Customer Reviews

HTML5 Games: Creating Fun with HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I pre-ordered this book and had high hopes for it. My hopes were realized. My major desire was to find a good book that I can use in a course
where we will build a game engine using webgl technologies. I would have liked perhaps an additional chapter about webgl, but am quite pleased
with the chapter that is present. Also, the other chapters are informative and helpful, e.g. those describing web sockets, local storage, etc. I
downloaded the software from the publisher website and ran many of the samples. In one case, I had to make a change to the code to accept 0 (zero)
from an xmlhttprequest where the code was only accepting a 200 as a valid return code. Otherwise, things that I tried ran unchanged. At one point I
was confused by a reference to "BC" in the Index. A quick email to the author got an almost immediate reply in which he told me that the acronym
referred to Bonus Content, and that the content would be added to the downloads at the website. He emailed me later when the content was available.
While I will probably provide some websites as supplements to be visited by my students, I am completely satisfied with the book and am currently
planning to use it in my course this summer.
Thanks.

(January 29, 2012 -- Beyond this point is my original review of "HTML5 Games: Creating Fun with HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL." Please note that the content below was written prior to completing "Chapter 10: Creating Audio for Games." I will complete this review once I have gone through the rest of the book.)

When I first heard Jacob Seidelin (the mastermind behind the NihiLogic Web site and the famous "HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet") was working on a book that was to cover game development using HTML5, I got excited. The current crop of HTML5 game programming books is, to put it bluntly, quite underwhelming. However, I knew if the book Mr. Seidelin was working on is near the caliber of the content on his Web site -- I'd be in for a real treat.

The book, "HTML5 Games: Creating Fun with HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL," meets my expectations.

In Part 1 of the book, you start out by learning a bit about the history of HTML5, and gaining some ideas about how HTML5 can be used for gaming. In Chapter 2, after a primer on the game you will be building (a puzzle game along the lines of "Jewel Quest"), you get to the nitty-gritty and start the HTML/CSS files (along with a few scripts) necessary for the game -- including coverage of Web Fonts.

Part 1 concludes with a chapter on techniques to help your project translate well on mobile devices. This chapter is a gold-mine of tips and tricks that will get you going if you want your games to work well on Apple mobile devices and Android systems.

Then, in "Part 2", you get into the thick of it. Chapter 4 has you build the game-board module, including move-validation (so that one cannot make illegal moves), finding sets-of-three, and clearing/refilling the game board. Chapter 5 covers Web Workers, and does so well -- Mr. Seidelin does a good job of explaining why workers can be helpful, and in what situations they perform (or don't perform) well.

In Chapter 6, you will be introduced to Canvas -- the scriptable graphics element introduced in HTML5. Everything is covered -- shapes/paths, transformation/scaling/rotation, rendering text and images, and real-time rendering (such as shadows, and my personal favorite -- compositing). Chapter 7 extends the game by showing you how to pre-load game assets (and display a progress bar in the meantime), and adding a "fallback" rendering method using CSS sprites and the DOM to control the game view.

Chapter 8 covers input. In addition to mouse and keyboard input, Jacob will explain to you how touch events work on devices with touch screens, and how to interpret them in the game. Chapter 9 covers animating the game, and includes a handy "fallback" script that imitates the functionality of requestAnimationFrame() for browsers without support for the function built-in.

Part 3 (which I have not delved into -- yet) covers the Audio element in Chapter 10, whereas Chapter 11 will guide you through adding WebGL rendering to the game project.

Part 4 covers more of the advanced functions introduced in HTML5, such as Local Storage and WebSockets. The book winds down in Chapter 14 with a list of resources -- everything from external libraries (Box2D, Impact, and Three are covered), to app deployment/sales (for both desktop and mobile devices), and so on.

In summary, this book is pretty much going to take you from 0 to 60 in about 430 pages. Jacob has a really great writing style, in that he explains things very well without being overly verbose -- he says a lot by saying a little. This makes it much easier to grasp even difficult concepts. His use of modules such as Modernizr and Sizzle is, in my opinion, a good thing (jQuery is more popular, but would add a bit of unnecessary bloat, unfortunately). I'm really impressed with the editing -- I have only come across one instance of mangled code, and it is minor. (I had the error marked and planned to point it out; unfortunately, the marker I used fell out of the book...)

One caveat -- there is some serious JavaScript-Fu going on in this book. If you are not at least somewhat comfortable with JavaScript and how it works under the hood, prepare to be schooled.

"HTML5 Games: Creating Fun with HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL" by Jacob Seidelin gets five well-deserved stars from me.

I've now read five titles on HTML5 game development, and while each has their redeeming qualities and high points, Jacob Seidelin's fine work is an absolute must-have. This isn't for the novice or beginning dev looking to add a new arrow to their web programming quill - this is a healthy discussion that tackles specific challenges in creating rich, engaging games for the browser environment. Seidelin greatly emphasizes the web's key advantage of being accessible via browsers on the desktop, smartphones, tablets, and hopefully soon, interactive TVs.

The book doesn't spend time discussing game theory and doesn't go into exhaustive detail with APIs for canvas and multimedia, it states the objective in building a puzzle game and then attacks the problem by building-out each of the components and subsystems. Each chapter is very logically-organized and well-written, neither too short nor not overly verbose. It leverages techniques for multiplayer games like Web Sockets and Web Workers and uses slick techniques to take advantage of local storage for a real console feel. The animation and WebGL chapters are very much appreciated, too.

But the book's finest hour is its hearty chapter dealing with the nuances of mobile games for iOS and Android. This chapter is essential reading, featuring material not found in wide distribution with most titles out there at the moment.

While I'm not a big fan of books using third-party libraries in their examples ([...]), Seidelin does leverage Modernizr and Sizzle, the DOM access library that's not as top-heavy as jQuery. In so doing is uses clever JavaScript programming idioms and patterns that are very worth considering for your next project.

This book is so good, I'd recommend owning it AS A BOOK. With maybe an electronic copy as a backup. :)

This is a book for someone who might know how to create a website and now wants to expand to using the tools and info he already knows to create a game using HTML5. Or it could be used by a Flash developer who wants to make the switch to HTML5. Or maybe you're familiar with HTML and want to make games for iPhones or iPads.

In any of the above cases, this would be a good book for you as Jacob Seidelin takes his readers through the process of creating a simple game from scratch. The author is passionate about HTML5, which is obvious from just the first page, and if you follow along with him through this book, his passion is likely to affect you. But that would be a good thing.

While I'm new to programming with HTML 5 (um, very new), I picked up this book because of my interest in programming games for mobile devices. That information isn't widely available online or in books, and so was well worth picking up this book over.

I was delighted to find that chapter was particularly robust. And since I have a general interest in learning the rest of the book's contents, I'm finding this a great read.

While many programming books are written in either a dry, technical style similar to a textbook, or in a chatty, dumbed-down style, this book takes the perfect middle road. It's factual, to the point, matter of fact and tells me everything I need to know in just the right order.

I'm finding the biggest strength of the book is its organized layout. It feels like reading a simple set of tutorials online, in the sense that it has bolded headlines to direct my eye where needed, information is broken up into short sections that are granular and cover one tight topic, and the code itself is laid out in a way that is easy to read. Tables and black and white photos are included where needed to break up the text and provide handy reference charts.

You know whether or not you want the book by the title, most likely, and are just reading reviews to see if there's anything wrong with this book. There's not. It's great. Pick it up and get programming.

I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to take their HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to the next level of building dynamic applications.

My experience with game development is with XNA and Silverlight. I'd say HTML5 games are closer to Silverlight games than XNA with regards to structure.

This book did a great job of putting the creation of a game into a format that makes for a really nice read and set of tutorials. I thought the author did a great job of implementing and explaining some complex functionality.

I must admit that although I found the chapters on WebGL interesting, I cannot take using it anymore seriously than I can Silverlight. What Apple has done to Silverlight, Microsoft is accomplishing to do to WebGL. I guess I see the difference being that Apple did it intentionally, while Microsoft is just simply incompetent.

The author did a great job of introducing and using the canvas. Out of all the books I have read on HTML5, this book does the best job of covering the canvas.

The downloadable code is very organized and usable. It all works as advertised.

One of the things this book will bring to light is that HTML5 is all about the JavaScript and CSS. A few new HTML5 tags are coming, but without a ton of JavaScript and CSS those tags bring no value.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to take their HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to the next level. The author will push you skillsets to a new level.

This book is not for beginners. You don't already have to know HTML5, but if you're not a web developer with sufficient CSS and Javascript experience to know what progressive enhancement or Javascript namespaces and module coding patterns are, for example, you will have some difficulty following along.

The game you get to build in this book is not a difficult one, but it's not a trivial one either. It's an interesting match-three puzzle game similar to those popularized by game developer PopCap Games. It can be played on the web on a regular laptop or desktop, or on an iOS or Android mobile device, as well as solo or multi-player. It keeps tab on high scores to help motivate a player to progress through higher and more difficult levels of game-playing, and the integration of audio, animation, and other visual effects add aesthetic touches that make the game look very professional and polished.

This book will teach you how to implement all of the above-mentioned features and more. By the time you're finished, you would have learned many, many things, including: how to use Modernizr (a Javascript library) to detect whether a specific HTML5 feature is supported so you can write appropriate code to handle all important contingencies, what to consider when writing code that can execute in devices with different form factors and supported input modalities (e.g., physical vs virtual keyboard, mouse vs touch inputs, etc), how to create gorgeous looking 2D and 3D graphics, how to offload CPU-intensive tasks from the main UI thread to web worker threads, how to support multiplayer interactions through the use of communicating WebSockets, how to leverage the new WebStorage alternative to cookies for storing application data if this feature is supported, how to make your game available offline if an HTML5 application cache is supported, and of course, how to create various audio, animation, and visual effects. You'll also get tips on how to distribute or deploy your finished game.

The book contains 14 chapters, each about 30-40 pages long, with the exception of the WebGL (for 3D Graphics) chapter, which is about 60 pages long. Each chapter usually begins with a stated objective, followed by an introduction of the specific HTML5 feature about to be used to enhance the game under implementation, the actual code for the additional game feature(s), and a recap of what was learned and accomplished. All code are available from the site mentioned in the book's back cover. Each chapter is concise and engaging, and packs a lot of useful information and helpful tips!