gaming with javascript

I was totally into two workshops – both about gaming, and in the end I chose to go to this one.

Teaching basic game programming using Javascript

Presenters: Phillip Chang and Pennsylvania Wu.

Need a language: why use Javascript

easy to learn, loosely design structure, cross-platform, os independent, high fault tolerance, require no installation, no complicated compilation, no initial investment – preferably open source. Javascript is a good candidate.

Advantages: loosely designed, cross platform, open source, test games immediately

Disadvantages: scripts, not self-executable programs, poor support on audio and visual efforts, poor support on 3D graphics programming, programmers have less controls on outputs.

Javascript browser game: structure is html page layout, css, javascript application.

Professor Wu showed examples of some games and showed their code. Games like Pacman, shooting aliens and Tetris. Games can be animation, handling user inputs, sprite programming, object movement, collision detection [motion], adding sound effects, artificial intelligence.

Javascript is easy to learn and implement, function sufficient, reduces the complexity level of teaching, motivates students by sharing their games online.

There are still problems cross-browser, but maybe we can just write a code to detect the browser first and use the programming based on it.

Javascript is not as functionable as other kinds of languages. Teaching students entry-level codes Javascript is great for that. You can also encouage the student by asking them  to upload to the web.

Remember that this is entry level for students because we see many students who are usuallydiscouraged by debugging and coding so this is a very good tool to encourage students to do gaming.