Knowledge required before doing game dev

[SuperMarco]

Hello guys,

 

 

I'm new in this community and I have a quick question :

 

I never used WebGL before, but I have some strong knowledges in javascript (1yr exp ish), and I would like to go into the game development for my personal experience. As I say I never touch WebGL before, and my question is that, Do I need to work with webgl before to be able to do something with some library such as pixi etc ?

 

If so, I tried to look online some tutorial, but it's very messy to find a good place to learn it, can you guys show me the right way to start it ?

 

Thanks for your answer and your advice !

[alex_h]

No, you don't need to know about WebGL. In fact that is one key benefit of using these kind of frameworks in that they abstract all of that stuff away from you. You can use Pixi or Phaser to build a game that runs in WebGL without ever looking at any WebGL code.

[SuperMarco]

Well that's nice then ! I will begin to have a look at it.

 

Another question : Is it possible to export an HTML5 game to desktop ? (or even steam (just dreaming, but curious))

[KyleNau]

There are a few HTML5 games on Steam. I know of A Wizard's Lizard and Game Dev Tycoon for sure. They use Node-Webkit to wrap their game into an EXE and Greenworks to integrate with the Steamworks API (achievements, etc.)

 

My advice would be to start with a 2D game and get used to the idiosyncrasies of HTML5 game development before tackling 3D. It doesn't take too long to learn, particularly if you're already familiar wtih JavaScript or even ActionScript.

[SuperMarco]

Thanks KyleNau for your advice !

 

I am actually learning how to use Phaser, and so far it's a great framework and I could do a lot of stuff very quickly event though I don't have the automatism to develop without looking tutorial yet ^^. I have a plan for a game in my head for a while now, and I made the dev plan already.

 

And it would start in 2D, and if I will be comfortable enough, it will evolve in 3D. But is there a lot of 3D framework that worth to learn to do a 3d game in html5 ?

[joshcamas]

Babylon.js is my personal favorite, and is in SUPER evolution right now. You can literally say "eh, I wish there was this one feature" and Deltakosh will often add it in the next day or so.

 

While you certainly don't need any knowledge of webGl going into it, be prepared to learn some fancy stuff.

[Rudrabhoj Bhati]

You'll need ability to read, understand and 'use' JavaScript properly. Then I'll advice use something like Phaser or Panda to develop games in. Don't care about exporting to desktop and moving to steam for now, it is possible with Node-webkit. You can learn exporting to desktop in detail once you got started with developing games.

Other than programming, you need to a good artist if you can't hire one for professional game development. But now a days, there are some good free graphics available too. Check them off.

Ultimately, never miss a chance to learn more.