Back to General and Gameplay Programming

html5 and DOM gets no love for mobile apps/games?

lmbarns · 2012-02-29T07:40:20

Was hoping for an "html5 or DOM cross platform game development for mobiles" category but it seems nobody here uses it? Bummer. I was working on a 3d game in Unity, but got stuck implementing multiplayer so put it on hold. Then working on web dev for mobile I came across html5 canvas and built a 2d version of my 3d game using the same design document. I rewrote some of the code I'd written in c# to be just plain old javascript and then realized you don't need a game engine and you don't even need the html5 canvas to make 2d/isometric games in the web browser, which run cross platform, and it may actually be faster to just use DOM with lots of divs rather than canvas. But honestly I find it empowering to use elementary trig and math in notepad with plain javascript and some sprite sheets to move objects from a point to another(like when a player touches the screen to move the char), while sliding the background sprite image to animate the div based on the Sin/Cos of the tangent the object is moving.. For an inventory system I just make a tabbed div with jquery and html/css which can show or hide, it has divs used as buttons to call onclick events to dynamically generate equipment, resources, consumables, skills/stats panels, etc styled nicely with CSS and selector (hover, etc) events. It also becomes super simple to loop through the arrays and save to/read from localstorage or a db, persisting characters items/equipment/stats/achievements/deaths/health/skills/etc etc etc(limit 5mb) no matter if they leave the page and come back, hit refresh, or get killed. Works on the mobiles I've tested on so far....easy to edit localstorage on the client but not as easy on mobile device. Obfuscation becomes needed. Json stringify is pimp. But then with node.js and socket.IO, things get really nuts(and powerful), even with just plain notepad or any text editor where you can write words............which is why I wish this site had a section for this topic....... Issues I've faced with designing browser games is limitations of mobiles. Both in power and input events. Android only triggers 1 touch event on the screen while Apple products register 2, so you can make the first touch trigger the characters movement while the second touch fires a fireball towards the second touch from the first touch. For android I defined image map where if a player touches within it won't shoot the projectile, but if they click outside the movement div it will fire the projectile at the touched coordinate. Thoughts?

General and Gameplay Programming Programming Unity

Started by lmbarns January 14, 2012 06:33 PM

10 comments, last by Sik_the_hedgehog 12 years, 1 month ago

lmbarns

460

Author

February 28, 2012 05:52 PM

I was just looking to get inspired and checked out a couple browser mmo's only to find one using html5 in a way far simpler than I ever expected players to tolerate, yet it seems populated.

For example, the game "Lord of Ultima" from EA, uses a canvas game window with what appears to be a DOM interface, which is just a front end "vew" to some database tables updated constantly with ajax.

When a player performs an action, the server starts a timer incrementing table entries for that item. The client simply refreshes it's elements display of table records via ajax every second.

It's basically battling database "records" vs "records". No npcs, no players to synchronize.

Very basic chat, it's like the absolute minimum required to call it an mmo....very interesting as it seems extremely simplistic. Also decent application of canvas in a browser game by a large company. Gave me several ideas to incorporate.

Edit:: Also I'll have to check out the setTimer instead of setInterval. I found when I cut down on globals and wrapped properties/methods within an object it seems to perform very well.

Also looking at custom webkit or standalone V8 framework to run canvas games, I think V8 is on the money converting javascript to machine-code at runtime...now if only they can do the same for mobile devices...

Sik_the_hedgehog

3,003

February 29, 2012 07:40 AM

Edit:: Also I'll have to check out the setTimer instead of setInterval. I found when I cut down on globals and wrapped properties/methods within an object it seems to perform very well.

The main difference between setTimeout and setInterval is that the former just calls the callback once while the later keeps calling it constantly (until explicitly removed). Both have exactly the same timing accuracy issues I mentioned before, which is why I suggest against using them for timing purposes and suggest getTime for the job instead (leaving setTimeout/Interval for just keeping the main loop going on regularly).

Don't pay much attention to "the hedgehog" in my nick, it's just because "Sik" was already taken =/ By the way, Sik is pronounced like seek, not like sick.

html5 and DOM gets no love for mobile apps/games?

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

html5 and DOM gets no love for mobile apps/games?

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

Reticulating splines