Are you wondering where to start with HTML5 game development? Maybe you’ve never seen HTML, JavaScript or CSS, but you still have a great idea for a game that you really want to make happen. Well today I want to talk about two frameworks that can really help translate your idea into a BlackBerry 10 game.
The first is a game creator called Construct 2. With Construct 2, you don’t actually write any code. Instead, you use an intuitive interface to create objects, assign behaviors to those objects and listen for events to affect how the user interacts with the world you’ve created.
With Construct 2, you use natural language to describe the events and actions that are occurring. Once you’ve created your game, you have the ability to export to a multitude of various platforms. You will need a paid license for some platforms, but the free edition comes with a number of great features, including the ability to export to HTML5.
If you’ve read any of my previous blogs or have seen me speak, you already know that at BlackBerry weloveHTML5. Once you’ve exported your Construct 2 project to HTML5, you can actually use our WebWorks SDK to repackage those files into a BlackBerry 10 application! To help you through the process, we’ve put together this porting guide. To boot, we’ve recently released the first version of a BlackBerry 10 plugin for Construct 2.
Currently the BlackBerry 10 plugin includes functionality for BlackBerry Messenger and In-App Payments. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to join in the discussion here.
As mentioned earlier, Construct 2 is great for developers who are not familiar with HTML5 because you can develop games in a natural language, and then export to HTML5. Even developers that are familiar with HTML5 may still prefer a tool like Construct 2 for development.
For those developers who want to code with HTML5 (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), a good option is the Cocos2d-HTML5 framework. This framework is still under active development and comes with good documentation to help guide developers.
We put together an extensive guide that outlines the creation of a sample application including:
Hello World
Adding sprites and leveraging TMX tile maps
Adding physics with Box2DWeb
Implementing touch controls with Freewill.js
You can find the full guide on the BlackBerry Developer HTML5 microsite. Since the Cocos2d-HTML5 framework is a direct HTML5 implementation, you can also leverage our full suite of WebWorks APIs to include BlackBerry 10 functionality (BlackBerry Messenger, Push Notifications, etc.) that is available to WebWorks applications in general.
With the WebWorks API integration available in Construct 2 and Cocos2d-HTML5, there’s no reason you can’t achieve Built for BlackBerry status with your games!
If you end up using one of these tools to create an HTML5 game for BlackBerry 10, let me know! Of course, these are more tools in the HTML5 arsenal available to developers. If you’re using any other frameworks, have tips for developers, or just want to share what you’re working on, let us know in the comments!
