Progress report

Tracking down the shim for cross-platform usage of window.requestAnimationFrame was a pain.  Especially since I couldn't remember what it was called, just that Google recommended something besides setInterval for timing for web pages at GDC11.  For those looking for a link: https://gist.github.com/838785 for just the code, and http://paulirish.com/2011/requestanimationframe-for-smart-animating/ for the author's original article.

I was considering using inline vectors for the first round, but came across something that gave me a major pause: http://caniuse.com/#cats=SVG  According to this chart, only 16.19% of browsers support in-line SVG.  Ouch.  That's IE 9, Chrome 10, and FF 4 only.  Opera isn't scheduled to support it until 11.5 and Safari not until 6.0.  I'm willing to take some hits on using HTML5 stuff, but not that big of a hit.  HTML5 canvas gives me 51%, which is basically just losing the people stuck on IE 8.  That hit I'm willing to take.  So if you are using IE 8 and have a choice:  go get Chrome or FireFox :)

Slowly getting my head wrapped around javascript again.  It has been a very, very long time since I've worked with it.  Like 12-13 years.  It has changed a lot in that time.  With that said, work on core.js has been started. I need to get a source control repo setup sometime this week.  Not 100% sure how to do that using Kodingen though...

Might finally get something playable tomorrow!

Dev Environment

Initially I was going to use my staff web page, but two things cooled my heals on that:  Speed and customization. Publishing to my staff page is slooooooooow unless I'm on campus.  Not good for iterative development.  So I switched over to http://kodingen.com.  So far I've enjoyed working with this in-browser dev environment.  As long as I don't go over 1GB of data transfer each month, I'm good.  Of course going over 1GB of data because of people playing WebRogue would be a nice problem to have....  The URL for the project is http://webrouge.languard.kodingen.com.  At this time I haven't decided on where I'll keep issues/bugs/source control.  Considering using the fine folks at http://www.fogcreek.com/ as I really liked their software the one time I got to use it in a commercial project pre-teaching days.

As for progress made: Site is setup, Google API key obtained, and the base index.html page is setup.  Should be able to get the tag setup and get something moving on screen tomorrow.

WebRogue - The start

So, why do I think RLs can be used to teach game programming and design?  Why would I care?  And why am I writing all of this?  These are fairly simple whys.  The main inspiration struck me during the Game Developer's Conference listening to Andy Schatz talk about Monoco and some of the tricks he did.  I just suddenly realized that were RLs an approachable project, something that could result in a fun playable game within a semester.  As to why this matters to me, I teach said topics at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS.  And finally for the writing, it has been a while since I've written something that is sustained over more than a day or two, so I need to sharpen my skills.  I also want a good record of what I did when and why, to better enable me to make good conclusions at the end of this.