Learning HTML5 Game Programming: A Hands-on Guide to Building Online Games Using Canvas, SVG, and WebGL [Paperback]

James L. Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2011 | Series: Learning

Get Started Fast with HTML5 Online Game Programming!

 

HTML5 will transform web and mobile gaming. As new browsers rapidly adopt it, HTML5 will do everything “legacy” technologies such as Flash and Silverlight have done—and much more. In Learning HTML5 Game Programming, pioneering developer James L. Williams gives you all the knowledge, code, and insights you’ll need to get started fast!

 

Williams combines detailed explanations of HTML5’s key innovations with examples, including two case study applications that address the entire development process. He guides you through setting up a state-of-the-art HTML5 development environment; making the most of HTML5’s canvas tag, SVG vector graphics, and WebGL 3D; and targeting diverse mobile and social platforms. It’s all here: from the essentials of online game design to the nitty-gritty details of performance optimization.

 

About the Website

 

All code samples and answers to chapter exercises are available for download at www.informit.com/title/9780321767363 and on Github at https://github.com/jwill/html5-game-book.

 

Coverage includes

·          Understanding the HTML5 innovations that make it possible to create amazingly rich games

·          Setting up a state-of-the-art open source HTML5 game development environment

·          Using JavaScript to drive sophisticated interactions between users and games

·          Building basic games fast, with the prototype-based Simple Game Framework (SGF)

·          Generating movement and gameplay with the canvas tag and surface

·          Creating games with SVG vector graphics using the RaphaëlJS Javascript library

·          Using Three.js to build powerful WebGL 3D games with far less complexity

·          Developing games without JavaScript, using Google Web Toolkit (GWT) or CoffeeScript

·          Building a complete multiplayer game server using Node.js and WebSockets

·          Planning and choosing tools for mobile game development with HTML5

·          Optimizing game performance with offline cache, minification, and other techniques

 

Learning HTML5 Game Programming is the fastest route to success with HTML5 game development—whether you’re a long-time game developer or a web/mobile programmer building games for the first time.

 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James L. Williams is an experienced Silicon Valley developer and speaker who has presented worldwide on Java, user interfaces, and game programming. He created SwingXBuilder, a domain-specific language for creating user interfaces utilizing SwingX components, and is co-despot of Griffon, a framework for building rich applications with Groovy. While riding a coach bus to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW), he and his team conceived, coded, and created a winning product in the StartupBus 2011 competition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (October 5, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321767365
• ISBN-13: 978-0321767363
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.5 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Williams is a developer based in Silicon Valley and frequent conference speaker, domestically and internationally. He was a successful participant in the 2007 Google Summer of Code working to bring easy access to SwingLabs UI components to Groovy. He is a co-creator of the Griffon project, a rich desktop framework for Java applications. He and his team WalkIN, created a product on a coach bus while riding to SXSW, and were crowned winners of StartupBus 2011. His first video game was "Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom" on the Coleco Adam, a beast of a machine with a blistering 3.58Mhz CPU, a high speed tape drive, and a propensity to erase floppy disks at bootup. He blogs at http://jameswilliams.be/blog and tweets as @ecspike.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book on HTML5 Game Programming November 20, 2011

By Andrew J. Indovina

Format:Paperback

Since April 2011, I've been exploring developing games utlizing HTML5 out of interest.

My resource from this time on has been what others have posted on the Internet.
I was excited to hear about the book "Learning HTML5 Game Programming" and even more excited to read it.

Below is my brief analysis of every chapter, but overall I found this book to be quite value to anyone interested in learning HTML5 programming but haven't really explored it, they should really get this book. I am not a professional HTML5 game developer, but as a hobbyiest I found this quite beneficial. It is well written, well organized, and covers what I feel are very important topics. Compared to what books that are currently out there, this is definitley one of best books to get on this subject to my knowledge.

Chapter 1, "Introducting HTML5", give a nice history of
Web technologies and a nice background of the
technologies through the years. While it's not necessary
to read, it is well worth reading.

Chapter 2, "Setting Up Your Development Environment", is
a very welcome and much needed chapter. While most books
would brush over this topic, this book does the courtesy
of dedicating a chapter to setting up the development
environment! On top of an entire chapter, he graciously
suggests free tools to use. As a developer, nothing is
more frustrating than struggling with your development
environment instead of doing actual development! I find
this chapter VERY valuable.

Chapter 3, "Learning JavaScript" is a nice chapter and
should speak well to beginners that want to make games
but don't know JavaScript so well. What's nice is he also
covers learning JQuery, JQuery with AJAX, and JSON. This
is valuable and I think it's part of the thoroughness of
the book. I also appreciate how he discusses client side
and server side JavaScript.

Chapter 4, "How Games Work", may be the most overlooked
chapter by wanna-be game developers who mistakenly think
"I know all about games". I cannot express enough how
important I think writing a game design document can be,
and thankfully he covers it. In addtion, he covers
Resources API and Networking APIs, which is also very
good.
It is this chapter where goes through life cycle of
developing a Pong game, and then Tic-Tac-Toe, classic
examples, but they work well.

Chapter 5, "Creating Games With The Canvas Tag", is
really the heart of the book, which is appropriate
because I believe the Canvas object is the heart and soul
of HTML5 games. He covers all the basic canvas options
you will need, and even 'Creates a Parallax Effect'
Sound is covered this same chapter. Normally most books
dedicate an entire chapter to sound, but it is still
covered well. MIDI Files are utilized and multiple sounds
are covered as well.

I should also state that practically every chapter has
examples and code samples. These can also be downloaded
where applicable.

Chapter 6, "Creating Games with SVG (Scalable Vector
Graphics) and RaphealJS". In this chapter a card game is
developed for examples and it is quite interesting.
Those interested in this type of development should be
find this chapter a welcome addition.

Chapter 7, "Creating Games with WebGL and Three.js" is
beneficial for those that want to use 3D objects and
extended graphic libraries. Its a good read about
rendering, texturing, particle systems, and real-world
physics.

Chapter 8, "Creating Games Without JavasScript" is
exactly what it says. While it's something I wasn't
considering, I find I might want to explore. It utilizes
GWT Widgets (Google Web Toolkit).
It also explores CoffeeScript a bit, then briefly
mentions Cappuccino and Pyjamas

Chapter 9, "Building a Multiplayer Game Server", is a
great read. It covers this indepth and is a lengthy
chapter, as it should be. It goes as far as covering the
'Game Lobby' and covering the use of Web Sockets.

Chapter 10, "Developing Mobile Games", is one of the
longest chapters. It is a topic that could be it's own
book itself, but it's covered quite well here. It's a good read if you are new and interested in developing mobile games, this is the one chapter you should check out.

Chapter 11, "Publishing Your Games", is the final chapter of the book and fittingly so. It talks about how to setup your game so that it runs offline for performance, hosting your own server, publishing applications on the Chrome Web Store. This isn't a chapter that is quickly written, but covers many of the areas of publishing. It's really worth your time to give this chapter much attention once you get to the point of publishing.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a learn-while-doing book. Requires big existing knowlege base April 9, 2012

By Kitt

Format:Paperback

I'm currently up to chapter 4 and my conclusion is that this book is either not very helpful for learning or that it is aimed at a very specialized audience that is not me. It may be for people who are already very experienced with web development and therefore assumes that you know a lot about other related subjects already. Many things are just skimmed over without any explanation of what they are. It's also possible that it's more appropriate for people accustomed to creating web games using Flash who just need to know the specific comparable HTML5 tools. Either way, if you're starting from scratch this book isn't going to be particularly comprehensible.

This book tells you ABOUT its topic but doesn't teach you how to do it. If you're happy just downloading the accompanying files and reading them along with the book as a learning technique then you'll like this book. If you want more hands-on how and why this is not that book.

In addition, the book isn't set up particularly well as a learning reference. For example it's very acronym-heavy but if you don't remember what a particular acronym stands for it's usually not referenced properly in the index so you're left guessing.

I went back and got "Head First HTML5 Programming" instead as it has more of a step-by-step instructional approach. http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-HTML5-Programming-JavaScript/dp/1449390544/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334013560&sr=8-1

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good overview for those starting with HTML5 ! November 21, 2011

By Oliver

Format:Paperback

At first a little disappointed by this book, as I found it maybe too much scattered (covering too much topics), I finally found it very useful as it actually allowed me to expand my field of knowledge on each of the subjects. For sure this book do not provide any ancient secret knowledge to become a guru, but it will however show you the magic, and how to use it with some real examples. Which at the end is more than enough to give you a first overview of the various possibilities around HTML5.

So would I recommend this book ? If you are an advanced JS/HTML5 developer looking to push your knowledge further : maybe not. But if you don't have a clue about how to start with HTML5, this book will come very handy in giving you the right kickstart to get you up and running in no times.