HTML5 Game Development Review

It came as a surprise for me to receive a request to review game development video tutorial because I was never focused on game development but I worked as an Actionscript developer. The Actionscript language itself is interesting and certainly does look a bit like Lua and JavaScript. Sometimes it’s the tasks that make us conclude a language is insensible. I thought that Flash will die after JavaScript and HTML5 became more popular alternatives for game development. It’s still around and people still prefer it for questionable business reasons. My point is that business people rarely understand technology and why they’re not getting what they want out of their choices. Unlike HTML5 and JavaScript, you would need an SWF downloader and decompiler for the source code. Anything that can be compiled can be decompiled and that includes the very “safe, proprietary” Flash technology. I knew how to do that nearly a decade ago.

Changes in web development are more amusing than I thought. It’s now very trivial to slide, fade and apply basic animations to HTML elements with CSS3.

A very good reason to use HTML5 over Flash is the lack of flash support for mobile browsers. The iPhone’s Safari browser does not support Flash so if you’re targeting mobile users, it doesn’t make sense to use Flash. “HTML5 Game Development” by Makzan does show you how to create a game that works well on a mobile device.

OMG, I Know Game Development!

If you’re a web developer, these are fun and funny times. You probably already have what it takes to write an HTML5 game. It’s easy to go through the first sections of HTML5 Game Development in fact. You probably know a lot more shortcuts and easier approaches to preloading a simple game, using custom fonts and organizing JavaScript code sensibly. Supporting mobile devices is something nearly every decent web developer knows. One line of HTML code which makes a difference.

If you know JavaScript very well, you can probably easy grasp how to create a native iOS application with that new language Swift which is so much like JavaScript.

JavaScript Best Practices

Does the video show best practices in organizing JavaScript code? Yes, it does. It’s not perfect and there’s no MVC structure as there’s no need for it yet. That structure is best for games that may require storing game states on a database.

If you’re not familiar with JavaScript because you’re too comfortable with jQuery and have not bothered writing multiple lines on JavaScript, it is worth the time to read a few style guides and books. Since Douglas Crockford wrote “JavaScript: The Good Parts”, there were a lot of books written about the language and several changes which improved the web in general. Douglas Crockford also created JSON data format.

Packt Publishing’s 10 Year Celebration Campaign

I’ve finished the tutorial and I have a few simple game ideas. This is certainly fun with good backend skills. If you want to watch the video, this is the best time to buy because of the campaign. All eBooks and videos are now worth $10 each. Normally, it’s a lot more. Take advantage of the campaign. It won’t last long. Just 24 hours left!