HTML5 - Does it have the power to handle a large 2D game with a huge world?

Posted by user15858 on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by user15858
Published on 2012-12-06T19:48:33Z Indexed on 2012/12/06 23:27 UTC
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I have been using XNA game studio, but due to private reasons (as well as the ability to publish anywhere & my heavy interest in isogenic engine), I would like to switch to HTML5.

However, I have very high 2D graphic demands for my game.

The game itself will have a HDD size of anywhere between 6GB (min) to 12GB (max) which would be a full game deployed offline. The size of the images aren't significantly large, so streaming would be entirely possible if only those assets required were streamed as needed. The game has a massive file size because of the sheer amount of content.

For some images or spritesheets, they would be quite massive. (ex. a very large Dragon, which if animated in a spritesheet would be split into two 4096x4096 sheets or one 8192x8192 sheet). Most assets would be very small, and about 7MB for a full character with 15 animations in every direction (all animations not required immediately) so in the size of a few hundred KB to download before the game loads.

My question, however, is if the graphical power of HTML5 is enough to animate several characters on screen at once, when it flips through frames quite rapidly. All my sprites have about 25 frames per animation, 5 directions (a spritesheet for each direction & animation), and run at 30fps. Upon changing direction, animation, or a new character entering, spritesheets would change and be constantly loading/unloading. If I pack all directions in a single sheet, it would be about 2048x2048 per sheet.

Most frameworks have no problem with this, but I am afraid from what I read that HTML5's graphical capabilities will limit me. Since it takes significant time simply to animate characters in any language, I'd like a quick answer.

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