2D web-game: on what?

Question

I want to make a basic, 2D fighting game (not fast paced nor does it have many cool effects.) I could make it with jQuery, but I think that it would run slowly (to my knowledge).

Can anyone give me an alternative to flash for the development of this game?

Answer 1

You might want to check out Processing.js, if you prefer not using browser plug-ins.

Processing.js uses Javascript to draw shapes and manipulate images on the Canvas element. The code is light-weight, simple to learn and makes an ideal tool for visualizing data, creating user-interfaces and developing web-based games.

Answer 2

If you like get this game running on the most computers out there I would go for these technologies:

• Flash (fast, and availabable and installed nearly everywhere, frameworks for gameprogramming are out there)
• JavaScript (no browser-plugin required, but performance will realy suck, especially at older computers or browsers)
• Silverlight (could be suitable, but still a just a very few people have it installed and I do not know if there any good working versions for Mac and Linux)
• JavaApplets (lesser installations then Flash, could be fine, altough it seems quite unsexy to use JavaApplets in these days.)

Answer 3

I already saw most options listed, but I thought I'd chime in with another great option that is now free (unless your game makes more than $100K/year and then you must pay a one time $1,500 fee: Unity.

This game generation tool allows you to use a visual developement environment with either javascript, boo or C# to develop games that can be played in a browser, on windows or on a mac. Though it is best known for 3D game development, it certainly supports 2D development.

Here is an example of a browser based 2D game made using Unity.