Professional HTML5 Mobile Game Development

Introduction

JavaScript has always been predominantly used as a browser-based language throughout its history. Although it has had forays into the server side dating back to Netscape’s LiveWire in 1996, JavaScript on the server never seemed to gain much traction. This started to change in 2010 following a November 2009 JSConf presentation on Node.js. Suddenly—and almost inexplicably—people were interested in running JavaScript separate from the browser. In the intervening years JavaScript has turned into a perfectly acceptable language to use on the server and the command line. This chapter will show you how to install, run, and write JavaScript from the command line to support your game.