Pro HTML5 Games

by Aditya Ravi Shankar

Build your next game on a bigger scale with Pro HTML5 Games . This book teaches you the essentials of advanced game programming in HTML5. You’ll learn techniques that you can transfer to any area of HTML5 game development to make your own professional HTML5 games!  Led by an expert game programmer, you’ll build two complete games in a strategy puzzle game based on the Box2d physics engine and in the style of Angry Birds and a real-time strategy (RTS) game complete with units, buildings, path-finding, artificial intelligence, and multiplayer support. In the process, you’ll learn how to do the    This book will help you take your HTML5/JavaScript programming experience to the next level. It gives you the knowledge and skills you need to develop more complex, bolder games and become an HTML5 games pro.Pro HTML5 Games is meant for programmers who already have some HTML and JavaScript programming experience and who now want to learn to harness the power of HTML5 to build amazing-looking games but don’t know where to begin.    Readers who have experience making games in other languages such as Flash and would like to move to HTML5 will also find a lot of useful information in this book.If you do not feel confident about your game programming skills, don’t worry. This book covers all the essentials needed to build these games so you can follow along and learn to design large, professional games in HTML5. The book will also point to resources and reference material for supplemental learning in case you are having trouble keeping up.With dedicated chapters on HTML5 basics, the Box2D engine, pathfinding and steering, combat and effective enemy AI, and multiplayer using Node.JS with WebSockets, you should get a lot from this book no matter how much game programming experience you have.

Genres: Programming, Reference, Computers

367 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Radimir Bitsov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book with very detail explanation of the development process for two complete games. I really enjoyed the second part about the RTS game dev tutorial and definitely recommend for everyone who wants to start with the html5 / javascript game development.

[Laurence Scotford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book if you can already put together simple HTML5 pages or applications and you now want to apply those skills to creating games. Although it does cover some of the basics in the first couple of chapters, it's probably going to be too much of a leap if you are new to HTML5.

It will also appeal to you more if you are the type of person who likes to learn by example. The author leads you through the creation of an Angry Birds style physics-based puzzle game and then a real-time strategy game, with both single and multiplayer modes, at a fair pace. To deliver these he uses a combination of jQuery, Box2DWeb and Node.js. The level of explanation was just right for my taste, but may be a little on the sparse side for some who prefer a more theoretical approach.

What Ravi Shankar leaves you with at the end is a very solid framework which you can then tailor to your own architectural preferences. A lot of HTML5 and games development books lack substance, but this one can't be faulted on that score.

[Leslie Pajuelo]

Does have two games, including pages of code for a game map. Could use more info on storing player values and/or other information between levels