HTML5 framework/engines?

[bhodi]

I have a few friends who are looking to learn HTML5 programming through making a game. They're .net/java/js programmers by trade and are looking to keep relevant, and so are going to work on this during their spare time to learn some new things.

At the planning stage, they are trying to evaluate the current state of HTML5 frameworks.

They're sort-of working from this list:
https://github.com/bebraw/jswiki/wiki/Game-Engines

Has anyone here done any evaluation or can make recommendations to shorten that list?

[Mrbloodworth]

See my comments in that other thread.

EDIT: Can't seem to find it.

Anyway, Don't chase HTML5, how about using other engines that you can replace the scripting layer with your flavor of choise. Or that are built on those languages and can export to web solutions instead.

[bhodi]

The entire point of this is to learn the ins and outs of HTML5. It may not be optimal for games, but it's so that they can learn and apply it to their commercial projects as well as put it on their resume'.

[Soln]

I've been playing with gameQuery (extends JQuery) and it's a fun and easy place to start.  Not sure how robust it is, however.  I've gone back to just playing with canvas.

BW, if you can find that link and list of gripes that might be interesting for others to look at.  We could even ask to sticky a Web Dev thread to put it in, since I bet there are more threads coming.   What's the gist of your concerns?

[Krakrok]

GameSalad publishes to HTML5 (and iphone). Games seem pretty slow.

Swiffy converts some Flash 8 AS2 files to HTML5. So far it worked pretty good on a flash banner. Not much else for me.
http://swiffy.googlelabs.com/

[Margalis]

Just write your own engine. FFS it's HTML + Javascript. If someone wants to learn they should do it themselves and if you can't write an HTML5 engine then you should probably give up on making games.

Also as I said in a similar thread, HTML + JS is so full of annoying bullshit and browser problems and performance issues that even if you try to use a framework sooner or later you are going to have to drill in quite far.

[Salamok]

maybe this video will help?
"In this presentation, Rob Hawkes of Mozilla and author of Foundation HTML5 Canvas will bring you up to speed with the HTML5 and JavaScript game development scene. He'll show off some of the best games that are already out there, highlight the key lessons that he's learned, and talk about the technologies and game engines that you need to be looking at."

[Ghambit]

See my "Constuct" post.
Ver. 2.0 is based on HTML5.  And you can of course just dig right into the engine.

Margalis is right though, right now there are quite a few browser issues since it's quite new.  Although it's technically supported by virtually every platform, they wont all perform the same... so you have to tweak each version.