I implemented my first ever (finished) HTML5 game called Laser Defence.

I used PIXI.JS v4 and TypeScript for the implementation. Visual Studio Code was used as the IDE.

For fun, I wrapped the project into Cordova and published it to the Google Play Store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.hrup.laserdefence

I had some issues with consistent frame-rates using Cordova on my Galaxy S5 phone. The fix was to use the Crosswalk Cordova plugin. This plugin comes with its own Chromium instance, which is far superior to the default webview provided by Android 6.0.

The con is a fatter APK, about 20MB - but the pro is a much more consistent experience.

My son is lacking a bit in the language department. To help him get better I decided to implement an app which randomized a set of pictures into a grid of 4 cells. The app tells out loud the name of the object/thing in one of the pictures which he has to pick.

I decided that I wanted to tryout Apache Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) and build it as an hybrid-app. Apache Cordova can be installed directly from Node’s package manager ‘NPM’:

npm install -g cordova

To create an app, call

cordova create AppName

which will scaffold a Cordova HTML5 app in the folder AppName.

cordova run browser

will build and start the cordova application in a browser.

cordova run android

will build and start the cordova application in an Android environment. The latter requires the android SDK and an attached device or emulator.

One issues I found with Cordova 6.x was that I was unable to create a proper Android build. Assets was not correctly compiled. I reverted to Cordova 5.x which worked perfectly. My guess is that this will be fixed in the next version.