Kelvin Sung - Build Your Own 2D Game Engine and Create Great Web Games: Using HTML5, JavaScript, and WebGL2

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Welcome to Build Your Own 2D Game Engine and Create Great Web Games. Because you have picked up this book, you are likely interested in the details of a game engine and the creation of your own games to be played over the Internet. This book teaches you how to build a 2D game engine by covering the involved technical concepts, demonstrating sample implementations, and showing you how to organize the large number of source code and asset files to support game development. This book also discusses how each covered technical topic area relates to elements of game design so that you can build, play, analyze, and learn about the development of 2D game engines and games. The sample implementations in this book are based on HTML5, JavaScript, and WebGL2, which are technologies that are freely available and supported by virtually all web browsers. After reading this book, the game engine you develop and the associated games will be playable through a web browser from anywhere on the Internet.

This book presents relevant concepts from software engineering, computer graphics, mathematics, physics, game development, and game designall in the context of building a 2D game engine. The presentations are tightly integrated with the analysis and development of source code; youll spend much of the book building game-like concept projects that demonstrate the functionality of game engine components. By building on source code introduced early on, the book leads you on a journey through which you will master the basic concepts behind a 2D game engine while simultaneously gaining hands-on experience developing simple but working 2D games. Beginning from Chapter , a Design Considerations section is included at the end of each chapter to relate the covered technical concepts to elements of game design. By the end of the book, you will be familiar with the concepts and technical details of 2D game engines, feel competent in implementing functionality in a 2D game engine to support commonly encountered 2D game requirements, and capable of considering game engine technical topics in the context of game design elements in building fun and engaging games.

The key additions to the second edition include JavaScript language and WebGL API update and dedicated chapters with substantial details on physics and particle systems components.

All examples throughout the entire book are refined for the latest features of the JavaScript language. While some updates are mundane, for example, prototype chain syntax replacements, the latest syntax allows significant improvements in overall presentation and code readability. The new and much cleaner asynchronous support facilitated a completely new resource loading architecture with a single synchronization point for the entire engine (Chapter ). The WebGL context is updated to connect to WebGL 2.0. The dedicated chapters allow more elaborate and gradual introduction to the complex physics and particle systems components. Detailed mathematical derivations are included where appropriate.

This book is targeted toward programmers who are familiar with basic object-oriented programming concepts and have a basic to intermediate knowledge of an object-oriented programming language such as Java or C#. For example, if you are a student who has taken a few introductory programming courses, an experienced developer who is new to games and graphics programming, or a self-taught programming enthusiast, you will be able to follow the concepts and code presented in this book with little trouble. If youre new to programming in general, it is suggested that you first become comfortable with the JavaScript programming language and concepts in object-oriented programming before tackling the content provided in this book.

You should be experienced with programming in an object-oriented programming language, such as Java or C#. Knowledge and expertise in JavaScript would be a plus but are not necessary. The examples in this book were created with the assumption that you understand data encapsulation and inheritance. In addition, you should be familiar with basic data structures such as linked lists and dictionaries and be comfortable working with the fundamentals of algebra and geometry, particularly linear equations and coordinate systems.

This book is not designed to teach readers how to program, nor does it attempt to explain the intricate details of HTML5, JavaScript, or WebGL2. If you have no prior experience developing software with an object-oriented programming language, you will probably find the examples in this book difficult to follow.

On the other hand, if you have an extensive background in game engine development based on other platforms, the content in this book will be too basic; this is a book intended for developers without 2D game engine development experience. However, you might still pick up a few useful tips about 2D game engine and 2D game development for the platforms covered in this book.