Slashdot Mirror
JavaScript/HTML 5 Gaming?
cjcela writes "Lately I've seen some HTML 5/JavaScript games popping up on the web. Most of them lack sound, and are not polished, but little by little this is changing. As an example, check Galactic Plunder. While it is only a single-level proof of concept, it is one of the first arcade non-Flash games that I've found playable. Do you know of other comparable or better pure JavaScript games?"
Everything I've seen so far has been "hey look what I can do". It's not the domain of cottage industry game developers, yet.
Just today I was looking at WebGL which will allow hardware accelerated 3d in the browser.
I just hope someone, eventually, figures out that the "full screen" button we have in web video can also be used in web games.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There's also another awesome game written in html5: http://www.effectgames.com/effect/games/crystalgalaxy/
It runs at decent speed in firefox, and its very fast in chromium.
~xnt14
No
Understandible. It can be hard to seperate HTML5 content from flash content these days. However, there is games popping up at a pretty constant rate. For example, look at these links:
Another thought: The HTML5 canvas element and Java's AWT "Graphics" element are very alike. I wonder how long it takes for someone to program a converter, so all java applet/mobile games are available as HTML5 games?
My <1000 UID is with a hot chick
I recreated the classic 8-bit arcade game 'Thrust' (predecessor of Gravitar) in this way: http://joncom.be/experiments/thrust/
1) I said websites, flash websites are more expensive than normal websites.
2) HTML can be ugly, but to add content you only need a text editor. Even the most ugly website can be edited and added content with a simple text editor. I can't say that for flash websites, most of then have the .fla files lost, and where designed statically. To change these, you probably need a hex editor...
3) "scrollbar what?". You sure know what is a scrollbar. Flash designers know what a scrollbar, even re-invent it. Most flash websites seems designed to work like frames websited to avoid the scrollbar. Embrace the scrollbar!, is great, and your mouse have a mouse whell for it!.
-Woof woof woof!
I created a HTML5 game using canvas and some other technologies. Naturally it requires a modern browser (meaning, anything but Internet Explorer).
The game is called Cities of Apocalypse and it is a relatively simple game that is somewhere between turn-based and real-time. You can have a look and try it out at http://citiesofap.game-host.org/ (please be gentle with my server :)
I hit a few snags while developing the game, such as Firefox 3.0 not having text rendering for canvas, or Opera having a surprisingly slow javascript engine (don't flame me, route calculations take 5x as long with Opera!). All in all, it was an interesting project that I might get back to someday.
JavaScript is the scripting language used by HTML5. Google Pac-Man is mostly written in JavaScript; it uses an SWF helper to play audio because half of Google users are still on IE versions that don't support HTML5's <audio> element.
Hi Overlord. I appreciate your effort searching google and posting these links, but did you bother to click on them?
Your first link is not a games library. At least not in the sense of your 3rd link.
But your 3rd link is 2 years old and the project it mentions doesn't appear to exist anymore.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Hi Hellop,
Thanks for your corrections!
It was actually from my bookmarks. I've played quite a bit around with the canvas element myself, and that's why I've got a lot of bookmarks.
Sorry about the confusion about "library". English is not my first language, and in my language library can also mean "collection of", so that's why I used that word.
The 3rd link was actually not the link I intended to post, I intended to post a link to this HTML 5 Game engine (More info in this article) which looks pretty good. It's in beta though, and I've got no hands on experience with it, but it looks promising.
The link I posted is still valid though, and can be found here: http://tommysmind.com/ It might not be updated any more but it's still a nice resource, if you've just started using the canvas element.
My <1000 UID is with a hot chick
They don't require a browser plugin (like java or flash) to play.
I agree that it's not that big of a deal if your target audience is using Windows PCs...
If you want Android and iP*d, and many Linux users to be able to play as well HTML5 + JS is a decent alternative.
I already use Flash's ActionScript, so why not use the almost identical JavaScript to make the game and target a wider audience?
1. Flash is made specifically for animation, so it's generally easier to get a game up and running with in than in JS+DHTML/Canvas.
Game authoring frameworks for JS may fix this.
2. JS animation is sometimes jerky and slow. SVG is very slow too.
Hardware acceleration will fix this.
3. The audience without flash or java is too small to worry about.
This audience is growing, much the same as when Firefox was new.
It's silly to not test websites in FF, Chrome, Safari and Opera now.
In short: Why? Because it's the future. HTML was originally for static content. Now web pages have rich multimedia content.
In the future HTML will likely incorporate standard effects like animated style transitions, and even 3D.
You can ignore the future, but soon the future will be very relevant.
You complain about some developers preferring to use a development environment. But then you go on to complain that you couldn't use your favorite text editor back in the day and were forced to use a lame one.
I don't trust any programmer that needs "their favorite editor" but I suppose that's beside the point. See how ridiculous that sounds? Hypocrite.
Different people prefer different environments. Hell, you can even get vim or emacs to do autocomplete, syntax checking, even compilation triggers. That's a development environment right there. I love vim, but get off your high horse and stop thinking that using the command line or a shitty editor makes you any better than someone who doesn't.