Most importantly, remember to go slowly and be methodical. That means you should be testing your changes in-browser as you write each line or so of code. Always be commiting. Deploy early and often.
Here's a rough sketch of what you should do and in what order:
- Sketch some rough wireframes for how the front end will look and act.
- Write out some user stories for the app. User stories are short of how a
user interacts with your app, and follows the format "As a
<role>, I want to<do something>, so that<some goal>. - Model the entities in your app. Draw a diagram. Use your wireframes and user stories to drive you modeling process by asking "What 'things' are a user interacting with?"
- Create a repo that your project will use, and add a README to it.
- Create a simple front-end with HTML and CSS, and host the front end on GitHub Pages. Use your wireframes to guide your layout.
- Create the code to manage your game logic.
- Write jQuery code to handle browser interaction.
- Start communicating with the back-end using
curl. Use this to begin writing your AJAX code. - Add any additional features to your app.
- Finish your documentation. Make it high-quality.