How Zynga moves to HTML5

As we all know, Facebook has been trying to advance the development of HTML5, open source Jsgamebench tool, chief technology officer Bret Taylor has also repeatedly mentioned the importance of HTML5. There is even a rumor that all of its smartphone apps could be rewritten to turn these applications into a more unified HTML5 program that can be used on all smart devices.

In fact, Zynga Germany is a real leader in HTML5 development and innovative thinking, and Paul Bakaus advises game developers to switch to HTML5 development in the new game Assembly (the Game Conference), "HTML5 is the future of the gaming industry." Of course, he also admits that the HTML5 game's current sound effects are bad, and they need to use sound to create a rich gaming experience, in addition to different devices there are many problems, such as the iphone can only play one sound effect at a time.

Zynga's HTML5 Products

Currently, Zynga has a total of Zynga Poker, FarmVille Express, Words with friends and CityVille Express four HTML5 games. The Company believes that these games can be comparable to local applications, "the use of HTML5 tools, such as WebSockets and CSS3 can be very good to complete the smooth animation, seamless gaming experience without waiting to load." ”

Zynga's contribution to HTML5 is more than just a game. Its Open-source library of source code, including Zyngajukebox help game developers solve the limitations of HTML5 multiple tracks, Zynga Viewporter greatly simplifies the size of the mobile browser window, Zynga Scroller a good solution to the HTML5 seamless sliding problems encountered. Bakaus hopes that one day HTML5 will be able to achieve the same seamless sliding effect as path. Now, let's take a look at the interview content:

About Paul Bakaus

First of all, I'm a developer. I started out as a UI developer, focused on JavaScript and the UI years ago, and then I joined the jquery team and became the creator of the jquery UI. Then John Resig me to make the UI for jquery, and by participating in the development of jquery I learned a lot about the jquery UI, step-by-step learning about the principles of JavaScript, how to use Web tags, how to optimize, and so on. Then also went to Japan, did some flash migration javasscript application of customer projects. In 2010, I started dextrose with a friend to develop the HTML5 game.

We were going to create a fully fledged HTML5 gaming community, but we realized that technology sharing was a big problem. So we started building a prototype of the HTML5 engine, the Aves Engine, to show how to develop games with HTML5. We uploaded the video to YouTube and sparked a lot of discussion. As the first practical HTML game engine, it showed many future content that could be rendered on the web.

After Zynga fully acquired us to develop the pure HTML5 game, we abandoned the prototype and started to study the game system solution again. Now we have a development studio in Germany that mainly disseminates HTML5 technology to developers and develops new technologies. The research here is full of fun.

Because we want to do is a mature game engine, so the process is full of challenges. And look forward to making some content as soon as possible.

Zynga's HTML5 philosophy

The technical decisions we design will relate to every developer of the game, so we really want to bring the games that we have made to all players. I don't care how powerful a technology is, we just want to do what we do now. Now focus on HTML5 because it has a lot of advantages that apps and Flash can't do. A cross-platform feature, for example, allows players to bring the game to different platforms.

Usually you have to install the app to your tablet and mobile phone, or load the game on the web, with HTML5, you can skip these steps, this is not good?

HTML5 's Game restrictions

To be honest, HTML's performance in the game also has limitations. First of all, audio is still a problem for many game developers. I do not recommend a keen webgl because of the current market share situation. The 3D game confirms this, and I don't think the WEBGL specification is the perfect way to support it. In addition, although some of the details of the HTML5 are somewhat rough, because it is not in advance of the game before running. But it's time to start developing HTML5 games. I do not think that anyone because HTML5 not perfect not to develop HTML5 game, if recall, people first use Atari and Commodore 64 when the game, how many restrictions, in fact, in the development of the process to come up with a variety of ideas. We can do a lot of things with HTML5 now, and I think the only thing now is for developers to focus on it and not worry about its limitations.

What causes developers to be less interested in HTML5 development

I think there are several reasons. One of them is the traditional game designer to change the Web page has some difficulty, because it is a completely different environment. Prior to this, if you have ever developed an Xbox game, there will be no difference in program or platform, because both have a lot of cross-platform code. Writing a completely different code will certainly have a psychological change at first.

Another big reason is that games are not HTML5 in the game, and HTML itself is a very good language for rendering documents. What are we doing now? actively participate in the cooperation of the Consortium, cooperate with the engineers, promote the game development specification. I find that a lot of developers are avoiding HTML5 because it's not a special language designed for games, and I think that's the main reason.

About Zynga's App Store and ecosystem-do you plan to do an app store?

Sorry, I can't disclose too much information about the products that will be released in the near future. But it's certainly right now to create an awesome solution for Web apps, just like the Chrome App Store. Now Mozilla has its own online app store and I love these services.

I think it would be super efficient to give you a way to do two things at the same time. As you may know, Facebook itself can be said to be an application platform and provide a very good ecological environment, I do not understand why some HTML5 engineers are more pessimistic.

Facebook's "Application Library" program

It depends on what you call the Application warehouse, and Facebook has already launched the mobile version of HTML5, so you can run apps on their HTML5 version. But now Facebook has no access to apps, it's just app stores.

How will Zynga look at these HTML5, Facebook-dependent platforms? How to increase identification and diversification?

I don't think that's a problem. That's not why we turned into HTML5 technology. Whether you're a flash, a HTMl5, or a localized application, you're faced with the question of choosing Facebook. In addition, I will not discuss the Facebook plan because we have a good relationship with Facebook and I believe the future will continue.

I don't think that's the problem, much less why we're turning to HTML5. Whether you're working on flash or HTML5 or localized apps, choose whether to use Facebook. , I can't discuss Facebook-related plans. We have a good relationship and we believe the future will be the same.

What will Zynga do next in the HTML5 game, 2012 of the planning?

We will design a lot of tricks, that's for sure! Unfortunately, I can't disclose too much information. However, you must pay attention to our open source code warehouse. From a technical standpoint, our current game in Github.com/zynga Open source code related to the technology to guide the current and future game direction. We will open up more game source code to help game developers. So, in addition to the product, 2012 will have a lot of interesting things.

One of the prototypes we've released is Zynga Jukebox, which is a shared technology we have on the HTML5. This is a good example, and we've already used it in words with friend. If you go to Facebook and experience a HTML5 based words with Friend, you'll find that this is an open source product. I know that some of our plug-ins are widely used. This is what we do now, in short, to develop a variety of groups.

There are two more examples. Zynga Jukebox solves HTML5 audio problems for game developers, and Zynga Viewporter offers engineers a number of browsing and resolution solutions. and Zynga scroller to highlight and smooth scrolling the scrolling tag tag, as handsome as path. Many people say the smooth scrolling effect is more difficult, I agree. But to be precise, I am confident that the same effect can be achieved using Zynga scroller in HTML5. This will give us more possibilities that we've only been able to implement in our local app.

What is Zynga's favorite tool to recommend or consider the best development HTML5 game?

The tool is still a pain point and I don't have any good answers right now. The integration environment is not currently available but is being developed by the document editor. We've also done some tools, but I've found that all HTML5 game developers are using the editor for development. Development environment tool manufacturers do not know what the developer really needs, resulting in the game developers have to find a way to solve the problem of development tools. I think the development of environmental tools is necessary. In this respect, I get a lot of experience, such as Mobi Edge and Senchal. I make contact with them every month to understand the direction of development. The engineers have a great deal of enthusiasm for solving the problem. We're still a long way from solving these problems, and I'm not sure what the game engineers are going to do with it, so let's watch it slowly.

How long does it take to HTML5 Web applications in browsers and terminals to the current state of the local app?

You know what? Formal statements usually have a year or two. This is quite normal because the specification takes a long time to reach the level of the consortium, but it does not affect anyone using it, I believe so. HTML5 and people's views are not influenced by CSS3 and JavaScript, as well as HTML.

I don't think that on a specific day you can say "the first real HTML5 application in history", and I think it's time to start the web. The network has no release cycle, but it is growing. We have seen the current level of browser and browser development, vendor-level more write iterations. So, if you look at Google Chrome and Firefox, you can see their weekly release cycle and find that everyone is in a crazy revision. I think Firefox 10 and Chrome 16 or 17 are great products, because when you communicate with the engineers, they can finish the first edition in a few weeks and extend it to users in a few months, which was impossible a few years ago.

So there is no reason to wait. You should have a monthly update that covers more than 75% of the features of HTML5 browser, to contact each new feature as soon as possible.