Microsoft's HTML5 Games Resource | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft's HTML5 Games Resource

buildnewgames.com

123 pointsTazeTSchnitzel50 comments

Microsoft is really changing my view of them. I find myself loving the time & effort they're putting into developer resources. I guess the sleeping giant wasnt sleeping after all

I feel the same. Here in Boston, they have an awesome facility called New England Research & Development (NERD) where they often host and sponsor lots of tech and startup meetups. They seem to be very active in the Boston startup scene.

There's a Microsoft store in Phoenix that's been playing host for some user groups lately, and don't think they're all MS-software related.

Also interesting that some of the tutorials are showing Linux screenshots. E.g. http://buildnewgames.com/taming-the-svg-beast/ shows the graphics being developed in Inkscape on Ubuntu.

That's probably because this site isn't strictly run by MS, it's run by another company and "brought to you with support from Internet Explorer". Microsoft's had a big focus on this kind of cross-browser support recently, though. With some of the games made for IE9, they also made sure they worked properly in Chrome, Firefox, etc.

Also, some of the articles mention things that don't work in IE but do work elsewhere (like the ammo.js physics library). I am quite impressed that Microsoft is sponsoring this.

Are you using IE9 or IE10? IE10 supports lots of stuff IE9 doesn't.

I'm going by what the article says (it said "doesn't work in IE"). I don't have a windows machine to test on myself.

I have to agree, the UX Guidelines document of Win 8 apps is really well thought out and put together. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46542...) - we live in interesting times....

Microsoft has always had great developer resources for their proprietary platforms. Whats changing is they are being forced to embrace open standards/platforms due to market realities.

Can the same be said of Adobe? I've noticed Adobe releasing quite a few web based technologies recently. Brackets and Edge being two examples.

I think thats a fair comparison to make. They have put out a pretty modern toolset here aimed at frontend developers/designers http://html.adobe.com/

Like Microsoft they also seem to embrace responsive design.

Adobe's even gotten Flash to export HTML5 animations. (with Grant Skinner's CreateJS library)

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/createjs/articles/getting-starte...

Who'd have thought Flash would become part of an HTML5 developer's workflow?

They currently have phone gap and the relayed build service which let's you make an html5 app and build to native for every mobile platform

I don't think "It's really good" is appropriate for this title. It's pretty cool, but its no more than a site with some javascript examples. It's not really good if you are trying to learn about game development as no links are like "START HERE" or "Tutorial" its more of a reference for people that already make games.

this site seems like a bandaid for the IE problem drawing attention to what IE can do rather than what it cannot.

With regards to tutorials, yes, it's not for absolute beginners. Still, it has some good guides on things like how to do multiplayer: http://buildnewgames.com/real-time-multiplayer/

Also, aside from the obvious example of WebGL, what's something important that IE10 doesn't do?

Should be easy enough to see what HTML5 features it's lacking compared to other browsers on http://html5test.com.

Ah, unfortunately, I do not have Windows 8 at hand, and I have no hardware-assisted virtualisation. Oh well.

http://html5test.com/compare/browser/ie10.html problem solved.

Looks reasonable. IE 10 could be better, but you know, it's great that we'll soon be seeing lots of Windows 8 computers with support for these web standards.

> Also, aside from the obvious example of WebGL, what's something important that IE10 doesn't do?

* Device orientation

* Full screen

* Mouse lock

* Web Audio

Full screen in IE10 doesn't matter much, in Metro it's fullscreen.

Mouse lock doesn't matter without WebGL IMO, especially since some browser vendors require Fullscreen first.

Web Audio and Device Orientation are quite important, though.

I think that it's most importantly against the rules on HN to add something like that in the title.

Ah, sorry, edited.

> drawing attention to what IE can do rather than what it cannot

Spot on. Specifically... WebGL.

I didn't notice this until I looked at the source of the site, but the background is a game. Use your arrows keys to fly around, space to shoot some asteroids.

Where's the money in HTML5 games? it's fun to play with but I have yet to see anyone make any money from making html5 games. Anyone have counter examples?

s/HTML5/Flash, a decade and a bit ago. The market for them will mature, but at the moment not many people are making much money from it, since it's new tech.

There's actually a lot of money in HTML5 games right now. I posted a detailed rundown of my earnings from games on reddit a while ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/xc4rs/anonymous_ind...

These are all fairly simple games. Nothing fancy.

My main job is still maintaining and selling my game engine ( http://impactjs.com/ ) - where I can't complain about money either.

ImpactJS is awesome. Can you shed some light on how successful it's been?

An aside: I find that this site looks absolutely beautiful on my phone.

Yes, they really are embracing the whole 'responsive' thing.

Does anyone else chuckle when seeing conditional comments for IE on a microsoft site?

"Oddly" missing articles on WebGL...

It's IE-sponsored, that isn't a terribly big surprise.

Hence my scare-quotes ;)

http://buildnewgames.com/physics-engines-comparison/ uses WebGL via three.js

It's pretty hard to fault this site in terms of neutrality. There's even an article about SVG where the author uses Ubuntu and Inkscape.

I followed the Sprite Animation tutorial awhile back and found it super useful.

And I like the looks of the retro website...

Nothing about making games playable and fun?

I thought that we had all learned since the eighties that making computer games is not only about overcoming technical constraints.

That's the "gamified" part of a game. Is it really so orthogonal to programming that it doesn't deserve a mention?

Of course games need to be playable and fun. But that's not the point of this site, I would guess.

Plenty of people have made good resources on making fun and playable games. But this is one of the few good resources on making games in HTML5.

Why redo what many others have done better?

This is very nitpicky and not productive, but I just want to click something on that page!

Is Microsoft taking us back to the old days of purple and green websites with all this "Metro style"?

The colour scheme of that site has nothing to do with Metro. Metro isn't a colour scheme it's a 'design language'.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language)#Princip...

And, for that matter, this only looks to be Metro-inspired, not Metro.

I think their new design decisions are great. With their new redesigns, pushing for HTML5 (or atleast a "non sucky IE10") it means less headaches.

Only another 15+ years before everyone is off IE7 I hope.

I wish MS would backport IE9 to XP, but alas, they won't.

Microsoft is going to silently update IE9 to IE10 for Windows 7. IE9 won't be around for long. Just in large enterprises with long upgrade cycles.

For people who run updates. Did they silent upgrade IE6 to IE7/IE8 in XP?

Aren't updates on by default? That means a lot of Consumers get them. They did upgrade people to IE8 this year, for people taking updates.

I love the whole premise of Metro. I've noticed more and more sites are starting to adopt the simple flat colours, non-rounded corners look like Metro promotes which as a web developer pleases me so much. I think type based layouts with flat colours are super effective and visually pleasing.

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