Releasing HTML5 Games for Windows 8

Preface

Designing, building and publishing games is not an easy task. One of the most challenging parts about publishing a game is how to distribute and monetize it. This is even more daunting when it comes to HTML5 games since cross browser compatibility and viable distribution channels are still maturing. Windows 8 offers an incredible opportunity for independent game developers looking to distribute and monetize their HTML5 based game. This book will cover everything you need to know about porting over your web based JavaScript game to Window 8, how to integrate support for WinJS (the JavaScript communication layer to the native OS), and how to publish and sell your game on the Windows 8 Store. This book is a must read for anyone looking to seriously develop HTML5 games!

Audience

While this book was designed for web and game developers who already have a HTML5 game ready to port over to Windows 8, I did my best to cover useful information for anyone simply interested in publishing an HTML5 game to the Window Store. While this book may not directly help you if this is your first time making an HTML5 it will give you a detailed overview of everything that goes into running HTML5 games on Windows 8.

Assumptions This Book Makes

This book assumes that you have a working knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and have made a HTML5 game before. I also assume you already have at least one game ready to port over. While there is a chapter that covers porting an existing open source HTML5 game over you will need to have some working knowledge of the underlying language and technology needed to successfully publish any HTML5 game.

Conventions Used in This Book

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife and sons for all their support while I was making this book. I’d also like to thank my parents and family for all their help and support over the years. I also have a lot of respect for all the thought leaders in the development community who continue to inspire me such as Christer Kaitila, Keith Peters, Chuck Freedman, Sean McCracken, Joel Hooks, Brendan Lee, Scott Penberthy, Seb Lee-Delisle, Rich Shupe, Jobe Makar, and especially Richard Davey who keeps pushing me to make better games.

Thank you as well to Rachel Roumeliotis from O’Reilly Media, Inc. for providing me with this opportunity and to David Isbitski and everyone else at Microsoft who helped make this possible. I also couldn’t have done this book without the help from my amazing tech editor Dave Voyles.

Finally I wanted to give a special thanks to Iñaki Diaz for helping me create the pixel art in my games.