Temporary Project-Hop [Still Working on Android!] (5/12/15)

Today I temporarily hopped to a new interesting project. Aki had shown me a game earlier that used HTML5's canvas element to make an easy-to-understand and simplistic MMO. From what I saw, I knew already that they were using Node.js and Javascript to communicate with a server. An idea popped into my head, and that was that I should try my skills at creating a Node.js-based game for the browser.

For the record, I'm still working daily on my Android project, and I haven't forgotten about it. I'm just adding this to my list of side-projects.

I started doing some research on the Canvas element, and found that it was pretty simple to use, but there's not a whole lot of documentation about it. Then, I found an article on creating a basic game using the canvas element, by a Mozilla developer. Although it's not exactly the concept of what I'm doing, I'm going to look at it to get an idea of what I'm going to try to do.

I then made a basic landing page using Bootstrap, and I started working on an "Upgrades Store".

After just an hour or so, my landing page started to look pretty nice. I'd be happy to show an example, I just don't want to upload any images yet since I think my game idea is pretty nice :)

It got even better when I started handling user connections, and mentioned their names. Since I'm on a Mac, it even featured Emoji support:

I then went ahead and setup multiple server support, like so:

	function connectToServer(servername, userid) {
	var dataToSend = {
	'userid': USER_ID
	};
	if (SERVER_ID == 'east') {
	socket = io.connect("http://localhost:3000", { // Connect to east
	'forceNew': true
	});
	} else if (SERVER_ID == 'west') {
	socket = io.connect("http://localhost:3000", { // Connect to west
	'forceNew': true
	});
	}
	socket.on('connect', function () {
	socket.emit('newconnection', dataToSend);
	socket.on('clientconnect', function (info) {
	setPlayerCount(info);
	});
	socket.on('clientdisconnect', function (info) {
	setPlayerCount(info);
	});
	});
	}

view raw gistfile1.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

I can't wait to get players to load tomorrow! I think it's going to be an interesting concept. I'm also going to work more on my Android project tomorrow. Unfortunately I couldn't do so tonight because I need to use multiple devices to test and have access to the internet while doing so.