Mobile HTML5 gamedev AMA

[Jamessimo]

Hey guys, I have been building mobile web games since 2013 and recently rediscovered Newgrounds and really like the new newgrounds.io api but noticed that the amount of new mobile friendly games is low compared to other portals. To help remedy this I wanted to offer any help if game devs have questions about developing games for mobile/touch screens!

My expertise lies in JavaScript (duh) and I mainly use Phaser (CE and 3), three.js, Babylonjs, iio.js and all the other tools required to make graphics and animations. Feel free to ask anything and I’ll try to answer best I can.

[23450]

In the future do you imagine yourself moving onto Unity, specifically, Project Tiny? (https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/12/05/project-tiny-preview-package-is-here/)

If not, what do you like about building games in this medium over others?

[Jamessimo]

At 6/6/19 02:28 AM, 23450 wrote: In the future do you imagine yourself moving onto Unity, specifically, Project Tiny? (https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/12/05/project-tiny-preview-package-is-here/)

If not, what do you like about building games in this medium over others?

I work with Unity for a few projects including porting my game Reach for the Star https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/731340 (Unity port is not being worked on at the moment)

and I ported a more serious desktop game https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/611rc9/converted_my_game_from_html5_to_unity_wip/ to unity

However, I still remain an avid HTML5 developer for many reasons.

• First one being accessibility, if it works on browser it works anywhere, this has became very important for me when I became a dad and noticed that I don't have time to install and play games on a PC. However just loading a Website on my phone makes gaming accessibility very easy.
• Second is publishing, because my game is HTML5 I can push it to any number of web portals (Newgrounds, Itch, Kongergate etc..), Facebook Instant games, WeChat games (China) and I can even push the game to native iOS or Android via Cordova Phonegap (also talking of China, developing counties are all on phones but on very weird OS's that I cant always target with an APK)
• Third is.... It's Fun! a bad reason I know but I love working in JS and I like working around the limitations.
• Forth is scope, whiles unity is a huge help for large 3D games, I find its almost always overkill for the kind of games I make, project tiny is a step in the right direction but I also feel the Unity Editor is a beast and depending on game size can take ages just to load the editor, I prefer working with a terminal window, an IDE and a webbrowser.
• Fifth is deployment is faster, I can make bugfixes and changes very quickly and have them live fast! No need to compile and package asset folders.
• Sixth, ownership, even though my games are not smash hits, I like owning the entire production pipeline and if I do make a smash hit I wont be hit by licensing costs.

I know Unity can port to WebGL however this is very un optimal for mobile since it doesn't work as well as it should. https://forum.unity.com/threads/state-of-unity-webgl-on-mobile.624685/

Unity is a great tool and if your good at it I say use it! However I am staying with HTML5 unless I want to make a game for PC and requires real GPU power.

[RaIix]

At 6/6/19 04:23 AM, Jamessimo wrote: Unity is a great tool and if your good at it I say use it! However I am staying with HTML5 unless I want to make a game for PC and requires real GPU power.

I'd give Project Tiny (as suggested by @23450) a shot. It differs from standard Unity a lot.

What you're describing is some of the reasoning behind its existence. It's still Unity, but heavily striped down (only 2D, for example; most complex graphics and physics disabled), with enforced ECS (data-oriented approach, resulting in a performance boost). It's for creating lightweight web-games which, in their own words, have “blazing fast startup on a wide range of mobile devices”. Demo game. You can't create a desktop game with Project Tiny, it's intended for web only.

---

But anyway, thanks for this thread. It didn't really occur to me before to try to make my games mobile-friendly. Sometimes it's not possible, or worth the design changes (too many controls, screen size, graphics…) but otherwise it's probably a good idea to keep it in mind.

[Jamessimo]

At 6/6/19 06:00 AM, Rallyx wrote:

At 6/6/19 04:23 AM, Jamessimo wrote: Unity is a great tool and if your good at it I say use it! However I am staying with HTML5 unless I want to make a game for PC and requires real GPU power.

I'd give Project Tiny (as suggested by @23450) a shot. It differs from standard Unity a lot

i will give it a shot when it’s in full public release.