Anyone familiar with Zynga's Farmville understands how fun and addictive real-time social games can be. This hands-on guide shows you how to design and build one of these games from start to finish, with nothing but open source tools. You'll learn how to render graphics, animate with sprites, add sound, validate scores to prevent cheating, and more, using detailed examples and code samples.
By the end of the book, you’ll complete a project called Tourist Resort that combines all of the techniques you’ve learned. You’ll also learn how to integrate your game with Facebook. If you’re familiar with JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, you’re ready to get started.
Use HTML5’s canvas element to build smooth animations with sprites
Create an isometric grid pattern for high-performance graphics
Design a GUI that works equally well on mobile devices and PCs
Add sound to your game with HTML5’s audio element
Implement the game’s path-finding function with WebWorkers
Build a client data model on the server with PHP and MySQL
Make your game come alive with dynamic CSS3 objects
Chapter 1 Graphics Foundations: Canvas and Sprites
Working with the canvas Object
Creating Smooth Animations
Working with Sprites
What’s at that Pixel?
Choosing a Rendering Method for Our Graphics
Chapter 2 Making It Isometric
Chapter 3 Interface Considerations
GUI Design and Interaction in Web Games
Implementing the GUI
Chapter 4 HTML5 Sound and Processing Optimization
Adding Sound with the Audio Element
Managing Computationally Expensive Work with the Web Workers API
Local Storage and Session Storage
Chapter 5 Connecting the Game to People
Cheat Prevention and Server-Side Operations
The Path to the Final Game
Polishing the Game
Adding a Social Networking Layer Using Facebook
Title:
Making Isometric Social Real-Time Games with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript
Andres Pagella is an accomplished software developer with more than 10 years of professional experience living in Capital Federal, Argentina. He has worked on the design and the implementation of several high traffic websites in Argentina. He currently works as the Chief Technical Officer of Minor Studios Argentina S.R.L. developing a social game design tool called Atmosphir.
