

HTML5 Game Development - akshayaurora
https://www.udacity.com/course/viewer#!/c-cs255/l-52473341/m-66255903

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gamblor956
Won't let me use Internet Explorer...even to simply view lesson plans,
attachments, and discussions....even though the browser supports all of the
required features.

That's a bummer, because this defeats the anywhere/anytime nature of Udacity's
system if I can't log in an do a quick lesson during a free lunch hour.

~~~
paradoxquine
If you are using IE9 or above then you absolutely can browse the site and
interact with classes (except game-dev of course, because IE9 does not support
basic html5 technologies that it needs). Feel free to join our irc or post on
the support forums if you think there is an issue with IE9 or above.

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JDDunn9
Really wish phone makers would take HTML5 seriously. Right now their JS
engines are too slow for practical use. It would be really nice to finally
have a build-once, deploy everywhere system

~~~
svachalek
Me too. On the latest hardware, JS is a lot better than most people give it
credit for, but it still has a long way to go. Unfortunately all the major
players have incentives NOT to give us a viable, portable platform.

~~~
hayksaakian
That's what annoys me the most.

Both Apple and Google have a disincentive to improving WebViews.

If both were JUST as apt as the platform's respective browsers, html5 apps
would be SO much better.

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ffk
I hope Udacity sets up a portfolio of games created by students of this
course. It would help support the efficacy of courses like this, and provide
the students with more potential hiring opportunities than a completion
certificate alone.

~~~
jiggy2011
By the look of it the course will basically walk through the creation of a
specific game rather than have students create their own.

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MatiasPenas-_-
At Udacity you learn making stuff.

Ex: the CS-101 is building a search engine from scratch.

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hfern
Decided to try the first few lessons and got a fun error:

> Expected 30 to be greater than 32.25806451612903.

They need to clarify the erroneous function call. (I was calling setInterval
with 30ms instead of 1000/30)

~~~
markdown
Did you post on their forums, or decide it would suit you better to broadcast
your issue to people who aren't in a position to fix it?

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dgesang
No Opera support. Sucks.

~~~
markdown
Serious question (no seriously!)...

Given that you will always have to deal with service providers not supporting
your browser, why do you choose to continue using it?

Usually there is an idealogical reason for this sort of stance, but Opera
isn't FOSS, and that's the only reason I can think of that someone would
choose to put up with an inferior software experience.

Why not switch to Chrome or Firefox?

~~~
bajsejohannes
I was a long time Opera user. I _loved_ that browser. Everything is at your
fingertips. You may spend half your day in your browser, so having everything
one click away is great. And if it's not one click away, you can make it so.
And if you don't like they way HN looks and behaves, you can change all of
that easily (once you know how to). Heck, I even worked at Opera for five
years because I loved it so much.

In the end, though, compatibilty issues led me to another browser. I miss much
of the functionality, but browser support trumps that.

Opera is to browsers what vim is to text editors. Great if you know how to use
it properly, but horrible in some very real and recurring situations.

~~~
rartichoke
How can you possibly compare Opera to vim heh?

I put a 70 year old dude on Opera to help prevent him from getting random
malware. It took less than a minute to explain to a completely computer
illiterate person that he has to click the red icon instead of the blue icon
to "launch the internet".

Once it's open it's not very different from other browsers other than it
having extremely useful features that most browsers end up adapting months or
years later!

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loso
I had fun using it but got a server error when I got to the loading audio
portion of the lesson. It said the answer was correct but to try again.
Overall I like where they are going with this. I just started on the path of
HTML5 game making a few months ago so hopefully this can fill in some holes I
may have.

~~~
myth_drannon
They have numerous Firefox problems, use Chrome for quizzes.

~~~
gaoshan
Even Chrome has issues. I've had one answer where it said I failed so I
reloaded and it said I now passed. I changed nothing. In another case the
tests failed when everything looked correct so I commented out one of the
methods and then it said I passed... specifically passing the test that
checked for the function that I had commented out! Seems like there is some
flakiness with their system.

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zachrose
Is there anything out there like this but less technical and more on game
mechanics and genres?

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slurgfest
How does this help you make a game? It seems to me that it would not be very
helpful unless you could already make games.

Anyway: Coursera classes often use premises like this to motivate teaching
some specific set of technical skills which are the real point.

~~~
zachrose
If you can write JavaScript but have no working model for how to make an
engaging game.

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nextparadigms
Do they have a WebGL one, too?

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Impossible
CS291, interactive rendering (<https://www.udacity.com/course/cs291>), is
WebGL based. The instructor is Eric Haines, one of the authors of Real-Time
Rendering, so I'm guessing the course will be a solid intro to real-time
graphics that goes beyond a how to use WebGL tutorial.

~~~
akshayaurora
The course should be interesting, it shall be teaching everything through
Three.js.

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moccajoghurt
Game Development without using WebGL seems like a waste of resources.

~~~
inafield
Don't tell that to the folks at www.scirra.com who make the program
Construct2. Or the many companies that use Construct2.

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jimmaswell
I've found HTML5/JS games an interesting experience. I'm currently writing an
online Pictionary-type game, like Draw My Thing, with HTML5, JS, and PHP. It's
been pretty smooth.

~~~
jbigelow76
"Draw My Thing" huh? Don't hold your breath on the Apple app store reviewers
letting it into the app store. :)

~~~
jimmaswell
This is for web browsers on a desktop, not iOS. Draw My Thing is just the name
of something similar, from OMGPop.

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vignesh_vs_in
Previous discussion <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134618>

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SeanDav
hmmm. It says I don't have permission to access that course - what gives?

~~~
bcks
I experienced this too, but it's working for me now. Seems like a aggressive
cookie / caching issue. Try clearing your cache, force-refresh, or logging out
and then logging back in again.

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keypusher
Looks great!

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papsosouid
I'm amazed to see people still doing browser detection (hint: other browsers
actually do have the features you need, you just didn't think to put them in
your list), and worse yet still outright blocking you when they mistakenly
think your browser won't work. "We haven't tested your browser, continue at
your own risk" is fine, "we won't let you look at this because we don't know
your browser exists" isn't.

~~~
paradoxquine
You will be able to easily continue into the site with an unsupported
supported browser once some changes go live in the next day or two. Sorry for
the current issues.

~~~
ohwp
I'm sorry to. You lost me.

Every time I see a "your broser is not supported" message I'm getting more
angry. As a developer it's your job to make things work!

Yes, I'm using Opera and yes Opera only supports the standard. But common I
checked it in other browsers and I can't see what's so special about the site
that a "modern" browser is needed.

