Re:8-bit style, old-school adventure game released for Linux...
by jcromartie on Tuesday February 14, 2012 @08:26AM
(#3589873)
I like how you're using standard HTML elements for the important bits outside of the game's main display. That is a great idea and seems like an efficient way (in terms of level of effort, not reinventing the wheel) to build a UI and tools for a game like this.
Re:8-bit style, old-school adventure game released for Linux...
by ajuc on Tuesday February 14, 2012 @08:49AM
(#3589930)
It's also making canvas window smaller, so it runs faster :)
At least when it's using canvas software renderer, 20% of screen size is making a big difference in fps (on my old PC 30 versus 37 fps).
But it would be worth it just for much simpler ui programming.
Re:8-bit style, old-school adventure game released for Linux...
by jcromartie on Tuesday February 14, 2012 @09:45AM
(#3590149)
And not just simpler, but way simpler, and way easier to get nice results. Think of all the stuff you get "for free" by using HTML in a modern browser. You'd have to write all this stuff by hand or lean on a game library to implement: text input, input focus, buttons, UI events, styled text (bold, italic, etc.), text shadows, box shadows, skinned UI (CSS).
In fact, I bet big name games will increasingly embed things like WebKit and use HTML5 and CSS for their UIs in the future.
I'm working on something similiar (ok, the biggest similiarity is in graphics - my game will be more like 2d sf action rpg with asteroid mechanics :)), and I'm very interested, if there's market for such games.
If you could publish your experiences, I'd be grateful.
EDIT: here's alpha version of my game. Most thigs don't work, and bugs abound, so beware :)
Should work on modern browsers (capable of webgl, or at least canvas).
http://alan.umcs.lublin.pl/~ajuc/tiled_arcade_webgl/current/