How to build an HTML5 game [closed]

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I'm tasked with building an educational game for 6 - 10 year-old children using HTML5 for a non-profit organization. I've used HTML5/CSS3/jQuery to build a new site but have no experience building games. This project will have to be completed in about 2 months.

A few questions for the experts here:

• Is this doable in 2 months?
• Do I need to be fulltime on t开发者_开发百科his for the two months to complete it? Having never done a game, I'm not sure about what will be involved.
• Is there an HTML5/JS game engine out there that will make this easier?

Any other thoughts you have on this will be appreciated. Thanks.

UPDATE: We'd like to have this game work well on iPhone/iPad via Safari; in other words, to have it detect hand gestures.

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The answer to this question largely depends on whether the game has been designed as of yet, and how complex this game is. There are competitions in which teams of 3 or 4 people complete a game (design, graphics, sound, game-play and all) in the space of a (sleepless) weekend. They aren't generally very complex at that point, but they are by all means a complete game.

On the other hand, the people participating in these competitions are largely people who know what they're doing. They have someone dedicated to sound, someone dedicated to graphics, and at least one person dedicated to programming. If you have little idea what you're doing with any of those (either through lack of design or lack of experience), then that adds time, and that time could be significant.

Given this background, I believe your will be possible in two months, and you will not need to be full time to accomplish it, though you may need to dedicate a majority of your time to the project. There are several reasons for this:

• Educational games are generally fairly simple
• Games for that age bracket are generally fairly simple
• A high level of graphics seems un-necessary
• Educational games have a specific goal, and thus are less susceptible to over-design
• You have experience with HTML5

Now, that last point could be valid, or it could not. If, for instance, you're required to use <canvas>, and you haven't before, you could be in trouble.

Otherwise, with the information given, and under the assumption that some direction is given as to the design of the game, I think you're in good shape.

Good luck!

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I make jQuery game with my son (8 year old) and share the source. "Engine" is separated from game specific code and better: in simple scenarious You needs no coding at all; just write html page with div-s with some classes and parameters. Game/application works online or offline (local html files and assets).

At this moment the project has limits; needs modern desktop PC (vs tablets or slow, old machines) and chrome/chromium browser. Maybe some day I (or someone) optimise the code and add other browsers support.

Project is public domain: livingHtml2D engine, jMachinarium exploration/puzzle game

(watch the engine demos #1, #2 also).

Happy experiments :)

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Take a look at our HTML5 game engine Construct 2 the HTML5 Game Maker

It could be a good fit for you, it enables people without and prior experience to rapidly develop HTML5 games.

It's always hard to estimate project completion times. It depends on so many factors!

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The original Scrabb.ly was build using HTML5 in under 48 hours for the Node.js knockout (as were many other games). So yes, it is very doable.

What are the requirements for this game? Are we talking pac-man type games, Mario Bros, Halo reach (lol).

Someone else (@ryan kinal) just answered the question better than I could. So I'm going to leave this answer as is.

Good luck!

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As a followup to Ryan's excellent answer, I cannot stress enough how important is going to be for you if you insist on using HTML5 and the goodies that go with it. Beware though. It is often commented that HTML5 took us back to 1995 ideals of graphics. Be prepared for anything.

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I am the author of the code for the Tetris game implemented using HTML5 Canvas which is here: http://htmltetris.com

I spent about one month in between classes working on it. It obviously depends on how complex the game you are working on is required to be. Tetris is a game that is particularly friendly when it comes to content generation wherein a simple random number generator is capable of providing infinite "levels".

Despite the poor choice of canvas for rendering and translating squares (CSS3 transforms are the clear solution for doing this), it runs acceptably on all iOS devices I have tested, and appears to push 60 frames per second on the iPhone 5.

I definitely think HTML5 is a legitimate platform for building games. Javascript is pretty friendly.