Chromebook only toolchain?

[RaymondStewart]

Longtime game developer, HTML5 newb. I am looking for recommendations and details on developing exclusively inside a chromebook ecosystem. The purpose is for mentoring kids in the school system for game development using hardware they have access to. So far, I have the following hits and misses...

 

Game Engine: Construct

Game Editor: Construct

3d modeling: Clara.io

2d paint/texture/sprite sheets: 

Sound: 

 

I’d prefer open source, like GDevelop over Construct, but it’s web client does not appear to be fully production capable. Similarly, Phaser should be a big option, but it’s not clear that sandbox is a production tool or a technical demo. Like Phaser, Babylon.js toolchain is a bit of a mystery. Do either of these have editors, or are they just programming frameworks?

I have the latitude to implement web servers, etc using the new Linux virtual machine stuff. That appears to be a factor for some of these. I’m just looking for what gaps and options exist without leaving the chromebook environment, or resorting to some remote cloud toolchain. Is anyone else actively working this way?

[mattstyles]

I'm not exactly sure on Chromebook limitations, on the one hand you seem to imply you want web-only tooling, but then talk about installing editors etc? I don't know how Unity/Construct/Gamemaker etc work either i.e. I don't know if they have their own IDE's.

In any case, Phaser, Babylon etc are 'just' javascript, any text editor will work.

Editors like Atom, VSCode etc are technically just glorified text editors, but with plugins can become as IDE-like as you want. If installing programs isn't a problem (either for Chromebooks or inside schools, where systems are notoriously difficult to manage) then any of these editors will work fine with almost any OS.

Regarding 2D stuff, tooling like Gimp and Inkscape are free and work on almost any platform.

Tiled may or may not be web based, but is much more game-specific.

Googling for web-based 2d tooling brings up loads of hits though.

[DaneBramage]

Hi Raymond,

I know this is an older post and that you've probably already figured out a solution, but I find myself in the same boat now and wanted to share that repl.it is a free cloud-based IDE that should work with any JavaScript library (I've tried it with Phaser 3 and p5js, and will soon try it with babylon.js). It now has version control through sync with github, which is great.

If you're still around, let me know what direction you ended up going with your Game Dev class, and whether there are any resources you recommend. I was going to introduce Unity, but now with Covid-19 we're purely distance-learning so anything I do has to be Chromebook-friendly.