The explosive growth of WebGL proves the popularity of gaming on the web. There are lots of cool things you can build on WebGL, but most developers want to delve into browser games.
WebGL is a powerful framework, but it’s not all you need for a game on the web. Game controls and audio also play a huge part of browser game development.
The free BabylonJS library is the perfect resource covering all these topics. It’s great for anyone getting into browser game development.
Babylon is a 3D game engine library powered by WebGL for 3D graphics. But it’s also much more than just a WebGL library.
It can handle everything from controls to object behaviors, and even sound effects. It truly is a complete JavaScript gaming framework made for HTML5 and WebGL development.
To get started you should check out the GitHub page for sample demos and the latest release hosted on their CDN.
They also have a live playground where you can tinker with different settings and display styles.
You can even alter the code, and click Run to auto-generate your changes right in the browser. This is perhaps the best way to practice using Babylon because you don’t need to download anything locally.
On that demo page look in the top-right corner for a menu labeled “Basic scene”. Click that dropdown to select from a wide variety of pre-built playgrounds including environments, lights, shadows, and height programs (among many others).
This is much easier than building your own demos on CodePen because you can see the full screen and you have access to the editor right there in the browser.
Babylon comes with many features, such as particle effects, gravity physics, and simple drag-and-drop features.
You will need to spend a lot of time with this library to get comfortable. But the best way to learn is to pick a project and see what you can build. Along the way, you may bump into problems and need to rely on the documentation to solve them.
If you can learn some of the fundamentals of Babylon then you may be surprised what’s possible in browser-based game development. It has come a long way in just a few short years, and Babylon is one of the few libraries that gets it all right.
To see a few live demos check out the Babylon homepage, and scroll down until you see the demos section. This should have more than enough inspiration to get you going and push you head-first into the world of Babylon game development.
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