Palm Developer Network Blog

Dan Kurtz, the resident web expert at Self Aware Games, joined Palm on-stage at the Sprint Developer Conference to share his team’s lessons learned from having developed two games for webOS, Word Ace and Card Ace.

The team came to webOS thinking that first reports made it an attractive platform for some of their gaming ideas, especially if they matched the games to webOS core capabilities, such as always-on web connectivity, easy text entry from a physical keyboard, and multitasking. That said, they didn’t take the task of developing a webOS game lightly. As Dan said, “A new platform means problems. Developing a new game means problems. So developing a new game on a new platform meant problems squared.”

To help manage the risk inherent in such an undertaking, they prototyped their first game, Word Ace, on iPhone, since they already had experience on the platform and could get to a playable app quickly. When they turned to implementing the same functionality on webOS, they were able to take advantage of their knowledge of JavaScript, focus on learning the new platform, and implement already-robust features without having to solve for multiple unknowns.

Dan summarized their lessons learned in a few brief points. To paraphrase him:

• Happiness is designing for a single, cutting-edge web environment, which is provided by webOS
• To develop great games on webOS, you need extremely detailed knowledge of JavaScript and CSS
• You can make your life much easier if you design your game around the webOS strengths summarized above
• When you need help or to learn more, use resources on the web including Palm’s webOSdev community forums and open source code.

You can read a lot more about Self Aware and its early webOS development experience in the webOSdev profile of Self Aware Lead Designer Seppo Helava in the “Getting Their Mojo Working” series.