onGameStart tickets

It is now possible to register to onGameStart - first HTML5 game conference. Don't wait for anything, just go to http://ongamestart.com and do what you have to do:).

CSS3 animations in Mibbu

Last week I implement CSS Animations in my gamedev micro framework, Mibbu.
It is possible now to animate sprites in three different ways - cropping parts of the sprite with .drawImage() in 'canvas mode', manipulating 'top' & 'left' attributes of absolute position of the image [both described in here] and CSS Animation in DOM mode.
For now Mibbu supports CSS animations only in webkit based browsers. I know that beta version of Firefox supports it as well, but I didn't find easy way to detect it. In webkit we can just check what is the initial value of given attribute (use whatever DOM element you want), like this:

if (typeof document.body.style.webkitAnimation !== "undefined") {
//all your animation are belong to us
} else {
//no css animations:(
}

Unfortunately it don't work in Aurora, mozAnimation always return 'undefined'. Is there any way to easy detect it?

The main point in creating css animations is preparing proper keyframes in a css classes and connecting it to the DOM elements with description parameters like duration or number of iterations. CSS engine will be responsible for sprite animation so draw() function of each sprite object should be empty. The keyframes are generated during constructing the object and append to the document - one class in one script element, it will be easier to edit them when the parameters of the animation will change during the gameplay. I also wrote a little function to convert speed of an animation (from Canvas & DOM mode) to the CSS Animation Duration parameter.

var calculateSpeed = function(speed, frames) {
    return (~~((1 / (60 / speed)) * 100) / 100) * (frames+1);
};

constructAnimationClass = function(){
 var animClass = "@-webkit-keyframes 's" + t.id + "' {\n",
        step = 100 / (t.fs + 1),
        str = '% { -webkit-transform: translate(';

    for (var q = 0; q < t.fs+1; q++) {
        animClass += ~~((step * q) * 100) / 100 + str + t.animation * t.width*-1 + 'px,' + q * t.height * -1 + 'px); }\n';
        animClass += ~~((step * (q + 1) - 0.01) * 100) / 100 + str + t.animation * t.width * -1 + 'px,' + q * t.height * -1 + 'px); }\n';
    }
                
    return animClass += '100'+ str +t.animation*t.width+'px, 0px); }\n}';
                
};

//append created class to the document
t.animStyle = document.createElement('style');
t.animStyle.innerHTML = constructAnimationClass();
document.body.appendChild(t.animStyle);

Above code creates class like this: And every sprite needs to implement description of the animation (name is created by concatenating 's' and internal id of the sprite:

t.style.webkitAnimation = "'s"+t.id+"' "+calculateSpeed(t.speed, t.fs)+"s linear 0 infinite";

Main problem I had with implementing this was pausing the game - even if main loop stops, CSS engine still animates the keyframes. So I just set '0' for the -webkit-animaition-duration parameter:

'off': function(){
    MB_Stop();
    if (MB_usingCSSAnimations){
        var i = MB_elements.length;
        for (;i--;){
            if (MB_elements[i].image)
                MB_elements[i].image.style.webkitAnimationDuration = 0;
        }
    }
};

It sucks but it works. Anyone know better solution? Next step is to provide support of webkitAnimationIterations for iteration's callbacks (now it is calculated using JavaScript, not with the events, but contrary to what I thought webkit has already supported DOM events for animation [thanks Askoth]). If you want help feel free and contribute: Mibbu on github. There are also some issues I found creating new features and I have no time to fix it now. If you use Mibbu and have some ideas or found any bugs, write me about it or fork & pull request on Github.

BTW, Github will be one of the sponsors of onGameStart, HTML5 Game Conference. We will open registration on Monday evening Central European time, so check the conference page and don't miss it!

Mibbu - javascript html5 game framework

I have just published initial release of Mibbu - my javascript microframework for fast game prototyping. To be honest - it is just set of functions and patterns I use always when I write my games. It is more a sandbox, starting place with basic tools, than a real framework (that's why I called it 'microframework'). It provides sprite animations, basic operations like movement or collisions, scrolling backgrounds and drawing on both - canvas or DOM. It uses DOM only when it is not possible to use Canvas (like in older IEs), but you can force it to do so with one single function (canvasOff()) - then it will be drawn with divs & imgs. It is the same mechanics I have used in OpenOdyssey or Janpu. I will try to write something more about using Mibbu later this week.