HN Academy

⬐ fnaticshank

Ah! I love how udacity instigates new methods for learning to program and by actually using the trending fun projects in the world right now!

⬐ palcu

Love the fact that for prerequisites they state "Nothing", the videos are structured as a dialogue and that they even tell you to use a simple editor like Sublime.

Colt is a pretty funny dev. He co-ran that html5 game development course last year.

https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255

Here is a free class on HTML 5 Game Development from Udacity:

https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255

Start building a github repo with examples of things you have done...they don't have to be magic.

⬐ gamg

What examples of really popular games are there that were written in HTML 5?

You might check out

1. http://www.digitalscienceacademy.com/dsa/index_general.php They are offering a game development course.

2. Udacity's HTML5 Game Development course - https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255

3. The ultimate resource and forum in Game Programming - http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html

I am in the same shoes like you. And asked the same question to someone. I felt like sharing my findings with you.

I am interested in learning game programming but have to make time. Currently I am off to a trip volunteering and would return on 13th June. I am also working on a startup idea.

But I know, I will make time for doing something if I really want it.

Most of your specific questions are answered on the internet.

Shoot me an email if you want to collaborate.

⬐ thoughtpalette

Thank you for the resources!

"I worry that it could be a waste of time"

It's education. If you want to stay 20 years in this industry, you have to invest in your education. Don't worry, just do it. Solving the problems would make you a better problem solver.

"I feel that most prospective employers don't really care about that, though."

That's right. Most prospective employers don't care. Don't work for them. If you have to, read my last answer.

"In otherwords, is SICP worthy of a CV bullet point."

Yes, really good developers would appreciate the effort. Employers won't care but the senior developer taking your technical interview may appreciate it.

"I should be focusing on more practical projects before looking for a first job." Yes, you must do that. Nothing beats showing a perfectly operational website. And depending on the profile you are targeting it can be a Android game or Web game or scraper or anything. Don't worry your github profile yet. Once you start building stuff it will come alive.

You can also check out https://www.udacity.com/ for some practical courses. They are taught by awesome people and are free. All these courses focus on a project to teach you basics of computer science. And you get real world skills.

1. Building a Search Engine - Introduction to Computer Science - https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101

2. Building a HTML5 game - HTML5 Game Development - https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255

3. Building a Blog - Web Development - https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253

4. Building a Browser - Programming Languages - https://www.udacity.com/course/cs262

5. Building blocks of any non - trivial software project - Design of Computer Programs - https://www.udacity.com/course/cs212 .

All the best learning CS, building things and contributing to the world.

It's still there. It's the html5 game development course: https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255

This course is the entire game client. The server side will be part 2 of the course released at a later time.

There's also an hour presentation from Google I/O explaining the client and another hour presentation from Google I/O explaining the server. Both can be found on Youtube searching for "html5 grits".

It says it starts today? :(

⬐ duhroach

Thanks for your interest in the course!!

Re: Jiggy2011 - All game dev is hard-work; JS is easier in some ways, harder in others. We've had good 2D IDE's for 20 years now to make 2D games; Making the runtime HTML5 isn't new (especially with the ability to export SWF to JS with easel.js)

Re: CodeCube5 - We'll be covering perf on rendering, input, sound and overall entity processing

Re: muyuu - NaCl is awesome! Html5 is awesome! Web game development is a win either way; NaCl is great for devs who have an existing codebase, HTML5 generally works for most others.

⬐ vignesh_vs_in

blog post by course instructor Colt McAnlis http://mainroach.blogspot.in/2013/01/the-past-and-future-of-...

⬐ muyuu

Looks great, but I guess NaCl isn't covered in the course.

⬐ j_s

Pardon my ignorance, but where is NaCl in HTML5?

⬐ muyuu

That's why I don't expect it to be covered, despite NaCl being his main area and it being a course on game development.

⬐ zachgalant

This looks like you need to have experience coding to take this class.

If you're a beginner or know a beginner who is interested in HTML 5 game development, you need to check out http://codehs.com

We teach you how to program from the ground up and get you as quickly as possible to creating awesome games in the browser.

The whole time, you get personal help from tutors who answer your questions and give you feedback on all of your programs.

You can make some really fun games really quickly. Here are some demos:

http://codehs.com/demos

⬐ krsunny

What is everyone's favorite HTML5 game engine? So far out of all that I've tried I like the Isogenic game engine: https://github.com/coolbloke1324/ige_prototype

⬐ laserDinosaur

I highly recommend Construct 2: http://www.scirra.com/construct2

It takes care of most of the heavy lifting when developing games for HTML5, but it still has a very open and powerful scripting language (unlike something like gamesalad which is more like using pre-built blocks).

Edit - Ha, beaten by 1 minute.

⬐ Yhippa

Have you made anything using it yet?

⬐ drhayes9

Current favorite: ImpactJS. Closed source, costs $100 to get started, but comes with a nice level editor and a very involved community.

Great for making 2d games.

⬐ jamesbritt

I'm liking create.js and easel.js

⬐ JDDunn9

I like gameQueryJS.com as there's almost no learning curve if you know jQuery.

⬐ Yhippa

I've been using Scirra's Construct 2 (http://www.scirra.com/construct2) and like it so far. I do programming for my day job but I like how this abstracts things that I need to do to make a game like tying art assets to game rules so I can focus on the game design and less time on learning lots of subsystems.

Curious to hear about other game engines as well.

⬐ CodeCube

Whoa, interesting ... I'm particularly curious as to what performance improvements he will go over.

I've been working on a little html5 game engine myself. It lets you use sprites in a retained mode like API, while still giving you an immediate mode interface to manage the game logic. It's still pretty early, need to do more work on some samples and documentation, but there are some docs there in the wiki :)

https://github.com/joelmartinez/flatredball-js

⬐ ameen

While HTML5 hasn't been employed heavily by the gaming industry, signs of it are showing up. Gas Powered Games' recently teased "Project Mercury", their next-gen cloud powered Modding Tool & Web platform – http://youtu.be/kuGdQqUhKD4

Such projects are possible only due to HTML5/WebGL, and the innovations on top of it. In a couple of years, we'd be seeing mainstream studios shipping AAA Games as Web-based applications.

⬐ manish_gill

Just noticed the design change on Udacity. Interesting, but I preferred the old one.

⬐ mhurron

The course catalog looks very much like Coursera's, which isn't bad.

The UI for a specific class, the unlabeled boxes above the videos to display progress, is horrible though. The list to the right side of the video was far clearer. Each unit of a course is accessed via a drop down now, as opposed to the collapsible list that used to be to the right of the videos.

Also, they seem to have lost all their orange.

⬐ droithomme

There's something seriously wrong with the new design. Clicking on just about anything results in a 5-15 second loading time for pages, it feels like it is bogged down in database queries for routine page access. Furthermore, some class pages have out of control javascript that pummels most browsers and pins CPUs. Wasn't like this at all before the new design, which seems to not have been tested.

⬐ cdman

Hey droithomme, could you please email some concrete examples (like I'm on page X, do Y after which there is a long delay) to attila [at] udacity.com? We're trying to iron out all the issues as quickly as possible.

⬐ thurn

I'd be really curious to know which libraries, frameworks, or engines they intend to employ. Just yesterday I started learning the melonJS canvas game engine and it's been a lot of fun so far!

⬐ vignesh_vs_in

box2d.js is the only external script that is going to be used (confirmed by the instructor).

⬐ krsunny

According to the blog post in a link from this thread they are using https://code.google.com/p/gritsgame/

⬐ plumeria

Why is it still unavailable today Feb. 4th??

⬐ jiggy2011

HTML5 gaming is an interesting frontier but I am sceptical that we will see a resurgence of the sort of the casually played (and developed) amateur games that we saw during the hayday of newgrounds and similar sites.

In retrospect Macromedia made a stroke of genius with Flash in bundling design & animation tools, sound editors and a code editor into the same IDE.

All of this combined in an easy-to-pirate package along with the thousands of tutorials and code samples available online made game development almost shockingly easy.

Myself and a more artistic friend could literally sit in his bedroom and crank out a complete game over a weekend by taking turns at the computer and drinking heavily. No thinking about "engines", writing asset import code , muddling through JS patterns/frameworks or being stumped by cross browser quirks.

Deployment and getting instant feedback was as simple as uploading the .swf to deviantart.com and spamming the link to all of our contacts via MSN messenger.

All of the .js game dev stuff by comparison looks like hard work.

⬐ jastanton

I'm curious, do you think it was the IDE that was the game changer (excuse the pun)? If JS had a game dev IDE with bundles sound editor etc... do you think it would be as popular as Flash?

⬐ jastanton

Or do you think that because games now have a higher bar we will see fewer but better JS games?

⬐ jiggy2011

I can't say for certain but I would wager it was certainly a significant part of it.

You could put a programmer or an artist down in front of it and it was intuitive enough and gave an "integrated" feel which was also probably part of what made Visual Basic popular.

Basically the interface felt "empowering" to the newbie in a way that something like vim doesn't.

For example, you could create an animated sprite and with a couple of clicks transform it into something that you could manipulate directly in the code as an object. No importing third party libraries or creating "sprite sheets" was required.

I'm not sure if the bar for games has become significantly higher apart from in the AAA area, plenty of successful indie titles still look like SNES games.

A games/multimedia specific JS IDE that dealt with as much of the crap surrounding the JS ecosystem as possible could certainly have a chance of being popular. Though I think something built around http://love2d.org/ with easy browser publishing might be better in some ways.

⬐ AshleysBrain

Our startup's IDE, Construct 2, attempts to do just that for HTML5: http://www.scirra.com

Do you think that's in the right direction?

⬐ krapp

I've used Construct 2, it's definitely good stuff.

⬐ manveru

Do you plan making a linux version?

⬐ jiggy2011

Interesting, though you seem to be going for a "no coding required" approach which always ends up hitting limits pretty quickly.

Do you support an easy way to add custom JS code for logic that the in built tools cannot handle elegantly?

Also interested in how this works, do you generate JS code or do you have a JS engine which reads settings from other files?

⬐ AshleysBrain

There aren't any hard-coded limits, and you can do things like make recursive functions with unique local variables at each call. We have a JS SDK for custom code too: https://www.scirra.com/manual/15/sdk