Scorched Earth in Canvas

I've been using Javascript for a long, long time now. I've always considered it more of a serious programming language than most of my peers, and with the recent additions to the HTML5 working drafts and other emerging technologies like WebGL, things are about to get really interesting!

Most of my professional experience has been in web development, dealing with databases, server-side scripting, and other super amazing fields of computer science. So naturally I've been exposed to Javascript quiet a bit over the years.

I'm also an avid gamer.

So naturally I've always wanted to combine programming and gaming to produce some of my own games. Since I don't get paid to combine passions and hobbies, these things are always a long time coming. I've been messing around with OpenGL here and there for a couple years, and trying to learn more and more about some of the concepts and patterns that go with game development, and find the game industry at an interesting point where blockbuster games seem to have reached a peak of sorts, while there seems to be a surging indie game development community filled with people similar to myself who just want to create for the love of it.

Like a lot of programmers trying to get into game development I've always run into snags along the way in a lot of the prototypes I've set up. Putting things together properly takes experience in common and proven patterns that I just don't have yet. So after having gone down the path of failure to create the next awesome 3D game several times, I decided to step back and simplify a bit.

Turns out that's exactly what I think I needed. I've been quietly working on an homage to the classic turn based tank warfare game Scorched Earth in my spare time for the past couple weeks, and it's really starting to take shape! There are a lot of things I've learned on the way to where I am now (not only in this project, but also from previous prototypes) that will be indispensable tools in the future.

I'm nowhere near finished with my rendition of Scorched, but what I have so far is definitely a worthy milestone on the way there. So without further ado:

http://demo.etlgfx.com/scorched/

I will be trying to share some of my learning and source code in future posts, so stay tuned