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[dariusk]

Hey folks. I've been messing around with Akihabara recently and decided to write up a tutorial series with my friend Darren Torpey. It's inspired by Derek's awesome Game Maker tutorials.

We've finished the first set of tutorials, which doesn't get you quite all the way to an 8-way shooter but it does show you how to make a very simple game that demonstrates a lot of technical concepts.

• Part 1, basics of Akihabara / title screen: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-1/
• Part 2, objects/sprites/input: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorial-part-2-moving-a-sprite/
• Part 3, tilemaps/collision: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-3-basic-mapping/
• Part 4, scrolling map / camera: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-4-scrolling-map/
• Part 4.5, interlude/cleanup (changing resolution, setting up framecount, etc): http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-4-5-interlude/
• Part 5, enemy AI (A*): http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-5-enemy-ai/
• Part 6, animation: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-6-animation/
• Part 7, game logic and HUD: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-7-game-logic-and-hud/

Also, I started writing up the full API documentation: http://tools.bostongamejams.com/akihabara/docs/

Hope you find it useful. I'll continue to post future parts in this thread. Let me know if you have any feedback or find any bugs as well. The end goal is going to be a simple 8-way shooter.

[george]

hot stuff, keep it going.

[Melon Bread]

Really Nice, Thank You
I Was Wanting to play with HTML 5 

[Farr]

Javascript game development is something that I have never yet heard of.
Whatever this library allows you to do seems to be pretty impressive.
Would a game developed in a framework like this perform better in one browser compared to other? They do process javascript differently, don't they?

[Skofo]

From my experience, Chrome has the best JavaScript/Canvas performance, followed closely by Safari and Opera. Firefox doesn't perform all that well compared to them. Internet Explorer doesn't support Canvas and has pretty bad JavaScript performance, but the Chrome Frame plugin fixes that.

[dariusk]

Just posted up part 2, which covers Akihabara's object model and how to render a sprite and get it moving around the screen.

http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorial-part-2-moving-a-sprite/

Final outcome of the tutorial is playable here:

http://tools.bostongamejams.com/akihabara_tutorials/tut2_moving_sprite/

(Press "Z" on your keyboard to get past the title screen and use arrow keys to move around.)

[baconman]

Thank you for the informative tuts, I've been waiting for one on the topic for awhile now. So is HTML5 an optional part of Java-gaming, or are they pretty much totally intertwined?

[Skofo]

HTML5 and JavaScript have nothing to do with Java.

[dariusk]

Thank you for the informative tuts, I've been waiting for one on the topic for awhile now. So is HTML5 an optional part of Java-gaming, or are they pretty much totally intertwined?

Java is totally different from JavaScript -- basically JavaScript used to be called LiveScript but when it was originally released in 1995 they changed the name because Java was the 'hot' language at the time and anything with Java in its name just had to be good, right?

So basically, as Skofo said, this doesn't have anything to do with Java.

But if what you were asking is about gaming based around JavaScript, then the answer to your question is: not really. You *can* create games in JavaScript that don't use the HTML5 canvas functionality, they're just probably not going to display any moving 2D sprites (or display them well). They would be more like games that use standard HTML4 elements as your display -- you could certainly make a choose-your-own-adventure style game in JS.

[Sanojian]

But if what you were asking is about gaming based around JavaScript, then the answer to your question is: not really. You *can* create games in JavaScript that don't use the HTML5 canvas functionality, they're just probably not going to display any moving 2D sprites (or display them well). They would be more like games that use standard HTML4 elements as your display -- you could certainly make a choose-your-own-adventure style game in JS.

For an example of a game written in HTML4 (also an example of some of the limitations) take a look at my Assemblee entree, tinyMMO

It was an attempt to write a MMO client in HTML4.  Most users had terrible performance depending on their OS/browser combination but not everyone did.

[namre]

Saw this Akihabara before and it was really promising. I don't to use it yet though since I'm still learning the ropes in canvas and html5, so it's better to me to handcode everything myself.

[dariusk]

Just updated with Part 3, maps and collision: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-3-basic-mapping/

[dariusk]

Part 4 is up, scrolling cameras: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-4-scrolling-map/

[davidp]

this certainly looks interesting. if i wasn't working on something at the moment i'd even dive into this... i'm bookmarking it for now.

good work so far

[dariusk]

Hey all, just updated with a bunch more tutorials:

• Part 5, enemy AI (A*): http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-5-enemy-ai/
• Part 6, animation: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-6-animation/
• Part 7, game logic and HUD: http://bostongamejams.com/akihabara-tutorials/akihabara-tutorial-part-7-game-logic-and-hud/

Also: I've been writing up API documentation! It's not 100% there, but there's a lot of stuff covered: http://tools.bostongamejams.com/akihabara/docs/