HTML5 Game Optimization: Proven Techniques for Speed and Efficiency

Optimizing Game Size for Faster Load Times

Let’s think for a minute about what people want. They want high-quality graphics, 3D models with a large number of polygons, shaders and filters, and excellent sound effects. Games must be high speed too. Game developers need to bear in mind that they must provide a full experience that includes all these things.

A developer should design a game using software that loads exceptionally quickly, the quicker the better! The animation must be top quality, with perfect clarity, especially even when millions of users exist.

Striking the Right Balance: Game Size, Speed, and Visual Quality.

Nobody wants to wait for anything anymore. We are living in the world of immediate gratification and a game should be quick to download. Recently there was a contest where developers were challenged to reducing the size of a game and keep it within a 13-kilobyte framework. They all discovered that it is possible to create a brilliant html5 game that works perfectly well within a a small framework.

If you research carefully, you will find that games do not need to have a rigid software framework, you just need to find a good balance between the developer requirements of loading speeds and the final appearance of the game.

Maximizing Performance With Sprite Sheets

TexturePacker is an excellent software that can be used to develop games that are top quality and will give the user everything he or she wants in a game. TexturePacker allows the developer to place all the small pictures and animations into a single large file. This means that the number of HTTP requests is significantly reduced. It also means the developer can reduce the loading of the graphics processor. It is much easier to handle a few large textures than hundreds of small ones.

If you take into account the fact that sometimes only textures of ‘power of two’ sizes are supported, it does make sense to use the software TexturePacker. For example, an image of 30 x 100 may be in the memory as 32 x 128, or in some cases 128×128 (sometimes only square textures are supported).

Atlases are excellent too, but the main thing to remember is to not overdo them. Some mobile devices do not support Atlases of more than a certain size. The most popular size is 2048 x 2048. But the optimal for relatively old devices such as iPhone 4 is only 1024 x 1024.

Optimizing Graphics For Speed And Quality

Optimization of your graphics will make a huge difference in both performance and visual quality within your HTML5 games. Choosing the right file formats and applying some simple compression will make a huge difference in load times and overall user experience. Here’s a breakdown of the best approaches, including how to choose the right file formats:

• WebP: Best for HTML5 games, as it has more profound capabilities in compression without affecting the quality. Besides that, WebP can shrink the size of the images by as much as 30% compared to PNG and JPEG, which can be quite effective for games that have rich graphics.
• PNG: Best for images that require transparency and lossless compression. While PNG files are larger compared to WebP, they come in handy for images that require fewer colors or have simple graphics, such as icons.
• JPEG: Good to use for complex images such as backgrounds where transparency is not required. JPEG offers decent compression, though it is a lossy format meaning quality is sacrificed for small file size.

Vector-Based Graphics with SVG

SVG is a fantastic choice for creating graphics that need to scale to different screen sizes and resolutions. Because SVGs are based on mathematical equations, rather than pixels, they maintain their quality at any size. This makes them ideal for UI elements, icons, and other visuals that need to be scalable.
Compression Tools
Compress image file types, PNG and JPEG by using TinyPNG or ImageOptim while maintaining their resolution. Web-based services like Squoosh also provide options to convert images into WebP format for further optimization in developer tasks.

Best Practices

• Quantization: Further quantization of the color palette can reduce file sizes with no noticeable loss of visual fidelity.
• Avoid Metadata: Some metadata can be removed from graphics that would not be needed, thus reducing file bloat.
• Lazy Loading: This is a technique whereby images would load only when their need arises onscreen for scrimping on resources upon initial game loadings.

Following all these techniques, developers can optimize graphic performance within their HTML5 games while ensuring the quality of the visual experience is guaranteed for end-users across all platforms.

Efficient Asset Loading: Boosting Game Performance

JavaScript supports parallel downloading of files, and there are many popular game engines that use this feature. If you have an engine of your own design, you should pay attention to optimization of the loader of resources. Keeping a part of resources on the CDN can also speed up the download.

If you use script tags on the HTML page, which is not the most desirable option, you can play around with the async / defer parameters of the script tag. Bear in mind that they are not supported by some browsers.

There is another method for loading resources, a design pattern called ‘lazy loading.’ With this approach, the necessary resources are loaded in the background, while the user performs certain actions.

Using Sound Sprites to Streamline Audio Processing

Just like with pictures you can use sprites for sounds. Sound sprites provide an advantage even though it is seen as controversial. A drawback with this approach is that you cannot use lazy or parallel loading of audio files. It therefore makes sense to combine techniques and use several sound sprites for certain parts or states of game logic.

Maintaining Optimal FPS for Smooth Gameplay

The number of frames per second is a very important parameter that affects the smoothness of the game. It also impacts the user’s opinion of the product because a smooth game is what a user wants. If the FPS lags, nobody will play the game again. You need to look at where the game is going to be played, whether on a PC, tablet or a smart device and which kind of smart device, and then look at each device’s characteristics and capabilities.

Always test your game on the weakest devices in your category and test your game on them. If you find that you have to abandon your good ideas for the normal operation of the application, then rather look at using divided assets.

Managing Assets for Multiple Devices and Resolutions

With technology being developed every single day, new devices are coming out with incredible speed. It can be hard for new game developers when there are new screen resolutions and new and upgraded sets of hardware. But a developer does need to keep on top of this and know how to handle it. As a game developer who needs to keep up with ever changing technology, you need to use various sets of resources for devices with different performance levels and screen resolutions.

You need to find a balance. High quality games must include a user-friendly interface, no matter what the platform or device is that is being used. You need to develop a unique interface for a PC, tablet and smartphone too. Owners of high-end devices expect high quality games, and it is not just owners of high-end devices that want quality. Everyone wants quality. You find that games are trendy, and everyone is playing the same game at the same time, no matter what they are playing on. You need to develop a game that is high quality for all users.

Sometimes an even more detailed separation by browsers and versions of the operating system is required. It’s quite expensive in terms of time and resources but your users will appreciate it.

Choosing the Right Timing Functions: RequestAnimationFrame vs. setTimeout

This is a tricky code to use in game development and we feel you should not use this code in games unless you are a hundred percent sure it is necessary. requestAnimationFrame was introduced and optimized specifically for the animation In HTML5 and this is a much better option to use.

There are many other ready-made tools that use requestAnimationFrame and are bound to deltaTime. deltaTime is a time factor that is the variable of the time elapsed since the last frame. For example, for a function with a delayed call. You can use the delayedCall method from the GreenSock TweenMax library. Look for the good options and that will help you develop a game and keep your users happy.

Streamlining Game Code: The Power of Minification and Obfuscation

In the beginning of this article I referred to tricks and magic. Code magnification and obfuscation is one of those magic tricks that is applicable to all web applications, not just for games. It is logical in the final version, which will go to the user, to remove from the code all the formatting, comments, reduce the names of variables and methods to several letters. A lot of ready tools will help you with that and we suggest you look at the Closure compiler from Google.

The Final Key from Digicode: Perfect Planning and Specialized Expertise

Creating a game that will conquer the market is a long process. You need to research properly and do a lot of work but if you do it well, the rewards will be huge. You need to plan properly and be consistent. You have to come up with the best game design, best animations, best speed and sound, and you need to test everything thoroughly and carefully. Look at each aspect of the game individually. We suggest you divide the various aspects of the game between team members, or to do it with specially trained people who are professionals in their field.

Use specialists. You have a great idea for a game and you want it to work properly. It has a much better chance of being successful and becoming world-famous if you work with an experienced HTML5 game development company, that understands gaming, Apps, development, devices and software.