.
Good question and I personally see myself also still in decission finding. I would recommend to choose the right thing for your thing and skillset. So don’t hear on marketing make a longer evaluation phase and make a plan what you want to achieve.
It is possible to make a card game on here, although it being better depends on your knowledge of ability when using the engine.
Personally I’ve always thought that even doing 2D games such as cards in 3D can end up being flashier in an engine like PlayCanvas for a variety of reasons. I think PlayCanvas’ PBR materials could definitely add to the aesthetic that you’re going for in addition to making those card animations look more authentic, the part that’s kind of a given since they would be objects rotating in 3D rather than that odd looking orthographic/perspective-free rotation that they do in your reference.
I’ve said this before, although the features of the webGL engines are similar, between three.JS, Babylon, and PlayCanvas, PlayCanvas feels the most intuitive to me in terms of straight API. If we’re talking in terms of editors, PlayCanvas has no comparison. Babylon’s editor is pretty rough and adds an enormous file size to the final product, and three.JS’ editor is extremely simple and a bit bare of features. PlayCanvas’ editor is extremely polished, and you can even collaborate with others in real-time out of the box with it, a very highly underrated feature in my opinion.
All 3 of the webGL 3D engines are blank slates with which you can do whatever you want, but if you want my opinion, absolutely use this engine to make your card game.
If on the other hand you are going to be using the 2D features of PlayCanvas, then I believe it would not make a difference between Phaser3 and PlayCanvas. They’re both easy to program in and there’s not much variance in 2D engine features. They do have that real-time lighting thing that a lot of 2D engines have been adding these days, but this is easily mimicable on the 3D side of PlayCanvas using flat planes, normal maps, and 3D lights, since that’s kind of all it is in the first place - animated sprites with normal maps.
In the end it’s up to you to try it out and see which you prefer though. Good luck on your project!
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