The Advanced Game Developer's Toolkit

Book excerpt: Master the most important skills and techniques you need to know for professional HTML5 and JavaScript 2D game development. This book delves into many of the great classic techniques of video game design. You’ll discover how to develop games and game levels using Tiled Editor, how to implement tile-based collision, how to design advanced pathfinding and enemy AI systems, the fundamentals of broad-phase collision, and how to make isometric games. All the techniques and supporting code are explained in an easy-to-understand manner and written in a general way so that they can be applied to any game engine or technology that you’re comfortable using. You'll find detailed working examples, with dozens of illustrations and many concepts you can freely apply to your own projects. All the math and programming techniques are elaborately explained and examples are open-ended to encourage you to think of original ways to use these techniques in your own games. You can use what you learn in this book as the basis for making games for desktops, mobile phones, tablets, or the Web. The Advanced Game Developer's Toolkit is a great next step if you already have some JavaScript game-making- experience, or a great continuation if you've already read Advanced Game Design with HTML5 and JavaScript by the same author. What You'll Learn Work with advanced tile-based design techniques for puzzle, platform and maze games Use Tiled Editor to build game worlds Build path-finding and AI systems using Line of Sight and A* (A-Star) Make isometric games Manage complexity to build games of any size that scale seamlessly Who This Book Is For Video game developers with some experience who want to learn the essential techniques they need to know to take their skills to the next level and for readers who want to understand and fine-tune every line of code they write, without resorting to quick fixes.