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I'm really disappointed with how slow publishers are being to adopt these technologies. If you look at the timeline[1] asm.js came out 3 years ago, fullscreen A

by Touche 11y ago

I'm really disappointed with how slow publishers are being to adopt these technologies. If you look at the timeline[1] asm.js came out 3 years ago, fullscreen API 4 years ago. And I can't hardly find any non-demo WebGL games on the web. I'm not talking AAA games, just something beyond "here's something I built at a hackathon". [1]http://www.openwebgames.com/#/timeline.html http://www.openwebgames.com/#/timeline.html

chadaustin 11y ago
As someone who has tried, there are just too many things wrong with the web as a platform. I'd love to use it to ship great customer experiences, but: 1) Web Audio is awful -- https://chadaustin.me/2014/09/web-platform-limitations-part-2-web-audio-api-is-a-mess/ https://chadaustin.me/2014/09/web-platform-limitations-part-... 2) You STILL cannot prioritize XMLHttpRequests. https://chadaustin.me/2014/08/web-platform-limitations-xmlhttprequest-priority/ https://chadaustin.me/2014/08/web-platform-limitations-xmlht... 3) The input APIs are janky 4) High frame latency in Chrome, low frame rate in Firefox 5) Allocating more than a couple hundred megabytes is risky -- it might even crash your process (I've filed a few bugs against Chrome on this) 6) SIMD.js is a least-common-denominator approach, meaning you pay a penalty on one of x86 or ARM, just like we saw with the JVM and floats. 7) JavaScript still doesn't have int64. 8) Still no efficient memcpy. As far as I can tell, the web is not on track to catch up to native platforms in terms of customer experience anytime soon. That said, you could probably ship some small things on this tech and get away with it, but in no way would they supplant a native iOS or desktop app. [begin rant] The WHATWG is a bunch of out-of-touch buffoons who have an opinion on everything even when they're not close to the problem domain. Browser vendors try too hard to work together, meaning if anyone has an objection about any API, it won't ship. (Or will take years.) The Extensible Web Manifesto seems to have had no effect. There are no conformance suites, so you can't actually rely on APIs working the same across all browsers. [end rant] I'm a strong believer in the open web as an enabling democratizing force for all kinds of content, but I no longer have faith that web standards bodies and consortiums of browser vendors will get us there anytime soon. EDIT: That really got me worked up. Better than morning coffee. :) But I'd be remiss if I didn't call out a small group of amazing people who are, without much support, pushing the platform forward. Alon Zakai, author of Emscripten, is a visionary and has had a HUGE impact on the feasibility of games in browsers. Dan Gohman, even though I've disagreed with his opinions on how SIMD.js should work, does extremely influential work. Patrick McManus is awesome. Vladimir Vukicevic pushed WebGL, which is one of the few good web APIs. Also, major props to Google's PNaCl team as they've retooled towards WebAssembly. I'm sure I'm missing people. Contrary to what I might have indicated, there ARE people with taste who do great work. :)
- vvanders 11y ago
  Yep, lots of reasons for no adoption. Hell, WebSockets doesn't have UDP. That's like the cornerstone of low latency networked games.
  - fulafel 11y ago
    WebRTC data channels get you UDP.
    - vvanders 11y ago
      Last time I looked into WebRTC it had the option to send UDP but wasn't guaranteed and would fallback to TCP in a lot of cases.
- opless 11y ago
  Or just not use JS for serious computation. It was never designed for this, and upgrading the core language to do serious computation will be like putting lipstick on a pig or a sticking plaster on a wooden leg. You're correct though Emscripten and WebGL are amazing things, but ultimately hacks. With browsers scurrying to implement ASM.js support, JITs etc... (because most JS developers write shonky code and interpreting JS is not fashionable any more) JS considered dangerous. DO. NOT. USE.
  - opless 11y ago
    Also the web always was "write once, suck everywhere" since its inception too. It was never meant to be a layout markup language, we already had SGML for that.
    - pcwalton 11y ago
      SGML doesn't have layout at all!
      - opless 11y ago
forgotmypassw 11y ago
>I'm really disappointed with how slow publishers are being to adopt these technologies. And for that, I'm grateful.
andrewmcwatters 11y ago
Publishers? You mean game developers? Game developers don't use these technologies because they're a joke.
drhayes9 11y ago
My favorite resource for news about HTML5 and gaming is http://www.html5gamedevs.com/ http://www.html5gamedevs.com/. You should also check out itch.io and filter for browser games: https://itch.io/games/platform-web https://itch.io/games/platform-web The "biggest" WebGL game I'm tracking these days is Wild Terra: http://www.playwildterra.com/ http://www.playwildterra.com/ But https://www.starbreak.com/ https://www.starbreak.com/ is also a pretty fun MMO in its own right. But there are hosts of others hiding within non-traditional gaming sites, like the BBC. I think browser-tech games haven't figured out the marketing/monetization paths. I think the rational response to the loads of risk found in making money on games is to produce lots of smaller games to see what sticks rather than investing tons of time into single, larger titles. That doesn't mean that larger projects aren't out there, I just think the risk/reward curves of game development don't lend themselves to experimenting with weird technologies as well without morphing the gaming experiences beyond what we'd normally call games.
- leereeves 11y ago
  From a purely technical standpoint, both Wild Terra and Starbreak look like games from 20 years ago. Good examples of HTML 5 instead of Flash, but not great examples of the web as a serious games platform.
  - drhayes9 11y ago
    When you say "technical standpoint", do you mean the graphics? 'Cuz I think the accessibility provided by browser-based MMOs is the best feature: no download, no install, available anywhere there's a browser. AFAIK there wasn't something like that available in 1996 and is the key technical differentiator that makes me so excited about the web as a games platform. I think if we're talking about the web as a serious games platform we have to widen the scope of the discussion from graphics/sounds and include both the network effects of online players and the true multimedia approach the games can have, especially when paired with social media. Here are some features web games can use because they run on the web platform that the authors don't have to write themselves: * Speech recognition * Peer-to-peer communication * WebVR * getUserMedia I agree, though, that not enough web games do any of this. The ones I've played keep trying to ape the old platform without using all the benefits of the new one.
MisterBastahrd 11y ago
The web is an inferior platform for games. Not sure why this is a surprise.
vamur 11y ago
It's going to take time for these technologies to mature and for developers and companies to start using them. And even then it will be Flash like games for a while.

by Touche 11y ago

chadaustin 11y ago

As someone who has tried, there are just too many things wrong with the web as a platform. I'd love to use it to ship great customer experiences, but: 1) Web Audio is awful -- https://chadaustin.me/2014/09/web-platform-limitations-part-2-web-audio-api-is-a-mess/ https://chadaustin.me/2014/09/web-platform-limitations-part-... 2) You STILL cannot prioritize XMLHttpRequests. https://chadaustin.me/2014/08/web-platform-limitations-xmlhttprequest-priority/ https://chadaustin.me/2014/08/web-platform-limitations-xmlht... 3) The input APIs are janky 4) High frame latency in Chrome, low frame rate in Firefox 5) Allocating more than a couple hundred megabytes is risky -- it might even crash your process (I've filed a few bugs against Chrome on this) 6) SIMD.js is a least-common-denominator approach, meaning you pay a penalty on one of x86 or ARM, just like we saw with the JVM and floats. 7) JavaScript still doesn't have int64. 8) Still no efficient memcpy. As far as I can tell, the web is not on track to catch up to native platforms in terms of customer experience anytime soon. That said, you could probably ship some small things on this tech and get away with it, but in no way would they supplant a native iOS or desktop app. [begin rant] The WHATWG is a bunch of out-of-touch buffoons who have an opinion on everything even when they're not close to the problem domain. Browser vendors try too hard to work together, meaning if anyone has an objection about any API, it won't ship. (Or will take years.) The Extensible Web Manifesto seems to have had no effect. There are no conformance suites, so you can't actually rely on APIs working the same across all browsers. [end rant] I'm a strong believer in the open web as an enabling democratizing force for all kinds of content, but I no longer have faith that web standards bodies and consortiums of browser vendors will get us there anytime soon. EDIT: That really got me worked up. Better than morning coffee. :) But I'd be remiss if I didn't call out a small group of amazing people who are, without much support, pushing the platform forward. Alon Zakai, author of Emscripten, is a visionary and has had a HUGE impact on the feasibility of games in browsers. Dan Gohman, even though I've disagreed with his opinions on how SIMD.js should work, does extremely influential work. Patrick McManus is awesome. Vladimir Vukicevic pushed WebGL, which is one of the few good web APIs. Also, major props to Google's PNaCl team as they've retooled towards WebAssembly. I'm sure I'm missing people. Contrary to what I might have indicated, there ARE people with taste who do great work. :)

vvanders 11y ago
Yep, lots of reasons for no adoption. Hell, WebSockets doesn't have UDP. That's like the cornerstone of low latency networked games.
- fulafel 11y ago
  WebRTC data channels get you UDP.
  - vvanders 11y ago
    Last time I looked into WebRTC it had the option to send UDP but wasn't guaranteed and would fallback to TCP in a lot of cases.
opless 11y ago
Or just not use JS for serious computation. It was never designed for this, and upgrading the core language to do serious computation will be like putting lipstick on a pig or a sticking plaster on a wooden leg. You're correct though Emscripten and WebGL are amazing things, but ultimately hacks. With browsers scurrying to implement ASM.js support, JITs etc... (because most JS developers write shonky code and interpreting JS is not fashionable any more) JS considered dangerous. DO. NOT. USE.
- opless 11y ago
  Also the web always was "write once, suck everywhere" since its inception too. It was never meant to be a layout markup language, we already had SGML for that.
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    SGML doesn't have layout at all!
    - opless 11y ago

forgotmypassw 11y ago

>I'm really disappointed with how slow publishers are being to adopt these technologies. And for that, I'm grateful.

andrewmcwatters 11y ago

Publishers? You mean game developers? Game developers don't use these technologies because they're a joke.

drhayes9 11y ago

My favorite resource for news about HTML5 and gaming is http://www.html5gamedevs.com/ http://www.html5gamedevs.com/. You should also check out itch.io and filter for browser games: https://itch.io/games/platform-web https://itch.io/games/platform-web The "biggest" WebGL game I'm tracking these days is Wild Terra: http://www.playwildterra.com/ http://www.playwildterra.com/ But https://www.starbreak.com/ https://www.starbreak.com/ is also a pretty fun MMO in its own right. But there are hosts of others hiding within non-traditional gaming sites, like the BBC. I think browser-tech games haven't figured out the marketing/monetization paths. I think the rational response to the loads of risk found in making money on games is to produce lots of smaller games to see what sticks rather than investing tons of time into single, larger titles. That doesn't mean that larger projects aren't out there, I just think the risk/reward curves of game development don't lend themselves to experimenting with weird technologies as well without morphing the gaming experiences beyond what we'd normally call games.

leereeves 11y ago
From a purely technical standpoint, both Wild Terra and Starbreak look like games from 20 years ago. Good examples of HTML 5 instead of Flash, but not great examples of the web as a serious games platform.
- drhayes9 11y ago
  When you say "technical standpoint", do you mean the graphics? 'Cuz I think the accessibility provided by browser-based MMOs is the best feature: no download, no install, available anywhere there's a browser. AFAIK there wasn't something like that available in 1996 and is the key technical differentiator that makes me so excited about the web as a games platform. I think if we're talking about the web as a serious games platform we have to widen the scope of the discussion from graphics/sounds and include both the network effects of online players and the true multimedia approach the games can have, especially when paired with social media. Here are some features web games can use because they run on the web platform that the authors don't have to write themselves: * Speech recognition * Peer-to-peer communication * WebVR * getUserMedia I agree, though, that not enough web games do any of this. The ones I've played keep trying to ape the old platform without using all the benefits of the new one.

MisterBastahrd 11y ago

The web is an inferior platform for games. Not sure why this is a surprise.

vamur 11y ago

It's going to take time for these technologies to mature and for developers and companies to start using them. And even then it will be Flash like games for a while.