I'm speaking at the first HTML5 games conference, onGameStart, about PBBGs!

[andrewjbaker]

OK gang, let me lay it down...

I am delighted to announce that I shall be speaking at the first HTML5 games conference, onGameStart, which is being held in Chris' native country (Poland) this very September.

The subject of my talk is you guys (and gals), your games, your experience, your knowledge and your general lack of willingness to embrace HTML5; you naughty people.

Believe it or not, you're actually in a prime position to begin using HTML5 to capitalise on your existing (and work-in-progress) PBBGs and bring 'em all shining and sparkly to the forefront of today's online gaming public. I'm talking about embellishing what you have, not beginning again from scratch.

I've made some fantastic friends through this forum, been assisted plenty, and both provided and received encouragement from loads of ya'. So I'm making it my personal crusade to promote the PBBG community as a whole.

I love being a part of something creative and inspiring, I love learning about what you're all up to, I love to see and play the games you're creating so do yourselves a favour and get the exposure you justly deserve. Start bloody learning HTML5 now, please!

THIS HAS BEEN A PERSONAL PLEA FROM ANDREW J. BAKER.

[CygnusX]

The canvas element is the only aspect of HTML 5 I am familiar with.  What else is there?

[andrewjbaker]

Plenty mate.

The canvas element is only one part of it. Besides the 2D context of canvas, there's also WebGL, an in-browser implementation of the de facto 3D low-level graphics library OpenGL.

There's also the audio and video elements, SVG (vector graphics), more elements for creating fancier forms, WebSockets (think network programming and multiplayer).

Best bet for an intro... Dive into HTML5 and check out the latest news at HTML5 Grind.

[gnoh]

Hah I seem to remember that it was lolninja and I who kept telling you to change the vnc implementation to canvas, now look what we've done, created a html5 monster

[andrewjbaker]

Ha... yeah, I blame you two too.

[Doidel]

Wow andrew, that's great! My congratulations!

HTML 5 is so promising, yet it just takes its time to settle. But when supported somewhat similarly by the browsers, along with CSS3 maybe, it'll sure become part of all our lives

Have fun and good luck there! I'm really jealous!

[andrewjbaker]

Thanks Doidel. I've seen what promises HTML5 offers us PBBG developers; I've seen your videos. Keep up the good work you've been doing too mate.

[Ben Adams]

From our point of view, we have a very small team and big plans for the future so changing what we already had working to HTML5 was going to be a high opportunity cost in new content and features.

We'd already bit the bullet by deciding to move from classic ASP to ASP.NET MVC and reworking the entire front end from a web site composed of pages to be Ajax driven single page app. This took months of rework but in the end was very worth it.

However, eventually we decided to take the plunge and did start migrating to HTML5. Our first HTML5 release was using canvas and Illyriad's - New world map. The performance gains were enormous and the new possibilities this has allowed us to consider are huge!

 ... of course we are still to do most of them  But the HTML5 version is infinitely better then what we had before and HTML5 is definitely the future!

[Ben Adams]

Oh, yeah - and there's obviously the time to learn what HTML5 is, what it can do, learning the RAW api or deciding on a library to use.

For me I love the RAW api - its back to old school coding 

If you want to know more - don't hesitate to ask...