Getting started with HTML5/JS + Node.js game development

[Derek Chalmers]

What's up people?

I've been wanting to write a game and have been looking at both iOS and the web. After I found out I need a Mac to make iOS games that sealed the deal: I'm making a game for the web.

JavaScript is my first programming language so everything I need to do is a bit tricky, but I have a very basic prototype with a Node.js server and an HTML5/JS client which draws with Canvas and which are talking over Socket.io. Am I doing okay so far? ;)

What I haven't really found yet is a good library for doing the glue between Socket.io and Canvas. What should I use, or is that code better to write by hand? I took a look at Backbone.js briefly and it seems like it might be what I want?

I have blogged about my experiences here so far if you would be interested in reading:

http://nodeblode.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/down-the-javascript-rabbit-hole/

Am I on the right track so far? Also is it better to learn JavaScript or CoffeeScript?

-- DC

[blake]

> I've been wanting to write a game and have been looking at both iOS and the
> web. After I found out I need a Mac to make iOS games that sealed the deal:
> I'm making a game for the web.

Pretty sure you can develop with Adobe AIR for Mac on a PC.

Not trying to talk you out of Node just sayin'.

[Derek Chalmers]

I don't really get the difference between AIR and Flash, but I hate Flash, so I think I'll stick with HTML/JS

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[Derek Chalmers]

http://phonegap.com/

I also saw this for publishing HTML games to iOS

[Duncan Gmail]

JavaScript is definitely the way to go.  If you want to go down the Coffee script I recommend you learn JavaScript first especially if you're new to programming (I'm not planning to go down the Coffee Script route).

Learn to use Chrome Inspector (dev tools) or Firebug.  There are lots of good JavaScript books & online tutorials. I recommend you read Douglas Crawford, especially 'JavaScript the good parts'.

GitHub.com is a great resource for your projects and reading how others write their JavaScript. 

I'm in the middle of writing an RTS HTML5 & nodejs game myself. Very early stages.

- Duncan

[Karl Tiedt]

Phonegap online build tool to avoid the Mac requirement but you still need a dev acct from apple

[Alexey Petrushin]

I'd prefer to start with CoffeeScript. 

 

In pure javaScript there's so many hacks and quirks that You'll spend lots of time examining and fighting it.

CoffeeScript generates sort of "ideal" JavaScript, in the same way it would be written by professional. 

As has been said before - You anyway need to know JavaScript, but it's much faster and enjoyable to learn it from the well-writen JavaScript generated by CoffeeScript, than to try to learn all these quirks and hacks by Yourself.

I learned it such way, about a half a Year ago when moving from Ruby to Node.

[Evan]

I'm also working on a web+ios game, and I've fallen in love with phoneGap.  It really does work as advertised (files/camera/contacts/etc all available in JS)

With a little work, you can even get push notifications going (this package is great for it: https://github.com/argon/node-apn).  I'm happy to answer any questions about it.