[...]... in the transition from five-minute puzzle games on the web to professional-grade games that have a console-like experience 8 The State of Open Web Games With much more on the way These technologies are really just scratching the surface when it comes to creating games on the web using open technologies Mozilla and other companies are working hard to bring you these APIs and services to help make the. .. almost all the good “what-ifs” came from conversations with my friends Having active conversations was the best way to get the creative juices flowing and to consider other viewpoints, eventually resulting in the best possible implementation Pre-production Once the idea was officially cemented, it was time to plan out the development The first thing I determined was the technology Having decided the. .. the offline version Is it a good fit for games? The short answer: yes Certain types of games will lend themselves better to using Processing.js Puzzle-based games like mine that are less reliant upon stunning visuals are the perfect form for Processing.js With fewer on-screen objects to be rendered, the canvas has no issue A full-on, simulation-based soccer game or a multi-player shooter, on the other... the viewpoint in a 3D first-person shooter) or rotating the player in a top-down 2D game In both of these situations, the mouse cursor is visible at all times, which is generally annoying and ruins the experience However, the most debilitating problem is that all movement stops when the mouse cursor leaves the browser window This same behavior occurs in full-screen mode when the mouse cursor hits the. .. idea, the game became a success Aesthetics are secondary This is basically a sub-section of rule number one Like the story, the aesthetics are mostly fluff Aesthetics can play a major role in the game, but I feel that it is secondary Aesthetics are what initially intrigue players; mechanics are what make them continue playing There is no doubt that aesthetic choices can have a major impact on the game,... out more by visiting http://blog.tojicode.com/2011/10/source-engine-levels-in-webglvideo.html 9 Chapter 1 Figure 1-1 Screenshot from HTML5 Bejeweled Figure 1-2 Screenshot from HTML5 Angry Birds 10 The State of Open Web Games Figure 1-3 Screenshot of the Robots Are People Too web site Figure 1-4 Screenshot from Runfield 11 Chapter 1 Figure 1-5 Screenshot from Brandon Jones’s TF2 WebGL demo Distribution... starts, the player is greeted with an old-school, highscore list, much like old arcades The game environment is an empty two-dimensional space At the beginning of each level, the ball is placed (frozen) at a pre-determined point A on the screen There is a point B that refers to the target, and a set of modifiers on the bottom Figure 2-1 Screenshot of A to B in action 16 Complexity from Simplicity When the. .. checklists and methods In the book, Schell claims that the mechanics are the foundation of the game, so most of your attention needs to be focused on it For me, this was the most important piece of information in the book, and became the basis for my first rule of simplicity Another helpful idea was from the seminal work on the concept of flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow is the idea that a perfect... Firefox and Chrome, and there is currently no word on whether the other browsers will adopt it The same can be said for the Mouse Lock API and a few others Another example is that Internet Explorer doesn’t support WebGL and is unlikely to support it in the near future, at least until they stop developing Silverlight The final issue is that the open nature of game development on the web is just not feasible... to do that, there are a few key events that need to occur The first is that browsers need to consistently adopt the necessary technologies for open web games, specifically in order to stop the platform battles we’re seeing with the current influx of WebKit-only games that target the Chrome Web Store Prominent examples of areas to improve are the audio data APIs, WebGL, the Gamepad API, and the Mouse . The authors of this book are all real-world games programmers who have come together to share their HTML5 expertise, tips, and tricks with you. In the. understanding the implications of the choices made by the other authors in subsequent chapters. 1 Chapter 1 The State of Open Web Games In this