Coding Games - Mobile Game Design Essentials - page 141

HTML5 games
We guess you are asking yourselves which kind of games can be developed with
HTML5?
Desktop : There are obviously desktop browser games, which also include Facebook
games. As we said, HTML5 is supported by all major web browsers, though all web
users are very likely to already have the latest Flash Player installed on their PCs.
Mobile web browser : More importantly for the goal of this topic, HTML5 is suppor-
ted by mobile web browsers. Generally speaking, when referring to mobile gaming,
one's likely to have apps in mind, stand alone programs that can be downloaded and
then run on a mobile device. Developing games that run in mobile web browsers, on
the other hand, is a viable alternative, as it is a growing market which already offers
dedicated portals to buy high profile games. There are obviously issues related to
performance when your game runs on different iPhone models and even more due
to Android devices variability. But this is an issue of mobile development in gener-
al, regardless of the specific technology you intend to use. You shouldn't forget that
HTML5 is a rather new technology and still under development; the issues you face
today could be resolved tomorrow!
Mobile apps : Mobile games in the form of downloadable apps can also be deve-
loped with HTML5, though in this case, you will need a third-party development
framework such as PhoneGap. Using PhoneGap, HTML5 and a little bit of
JavaScript, it is possible to create games that natively target all mobile platforms with
a single codebase. Since 2012, in fact, the PhoneGap Build service allows source
code to be cloud-compiled and generate apps that can run on any desired mobile
platform: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and so on.
Even tablets such as the Blackberry PlayBook offer support for HTML5 games.
If you want to know more about PhoneGap we suggest to check ht-
tp://phonegap.com/ .
Conclusions
In conclusion, HTML5 is both a viable option to develop mobile games and a source
of problems and performance issues.