4 ms·
It won't be a success until Local Storage isn't limited to 5MB. Right now there's no way to "install" your game into a browser, which cripples WebGL's ability
by palish 15y ago
It won't be a success until Local Storage isn't limited to 5MB. Right now there's no way to "install" your game into a browser, which cripples WebGL's ability to be a serious alternative to traditional PC-based gaming / mobile gaming.
A single uncompressed 1024x1024 RGBA texture is 4MB, for example.
(I say all this not to be negative, but rather in hopes that the correct developers will hear the plea from the indie game industry: enhance Local Storage. We want to build games on your WebGL platform, but we can't until you do.)
- crux_ 15y agoI don't think WebGL is meant to be a serious alternative to PC or console gaming. It has a very good chance of replacing casual Flash games, however.
- wladimir 15y agoTrue, 5MB limits you to pretty simple games :) There are probably some other practical issues left to be resolved as well before the browser is a mature cross-platform 3D gaming platform. But I can certainly see things going that way.
- windsurfer 15y agoI'm in the process of making a WebGL game - and oh yes, local storage is a minor concern. Random slow downs, browser freezing, audio syncing, and randomly incompatible hardware are only some of the problems I've been facing.
- wladimir 15y agothat wasn't much different with OpenGL in a Java applet, though... but yes you'd hope this would be better
- pavlov 15y agoWhy would you hope that? Making another paper-thin wrapper over OpenGL means inheriting its long-standing issues.
- wladimir 15y agoA paper-thin wrapper around OpenGL is what the game-devs want. They don't want to be straight-jacketed into one game or rendering engine. Also, OpenGL isn't that low-level anymore. It is the API that the GPU speaks, and with recent developments the client can be much less 'chatty'. Do as much as possible from shaders and on the GPU itself. We've gone far beyond "do a call per vertex". As for hope, yes I have more "faith" in Google/Mozilla to improve cross-platform javascript performance and memory issues than I have in Oracle or Adobe to improve theirs.