Z2 – HTML5-Javascript browser-based game engine
Context
Current state of the art in game engine technologies points towards 3D engines that are computationally heavy, often dependent on GPUs. Moreover, production of 3D content is scarce and difficult making new game projects highly dependent on rare artistic modeling and animation skills and resources.
On the other hand 2D/2.5D perspective engines can facilitate testing of game ideas by enabling tuning on game flow with minimal investment in art production. Moreover, 2D games can be more easily supported on high-volume platforms such as set-top boxes and mobile phones.
With these factors in mind we want to architect a minimalistic game engine that can be used on any HTML5-enabled browser. The main focus of the design will be the ease of use and creation of RTS and RPG games. For portability we will target a Javascript implementation. While several javascript implementations exist, nome is complete or properly structured for general use or documented.
Main architectural drivers will be low resource consumption, so that it can scale up for games with large number of simulated units, and concurrent multiplayer editing capabilities over a common visual representation, with all communication and coordination run on http.
Objective
The purpose is to architect a minimalistic game engine that can be used on a HTML5-enabled browser on desktop, set top box and mobile platforms. The main focus of the design will be the ease of use and creation of games. For simplicity and portability, we will aim at a 2.5 multilayer graphics and animation pure-Javascript approach.
This project was developed at GSI/CISUC by Pedro Ferreira as part of his MEI Dissertation work, having resulted in a Node.js based demo implementation of a stepwise MOG library and nautical battle game.