Recently I have been spending more time looking at Html5 gaming solutions. Haxe NME has been my specific focus of recent.
I have decided to approach the learning process similarly to the way I learn flash many years ago –  by making real simple games.

For my first test I have create a simple shooting game which demonstrates a basic game state flow, start, play, win, loop.

Give it a go.

Nothing special in terms of game innovation, but its kinda cool because its HTML5 and runs on mobile browsers.

After playing around a bit, I have found the following issue with ‘Html5 gaming’:

The purpose of Html5 gaming should be to run games on mobile device browsers,  replacing the now deprecated Flash Mobile.
The problem is, even simple examples like my shooting game perform pretty poorly when tested on mobile browsers. ie, when you touch the targets, there is a slight but noticeable delay before the target is removed, however it doesn’t happen on desktop. This isn’t to do with my code as much as it is to do with the actual mobile browsers and the javascript execution.

I cant even imagine the performance problems you would experience with a ‘real’ game ported to html5 running in mobile browsers. In my opinion the games would have to be pretty simple to run well.. This could change very soon with software/hardware improvements, but its just not there yet.

My motivation to build html5 games comes from the requirement for them to perform great in mobile browsers, but I don’t think this is yet an reality. Most games need to run smoothly with high frame rates to be functional and enjoyable.  So I will continue to harness Stage3D, Starling and other cool gaming techs for browser games, and reserve html5 for simple one button games that specifically need to run on mobile.

With that said, if you were a flash/as3 developer in your former life, and have not yet been introduced to HaxeNME, do yourself a favour and check it out. Haxe NME is an api which mirrors as3 closely and allows cross platform publishing. It allows structured html5 projects which force strict syntax.

Regardless of the current performance limitations in html5/js mobile browser games, it is definitely an interesting space with a lot of momentum. I will continue to make simple Html5 games and post them every now and then. Stay tuned