onGameStart: a bright future for HTML5 games

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onGameStart was a success for one very simple but fundamentally important reason: the people who attended the event made it so. It was fantastic to have so many interesting, enthusiastic and intelligent people all together at the same conference discussing and sharing information about HTML5 games. Not only where the people there great but the \[…\]

Introduction

onGameStart was a success for one very simple but fundamentally important reason: the people who attended the event made it so. It was fantastic to have so many interesting, enthusiastic and intelligent people all together at the same conference discussing and sharing information about HTML5 games.

Not only where the people there great but the company presence also shows the interest in this area. With Seth Ladd from Google, Rob Hawkes from Mozilla, Foks & Czekala from Microsoft, Laurent Hasson from RIM and sponsors such as Blackberry, github, Apress, Google and of course Pusher, it’s clear to see that HTML5 games have an exciting future. There was also some sponsorship and presence from the W3C and a workshop held on the Saturday to gather feedback and input from the conference attendees which is a fantastic sign for the future.

For a summary of each talk see the day 1 and day 2 posts on smashinglabs.pl.

Game Engines, Libraries & Platforms

A whole bunch of game engines, libraries and platforms were talked about and demoed. Here’s a list of those that I saw or heard mentioned (there will be more so check out the links above):

For even more HTML5 Game Engine resources check out this Game Engines wiki page on github.

HTML5 Multiplayer Gaming

From the talks I attended only the IsoGenicEngine currently offers realtime HTML5 multiplayer gaming and I’m pleased to say that Rob Evans, the author, has added support to use Pusher as the realtime communication platform for the game. SpilGames, ludei, ImpactJS and GameJS all plan to add multiplayer support in the future (guys – get in touch).

WebGL

I was absolutely blown away by the talks I attended on WebGL. If you are in any doubt that the web browser has the potential to be, or already is, a gaming platform then you should take a look at what Brandon Jones has achieved in porting parts of iOS Rage, Quake 3 and Team Fortress 2 to WebGL. Check out his presentation from onGameStart. If you’ve not seen it already then you should take a look at the ro.me demo. Bartek Drozdz was involved in the project and from his experiences he’s developed the j3D (JavaScript 3D) engine which is also worth a look.

The Future of HTML5 games

It’s really great to be a small part of what is a very exciting and bright future for HTML5 games. The majority of us get into programming because we like computer games. Very few of us end up as games developers but the web has yet again come to rescue. It’s easier to program for the web because all you need is a text editor and a web browser. It’s easier to publish on the web as all you need is a simple hosting solution. And it’s now easy to write, publish and get users playing your games all thanks to the web and now HTML5 Games. Finally, let’s not forget that HTML5 games have a much wider platform reach with the ability to run on mobile, desktop and any other device with a good web browser.