4 ms·

First off - this is a great thing to hear; I'm glad that WebGL is advancing. That said, there are a few voices hear bemoaning the fact that this update still i

by cr0sh 10y ago

First off - this is a great thing to hear; I'm glad that WebGL is advancing. That said, there are a few voices hear bemoaning the fact that this update still isn't up-to-par with the latest native API abilities or whatnot. These kind of comments remind me of comments complaining about artificial intelligence not being useful because it can't do x/y/z (ie - something that a human can do), and so it is worthless. Never mind the fact that when x/y/z tasks are demonstrated, the goal posts are moved to a/b/c... I see the same thing here with WebGL. Personally, I feel this is unfair. Instead of complaining about what it can't do, instead one should work with it and push it to do what it can do. I dare-say that in the hands of talent, the current WebGL could easily do things that would be almost considered "impossible". By talent, I mean those who really push the capabilities of hardware and software, pulling tricks and such to maximize the apparent capability (demoscene). Even with that taken off the table, though - WebGL (even 1.0) can still do things and represent ideas and worlds in enough detail to be fun for a game or other use. I feel that those who complain will always complain. Instead, those who can - use it! So what if it isn't perfect; I dare say that a Infocom's Zork is a better game than many of today's triple-A FPS shooters or whatnot! Graphics aren't everything; if you know what you are doing, you can make a compelling and fun game today without them - there are plenty of recent IF titles to attest to that. I sometimes wonder if the complaints aren't excuses or something; that developers are complaining about WebGL because they don't want to move the the platform of the web browser (for some reason)? So any excuse not to develop on the platform is a valid excuse? Perhaps. For me, what I see in WebGL is extreme promise; in fact, it holds it right now, with WebGL 1.0 - if more people would just develop for it. Maybe I'm just biased, having grown up with computers from a time when the idea of 3D graphics was either simple wire-frames or other slow software rendering - or you dropped many thousands to tens-of-thousands of dollars on hardware to get output that wouldn't even be worthy of the old-school Quake engine. For me, what I see with WebGL blows me away, despite it not being "realistic". It's realistic enough for me to see compelling action and stories developed with it. ...and with native API access? Well - what little I have seen (because I run *nix and you don't see much there) - it's amazing. One day it will be on the browser too. But what we have already available, in the right hands, should be more than enough. So quit complaining, and get to creating. /personally wish I had the talent to work in this field...

merlish 10y ago
> I dare say that a Infocom's Zork is a better game than many of today's triple-A FPS shooters or whatnot! Graphics aren't everything; Interesting point of view, certainly. But the majority of game purchasers do care about graphics. Great graphics suggest (often incorrectly, I'll admit!) great production quality, and in the minds of many this is a 1:1 mapping to the monetary value of a product. So selling a game that's accessible via a URL is a bit of a barrier on the commercial front. I guess itch.io works here. On the technical/noncommercial side, for more high fidelity games I'd argue guaranteeing a stable framerate (and not having the rest of the browser chug while the game's running) and being able to use multi-threading would be a great help. Once WebAssembly gets threading support, I'd expect to start seeing more intensive games. Web workers are... okay, but hardly convenient. I genuinely believe multi-threading support is more important than a better graphics API. (Typical engines cross-compiled from C++ then basically only have to deal with targetting mobile-quality graphics with a few edges knocked off & workarounds.) As for Zork: You don't need WebGL for Zork. (Indeed, embedding text in a WebGL scene (as opposed to overlaying it) is very hard work.) So WebGL is a suitable technology when you need interactive 3D that can't be prerendered, but you don't need impressive 3D; you're happy with results from a decade ago with worse performance. It's not a bad prospect for me as a prospective indie developer, but the tooling is noticeably more difficult than in native solutions. And the WebGL API is much harder to use than glBegin(), glVertex3f()..., glEnd() from the bad old days... but that's just the influence of OpenGL ES. Suggested path: write something in C against bgfx ( https://bkaradzic.github.io/bgfx/examples.html#metaballs https://bkaradzic.github.io/bgfx/examples.html#metaballs ), then pray to kripken. And if Emscripten doesn't work just put some binaries on itch.io. Even the subset of gamers interested in indie games expect to download binaries. -- Edit: You say you wish you had the talent to work in this field. If you're a fan of IF, you certainly have the technical talent to do that :) And writing is fun, but extremely time-consuming. Good grief it's time-consuming. If you can deal with some mildly heinous gameplay, consider buying & playing Sunless Sea. The writing is transcendental, and the universe is brilliant.

by cr0sh 10y ago

merlish 10y ago

> I dare say that a Infocom's Zork is a better game than many of today's triple-A FPS shooters or whatnot! Graphics aren't everything; Interesting point of view, certainly. But the majority of game purchasers do care about graphics. Great graphics suggest (often incorrectly, I'll admit!) great production quality, and in the minds of many this is a 1:1 mapping to the monetary value of a product. So selling a game that's accessible via a URL is a bit of a barrier on the commercial front. I guess itch.io works here. On the technical/noncommercial side, for more high fidelity games I'd argue guaranteeing a stable framerate (and not having the rest of the browser chug while the game's running) and being able to use multi-threading would be a great help. Once WebAssembly gets threading support, I'd expect to start seeing more intensive games. Web workers are... okay, but hardly convenient. I genuinely believe multi-threading support is more important than a better graphics API. (Typical engines cross-compiled from C++ then basically only have to deal with targetting mobile-quality graphics with a few edges knocked off & workarounds.) As for Zork: You don't need WebGL for Zork. (Indeed, embedding text in a WebGL scene (as opposed to overlaying it) is very hard work.) So WebGL is a suitable technology when you need interactive 3D that can't be prerendered, but you don't need impressive 3D; you're happy with results from a decade ago with worse performance. It's not a bad prospect for me as a prospective indie developer, but the tooling is noticeably more difficult than in native solutions. And the WebGL API is much harder to use than glBegin(), glVertex3f()..., glEnd() from the bad old days... but that's just the influence of OpenGL ES. Suggested path: write something in C against bgfx ( https://bkaradzic.github.io/bgfx/examples.html#metaballs https://bkaradzic.github.io/bgfx/examples.html#metaballs ), then pray to kripken. And if Emscripten doesn't work just put some binaries on itch.io. Even the subset of gamers interested in indie games expect to download binaries. -- Edit: You say you wish you had the talent to work in this field. If you're a fan of IF, you certainly have the technical talent to do that :) And writing is fun, but extremely time-consuming. Good grief it's time-consuming. If you can deal with some mildly heinous gameplay, consider buying & playing Sunless Sea. The writing is transcendental, and the universe is brilliant.