[game_edu] HTML 5 2D

[Mike Sellers]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 8:46 AM, Gregory Walek <gwalek at ccsnh.edu> wrote:

> I am actually going to recommend that you don't move off AS3 in your first
> year course.  HTML5 and JavaScript is not suitable replacement for Flash
> for an entire first semester course.
>

A couple of years ago I would have said the same thing. Not now -- at least
not if your aim is to turn out students who have viable skills for game
development. Sadly, though I've long been a supporter of (and developer
with) Flash/AS3, it's essentially a dead product now. In terms of preparing
students for work in industry, it's little better than teaching them COBOL.
It's not being actively supported by Adobe, and I don't know of any major
or mid-size developers starting new projects using AS3, or hiring based on
having that skill set.

JS/HTML5 is still not up to all of what AS3 could do, but it hits more and
more of the same capabilities needed for games. However the undeniable *de
facto* technology in social, mobile, and essentially any non-console game
dev now is Unity with C# scripting. JS is usable with Unity too, and is a
good intro for students.



> The issue here is solely in the JavaScript Language. We have found the
> unstructured nature of the language promotes itself to MANY MANY MANY bad
> practices.  As a result, we would rather have our students learn good
> procedural and structured code before having to understand concepts such as
> inheritance via the prototype and enclosures.
>

This is a good point, but I'd go to C# for better practices, or require
that students use JS in a structured way. Unfortunately I don't think
introducing them to the idiosyncrasies of AS3 only to toss that aside for
the inevitable cocktail of HTML5/JS/CC and Unity/C# is an effective
strategy.

Mike Sellers
Indiana University
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