Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 9-4.
The final game client, with three players online
Conclusion
WebSockets and the HTML5 canvas open up all sorts of possibilities to developers. These technologies
are still brand new, but we should expect to see them really take off in the years ahead. In this chapter,
we've created a prototype game and hopefully you will agree that it wasn't exceedingly difficult. Nobody
can argue the fact that this was a walk in the park compared to making the same bumper car demo as a
standalone application in a traditional language like C++.
You may point out that the ease of development owes to offloading all of the heavy lifting to the web
browser. This is certainly true, but in the context of many games and applications, the benefits outweigh
the downsides. The performance hit you take, relying on a browser rather than optimizing your own
standalone application, is getting smaller every day (not to say that it will ever be non-existent). Web
browsers are continually improving thanks to intense competition for market share.
On the other hand, you get portability and high-level access to sockets, graphics, sound, user input, and
so forth, all with comparatively minimal effort on your part. Clearly, this is an option worth considering for
development of any small or mid-sized games. I hope to see yours online soon!
