Knowing what you do now, with the memories of the terrible bugs you had to work through due to Chrome / OSX, would you still choose HTML5 over other cross-platform game engines like Unity?
Javascript was nothing but pure bliss to work with, but the browsers were hell. Overall I know I'm definitely going to keep making short, simple games with javascript because it's a wonderful tool for the job. Long-term projects are a bit risky due to browser issues, so this'll probably be my last huge game with the language (sadly). If you're planning on doing a 2D game, javascript is a great language. Flash would still be "best" at this point in time due to all the support and speed at which you can create something, but, in a way, the problem solving and brain wracking is what makes development fun.
Unity's something I've been looking into for a while now, so it's a possibility for future projects.
The OS X issues have been screwing me over inside of outside of the browser. Performance dropped like a rock after Snow Leopard, so the real question is whether or not I'll continue using OS X.
I suspect most browsers have improved a lot in the time since then. I'd like to use Javascript for another game soon; I really like the language, despite its rough edges.
node.js?
The closest analog I can think of is ActionScript in Adobe Flash/Air/Flex, but that's not a mast I would lash myself to right now.
It's kinda a drag though because AIR actually provides a fantastic cross-platform solution for desktop apps. Even thought they are in ActionScript, it's extremely similar writing Javascript apps that have model binding.
I feel like I've tried every cross platform environment from AIR to Titanium to Java/QT to RealBasic, to Mono and none of them are quite as easy and predictable to get running as an AIR app. I guess going with straight-up C would be better but nobody on my team has that kind of experience.
Anyway, probably off topic rant, but I think AIR would be a reasonable choice for a desktop game. The main problem with it right now is that it feels like it's gone out of favor and everybody is abandoning the platform.
AIR is a great idea, but it would be way better (for me, at least) if they incorporated a decent HTML/CSS rendering engine that had the same potential as the ones we see on modern browsers.
I totally agree. I actually dabbled in making AIR apps a few years ago and found it just great. It's really the lack of access to the iOS platform that killed AIR for me.
I really do look forward to a future of desktop javascript, though.
You also say this is the last huge game with JS. Why is that?
And the biggest reason is because I can't trust the browsers. They run in a fragile environment that can easily be destroyed by a single update. For example, Chrome refuses to run Subbania unless it's installed as an extension because it directly modifies the pixel contents of the screen; Firefox doesn't. However, the way Chrome forces me to break up my code for "security" reasons also resulted in Firefox not reading keyboard input, which is why I provided separate HTML files for each browser. I'm sure there's some better way of handling it, but I just went with the simplest and most obvious solution.
Its Javascript support is probably what's drawing you to the engine though (I use C#).
I used to be all about HTML5 but after a while I realized that I don't like javascript and I hate dealing with browser quirks. C# Unity is where it's at.