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 HTML5: 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 following:

Create realistic physics in your game by incorporating the Box2d physics engine
Design large worlds with lots of characters and let users interact with them
Use sprite sheets, panning, parallax scrolling, and sound effects to build a more polished game
Incorporate pathfinding and steering to help characters navigate through your world
Create challenging levels with intelligent enemies by using decision trees, state machines, and scripted events
Add multiplayer in your games using Node.js and the WebSocket API

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.

What you’ll learn

Creating realistic physics in your game by incorporating the Box2d physics engine
Designing large worlds with lots of characters and let users interact with them
Using sprite sheets, panning, parallax scrolling, and sound effects to build a more polished game
Incorporating pathfinding and steering to help characters navigate through your world
Creating challenging levels with intelligent enemies by using decision trees, state machines, and scripted events
Adding multiplayer in your games using Node.js and the WebSocket API

Who this book is for

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.

Table of Contents

HTML5 and JavaScript Essentials
Creating a Basic Game World
Physics Engine Basics
Integrating the Physics Engine
Creating the RTS Game World
Adding Entities to Our World
Intelligent Unit Movement
Adding More Game Elements
CreaAdding Weapons and Combat
Wrapping Up the Single-Player Campaign
Multiplayer with WebSockets
Multiplayer Gameplay