How we chose HTML5 to develop Panzer Division

The story is quite simple, we wanted the game to run on the iPad. On the iPad you can either run:

• native apps from the Apps Store - developed with Xcode in Objective-C
• web apps - developed in HTML5

None of us had Macs at the time so a native app was out of the question, we could only choose HTML5. After an initial evaluation of HTML5 we concluded we could give it a try. From that day we move forward with it.

As expected, not everything is peachy, we had to redo the rendering several times because of the performance on the iPad 1 and I'm not sure we won't do it again. And we still have problems with the sounds. But we are still optimistic.

PhoneGap : from web to app store

While we'll use for development just plain text editors and browsers, we do plan to use PhoneGap to build our app to a native app that can be published in a app store. PhoneGap provides some nice APIs that fill the gap between native and web apps.

For desktop version we plan to create wrapper apps around WebKit or Chromium libraries.

Store and marketplace

We cannot afford to have fancy stuff like DRM, licence keys, purchase mechanism, etc. We also cannot afford to test on every browser ever made, so we decided to use existing app stores, that is to publish our app in one or more of the following stores:

1. Apple App Store
2. Chrome Web Store
3. Mac App Store
4. Google Play
5. Amazon Kindle Fire Appstore
6. Microsoft Marketplace
7. Mozilla Marketplace

The good news there are quite a few places to publish Panzer Division. An even better news is that the app must run only in WebKit (stores 1-5), Internet Explorer 10 (store 6) and Firefox (store 7).

So we decided to focus initially only on WebKit and to periodically test in IE10 and Firefox. If the compatibility issues can be solved quickly we solve them, otherwise just move on.

IE 6,7,8,9 must die

The biggest advantage of a web app is that it theoretically can run on any device that has a browser. Theoretically. In practice most of the browsers are just a pain in the ass. Panzer Division will never work on them, we will not even try.

We know, "Requires browser XXX to run" is lame in 2012 but we do what we have to do: be pragmatic and accept the reality that we don't have time or resources to support the others.

Keep the faith

Even that we use HTML5, we hope the players won't be aware of that. Hopefully we'll make Panzer Division feel like a native app. If not for iPad 1 at least for some of the other options.