Seth Ladd's Blog

Aloha! We want YOU to speak at the newly announced  New Game, the conference for HTML5 game developers , held Nov 1-2, 2011 in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Who can speak? Anyone building HTML5 games today, or who is connected in some way with making the web the best game platform out there.  If you are passionate about browser based gaming, we want to hear your story! How do I submit my proposal? Simply fill out  http://goo.gl/iWA2J What's the deadline? All proposals must be submitted by August 1 at midnight PDT. What are potential topics? * debriefs from HTML5 game projects and launches * feature detection (gauging performance of underlying client machine in order to scale application experience) * commerce and issues around billing/DRM/protecting source assets from theft/modding/cheating * debugging/performance profiling tools and how to navigate this new space (anything from JS profiling to things like measuring GPU ...

I asked the question "Who (not what) do you think of when I say HTML5 Games?"  Here's what I heard, and here's who you should follow and watch.  This group is leading the way for HTML5 games. @robhawkes  - now works at Mozilla, developer of Rawkets , a multi-player HTML5 game; author of HTML5 Canvas book @phoboslab  - developer of the Impact game engine for JavaScript and HTML5 @LostDecadeGames  - developers of Onslaught @hiive  - ported his iOS game Creatures and Castles over to HTML5, now in the Chrome Web Store @SubsonicGames  - building a full WebGL game; great developer diary blog @Vincent_Scheib  - Chrome engineer, working on adding features to the platform like Mouse Lock @lillithompson  - Chrome Developer Advocate for Games @hakimel  - general awesome HTML5 engineer, wrote Sinuous , an early and very popular HTML5 game @ggoodale  - developer on Word2 , an HTML5 massively multiplayer tile based word forming g...

We love HTML5 games, and we love helping developers build HTML5 games.  One popular and fun format for learning HTML5 games is the Game Jam.  A Game Jam is like a hackathon for game developers.  Think food, laptops, snacks, and lots and lots of hacking.  In the end, each team will demo their game and there are usually prizes for "crowd favorite" or "technical achievement". After running a few Game Jams, we've collected some best practices and tips to make your next Game Jam a success.  Big props to Vince Scheib and Mike Mahemoff for providing these tips. - Publicize frameworks in advance and encourage attendees to come with 'hello world' games already under their belt so they can hit the ground running. Possibly include a super simple template of our own that isn't a 'framework', but just a tiny simple example. - Publicize easy / free tools for e.g. audio & 2D drawing. - Publicize source control and encourage teams to already k...

This weekend I built a simple Chrome Extension which adds the Google +1 button to twitter.com.  The "Tweets +1" extension lets you +1 tweets from directly inside Twitter (well, New Twitter to be specific).  You can now +1 a tweet without ever leaving Twitter, plus see how many other people have +1'd a tweet. I nstall the Tweets +1 extension and let me know your thoughts .  Of course, it's open source thanks to GitHub . Tim Bray does a good job explaining what the +1 button is and why we should care. How it works This Chrome Extension uses a " content script " which is a fancy way of saying "inject some JavaScript from the extension into an existing web app or web page". The extension manifest declares which script to embed into the host page, and what pages should use the extension: The first bit of JavaScript needed to scan through the page and look for tweets inside of the HTML.  Luckily, thanks to querySelectorAll and matche...

Google IO 2011 is a wrap!  My first Google IO experience was great, thanks to the team for putting on a professional and fun show.  Many thanks to all of our attendees, you made it awesome. I've collected the slides, the video, and the source code for Super Browser 2 Turbo HD Remix: An Introduction to HTML5 Game Development . Session Description: HTML5 provides the foundation for rich and interactive experiences. Which is great, but we really want to build and play games! Learn the basics of building an HTML5 game and explore the related technologies. We'll write a simple game and give you the tools and techniques to create your own worlds and fun. Video: Slides: The slides for Super Browser 2 Turbo HD Remix: An Intro to HTML5 Game Development are of course written with HTML5. :) Source Code: Source code for the demo game, Bad Aliens Feedback: If you have 30 seconds, please do leave session feedback so I can improve for next time. Thanks everyone!

(disclaimer: I haven't seen every talk at Google IO this year, there might very well be other huge talks. This is what I've seen and want you to see, too.) These five talks are going to be huge.  If you are an HTML5 web developer you won't want to miss them.  And don't worry, these talks will be live streamed. HTML5 and What's Next by Alex Russell and Ian Fette will introduce, well, I don't want to spoil it.  Don't miss it. Super Browser 2 Turbo HD Remix : Intro to HTML5 Game Development by Seth Ladd will walk you though, from start to finish, how to build a simple HTML5 game.  Also, we'll blow up aliens. HTML5 Showcase for Web Developers : The Wow and How by Eric Bidelman and Arne Roomann-Kurrik has extremely high production value, awesome demos, and will open your eyes to what's possible in HTML5 now and soon. Mobile Web Development: From Zero to Hero by Michael Mahemoff and Paul Kinlan take a pragmatic approach as they walk you throu...

Whether you are new to HTML5 game development or an experienced practitioner, these blogs are publishing some great posts recently. I recommend following these HTML5 game development blogs to keep your finger on the pulse and learn some new HTML5 tips and tricks. Hiive Blog - porting Creatures and Castles to HTML5 Gopherwood Studios Blog - creators of Entanglement and working on something cool Game Closure Blog - building a multi-player HTML5 game development toolkit These blogs are active now and highly recommended. What are your favorite HTML5 game development blogs?