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How hard is it to make html 5 games portable across different devices with different screens ? Do "html5" game devs mainly use game maker studios that handle th

How hard is it to make html 5 games portable across different devices with different screens ? Do "html5" game devs mainly use game maker studios that handle the export for different devices or is it better to do that "by hand", if latter, does anyone know for a good resource on that ?

i336_ 10y ago
That's pretty tricky to do at the moment sadly, JS isn't quite there yet. As you can see with the HTML5 games in this collection, raw JS is quite unpolished. If you ask me, I think handling all the little things manually is probably best at this point; JavaScript is actually quite a slow language, so frameworks do introduce noteworthy overhead. For example my old computers do NOT like Unity's HTML5 export at all, and current smartphones can be easily bogged down by bad code too. So hand-optimizing it is the way to go at this exact moment. I think this is why people are investing so heavily in WebAssembly: it'll allow the actual language primitives to be abstracted out in different directions, and provide higher performance to boot. At least if they get the implementation right :P
- wavefunction 10y ago
  You might be surprised: https://playcanvas.com/explore https://playcanvas.com/explore
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Ah, my old Intel HD 2000 is on Chrome's hardware render blacklist (for good reason, disabling it is hilarious). WebGL is amazing though, I agree; http://acko.net/ http://acko.net/ is how all websites should work. :D There are also well-polished JS games like http://zty.pe/ http://zty.pe/ (that don't require WebGL); that game in particular is built on a nonfree JS game engine, but it's a good demo of what's possible with efficient coding.
    - wavefunction 10y ago
      Thanks for the links, I love seeing people pushing the boundaries of JavaScript and software via the web in general. I've got some similar things I work on for fun but what you've posted is pretty remarkable!
      - i336_ 10y ago
        I got hooked on ZType for a while... then I went full crazy and discovered that there's just enough game state left accessible in the global scope in order to be able to make the game... um, play itself. It looks absolutely ridiculous at level 60+. :D EDIT: Doh, I completely forgot to ask - what litle side things are you working on? I'm curious.
  - iofj 10y ago
    Doesn't work well at all on my android phone I must say.
    - wavefunction 10y ago
      What browser are you using? The default 'android browser'? Also, you may have an older android phone? Some more details would add some context to your post. They also have a way to wrap the JS app as a native app similar to Cordova. The games I've tried on my Nexus 5 worked fine with a great user experience.
ww520 10y ago
Last time I looked. Babylon.js is an amazing JS-based 3D game framework. It relies on WebGL for the heavy-lifting; support good support of WebGL in the browser is needed.
daredevildave 10y ago
For Swerve http://swerve.playcanvas.com/ http://swerve.playcanvas.com/ we designed the UI to be responsive for desktop and mobile. We're using HTML/CSS for this so it works well, but unfortunately you end up getting some stalls for browser layout and compositing. For Swerve this is a problem because we're aiming for smooth 60fps but in a less twitch-based game this wouldn't be so much of an issue.
- george_soros 10y ago
  Wow, gonna checkout playcanvas. Swere looks awesome.

i336_ 10y ago

That's pretty tricky to do at the moment sadly, JS isn't quite there yet. As you can see with the HTML5 games in this collection, raw JS is quite unpolished. If you ask me, I think handling all the little things manually is probably best at this point; JavaScript is actually quite a slow language, so frameworks do introduce noteworthy overhead. For example my old computers do NOT like Unity's HTML5 export at all, and current smartphones can be easily bogged down by bad code too. So hand-optimizing it is the way to go at this exact moment. I think this is why people are investing so heavily in WebAssembly: it'll allow the actual language primitives to be abstracted out in different directions, and provide higher performance to boot. At least if they get the implementation right :P

wavefunction 10y ago
You might be surprised: https://playcanvas.com/explore https://playcanvas.com/explore
- i336_ 10y ago
  Ah, my old Intel HD 2000 is on Chrome's hardware render blacklist (for good reason, disabling it is hilarious). WebGL is amazing though, I agree; http://acko.net/ http://acko.net/ is how all websites should work. :D There are also well-polished JS games like http://zty.pe/ http://zty.pe/ (that don't require WebGL); that game in particular is built on a nonfree JS game engine, but it's a good demo of what's possible with efficient coding.
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    Thanks for the links, I love seeing people pushing the boundaries of JavaScript and software via the web in general. I've got some similar things I work on for fun but what you've posted is pretty remarkable!
    - i336_ 10y ago
      I got hooked on ZType for a while... then I went full crazy and discovered that there's just enough game state left accessible in the global scope in order to be able to make the game... um, play itself. It looks absolutely ridiculous at level 60+. :D EDIT: Doh, I completely forgot to ask - what litle side things are you working on? I'm curious.
- iofj 10y ago
  Doesn't work well at all on my android phone I must say.
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    What browser are you using? The default 'android browser'? Also, you may have an older android phone? Some more details would add some context to your post. They also have a way to wrap the JS app as a native app similar to Cordova. The games I've tried on my Nexus 5 worked fine with a great user experience.

ww520 10y ago

Last time I looked. Babylon.js is an amazing JS-based 3D game framework. It relies on WebGL for the heavy-lifting; support good support of WebGL in the browser is needed.

daredevildave 10y ago

For Swerve http://swerve.playcanvas.com/ http://swerve.playcanvas.com/ we designed the UI to be responsive for desktop and mobile. We're using HTML/CSS for this so it works well, but unfortunately you end up getting some stalls for browser layout and compositing. For Swerve this is a problem because we're aiming for smooth 60fps but in a less twitch-based game this wouldn't be so much of an issue.

george_soros 10y ago
Wow, gonna checkout playcanvas. Swere looks awesome.