JavaScript/HTML 5 Gaming?

cjcela writes "Lately I've seen some HTML 5/JavaScript games popping up on the web. Most of them lack sound, and are not polished, but little by little this is changing. As an example, check Galactic Plunder. While it is only a single-level proof of concept, it is one of the first arcade non-Flash games that I've found playable. Do you know of other comparable or better pure JavaScript games?"

Answer:

[VortexCortex]

They don't require a browser plugin (like java or flash) to play.

I agree that it's not that big of a deal if your target audience is using Windows PCs...
If you want Android and iP*d, and many Linux users to be able to play as well HTML5 + JS is a decent alternative.

I already use Flash's ActionScript, so why not use the almost identical JavaScript to make the game and target a wider audience?

1. Flash is made specifically for animation, so it's generally easier to get a game up and running with in than in JS+DHTML/Canvas.
Game authoring frameworks for JS may fix this.

2. JS animation is sometimes jerky and slow. SVG is very slow too.
Hardware acceleration will fix this.

3. The audience without flash or java is too small to worry about.
This audience is growing, much the same as when Firefox was new.
It's silly to not test websites in FF, Chrome, Safari and Opera now.

In short: Why? Because it's the future. HTML was originally for static content. Now web pages have rich multimedia content.
In the future HTML will likely incorporate standard effects like animated style transitions, and even 3D.

You can ignore the future, but soon the future will be very relevant.

Re:All demos

[Sloppy]

That is actually one of the most significant problems with HTML5. It provides no way for the video to maximize to full screen

Try this in Firefox: Command-shift-F (on Mac OS) or F11 (on Linux). There's your full screen. The video doesn't need any way to do that, because it's right at the user's fingertips ***IF*** they want it, and likewise, the user isn't compelled to live with the programmer's arrogance if the user doesn't want fullscreen. This is a good thing.

Adding a way for javascript programmers to interfere with the user's window environment in such a way, would weaken HTML5. It might make it ever-so-slightly more convenient for your local intranet app server, but for The Internet, it would be a step toward degrading HTML5 into the realm of Flash and ActiveX. Even if they fuck up and add this "feature" to HTML5, then you're just going to have all the browser authors need to add preference options to enable/disable it, and since no one will have reason to suspect that issuing that API call will actually result in full screenage, no one will use it anyway. This idea is just as useless as the past mistake of adding the calls which allow pop-under windows.