6 ms·

Your question is unpopular because everyone here likes the web and want to see it thrive as a platform. So do I, but still, I agree with you. Unfortunately, the

Your question is unpopular because everyone here likes the web and want to see it thrive as a platform. So do I, but still, I agree with you. Unfortunately, the web is not a viable platform for games. It had its moment for casual games some years ago, but mobile devices have taken that over. Thats why all the web game portals (the bargain bin bottom of the games space) are languishing, even Facebook Games, with its captive audience, is slowly dwindling away. To put the actual game editor on the web makes even less sense. It's a cool technical feat, and the author may have thought of it as 'free', as some commenters have alluded to, given that there is already a web export, but anyone with a bit of experience knows that nothing is free, and certainly not a project like this. At the very least it's a months long effort (the author himself stated as much in the blog post), even before factoring in continued maintenance. I love it as a technical feat, but I'll agree it doesn't make sense from a 'business' perspective (for lack of a better term, given it's an open source project).

onion2k 6y ago
Unfortunately, the web is not a viable platform for games. Why not? The usual answer is "performance", but that's a non-answer. Not all games need cutting edge levels of performance, web performance for accelerated graphics is actually pretty good as once a shader is on the GPU there's very little practical difference between web and native, and most importantly nothing pushes performance to improve quite like developers trying to maximize performance. If we don't try to make web games (or any other performant apps) then there's no reason for browser vendors to work on improving the situations where things are slow. If Godot's devs think web is an interesting and fun thing to target then they absolutely should be making tools like this.
- slezyr 6y ago
  > The usual answer is "performance", but that's a non-answer. Try to play https://slither.io https://slither.io The performance is horrible even in simple games.
  - andybak 6y ago
    Surely that's a poor implementation? The parent post's point still stands. Browsers are "good enough" a very broad range of games. There's ample evidence of this if you wanted to look.
    - slezyr 6y ago
      So, can you provide "good enough" games with "good implementations" that are somewhat popular?
      - athrowaway3z 6y ago
        agar.io
        slezyr 6y ago
        It lags even more that slither
      - TheSisb2 6y ago
        Venge.io
        slezyr 6y ago
        It looks even worse that Quake3 to me and it's gameplay is just dull.
        andybak 6y ago
        Aren't you just moving the goalposts now?
        felipellrocha 6y ago
        Yeah, they did. Goalpost went from "is it even feasible" to "did the devs implement a compelling game" as if it was impossible to create a compelling game over the web.
- liveoneggs 6y ago
  the web is not viable for games because browsers are unstable targets that change things constantly, breaking the games. Back when there was a stable deployment target (flash) games were everywhere.
  - learc83 6y ago
    This is very true. I built a game to go along with our wedding invitations. I’ve been maintaining it for the past 6 months, and it has stopped working on one browser or the other multiple times. This is despite the fact that I’m using a popular actively maintained JavaScript engine. It noticed just a few days ago that is wasn’t working on my iPhone because mobileSafari decided to stop reporting itself as safari and only as “mobile safari”.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Why do things break? The underlying primitives are as simple as a canvas element, no? I'd think it would be hard to break an array of literal pixels.
      - jan_Inkepa 6y ago
        Sound stuff is still pretty unstable.
      - jayd16 6y ago
        Well for starters even getting a canvas based UI working that supports all DPIs, all aspect ratios, live resize, clicks, and multi-touches is non-trivial.
        sfjailbird 6y ago
        Not to mention text input.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        And unless we do some strange CSS tricks to force acceleration, there isn't even the guarantee that canvas is doing hardware acceleratd drawings.
- sfjailbird 6y ago
  Most importantly, nobody wants to pay for anything on the web. Sad but true.
  - jan_Inkepa 6y ago
    Advertisers were willing to pay quite a bit back in the days! While privacy is good, the advertising industry supported a p. large cottage industry of cool online game developers back in the days. A lot of people I know got their first buck that way in a way that's harder to do nowadays.
  - UnpossibleJim 6y ago
    I hate to admit it (and it truly does pain me), but anything casual will be on a mobile platform. Anything on the web should just be ported to the mobile space. The rise of web games, way back when, was to blow off some steam at work. With the rise of monitoring software, that niche has been filled with mobile games that can waste time at work, on the bus, on the toilet, at the dinner table and while watching the television. Flash games are where I started making graphics and learning programming, so this is a wonderful introduction for younger people to programming (Godot doesn't come with a suite of drawing programs like the stolen version of the Adobe Suite that I "liberated" as a script kiddy a thousand years ago). They can readily host them for cheap or free and show them to their friends, but as for business viability, you're very right. Apologies for the length of this.... it kind of got away from me =)
  - TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
    There are free-to-play web games making a killing off microtransactions.
- Negitivefrags 6y ago
  People played browser games before because it was a way to play games without installing them. This is a use case that existed because of locked down computers in schools, universities and workplaces. Now everyone has phones.
thejosh 6y ago
I've seen a lot of people comment that they would love these for students, as their computers are locked down and they can't do much. Even trying to get the latest versions of the software installed is a burden if they DO manage to get the software installed. This unlocks so much, in terms of being able to build games via the web browser without students needing to download software is pretty amazing.
- techlaw 6y ago
  Yes -- our non-profit publishes nearly all of our games to the web because they run reliably on browsers in schools and public libraries without plug-ins. We've deliberately gone in this direction to make games available to educators without risking the ire of network admins.
hiccuphippo 6y ago
Not everything has a business perspective. Sometimes people build things for fun or to learn something.
techlaw 6y ago
The web is reliably the best platform for the games our nonprofit produces. And we've produced dozens of them played by young people around the world for the past 15 years. (Yes, we've had setbacks with deprecation of Flash and Unity Web Player but webGL has been fantastic.) Although the games are also available through the appstores or for direct download, those channels are not as accessible for many people, especially those on the other side of the digital-divide. No smartphone, tablet, or home PC? Then turn to the web instead: our evidence-based and award-winning games are used by educators in classrooms, by parents at home, and by young people who access them via public libraries. The web is the best outlet for these games because it is by far the most accessible of platforms. These games are also much safer from a privacy perspective via the web than installing an always-on & always-tracking game from Google Play. And though these are not AAA games and they don't include microtransactions or advertisements that merely means nobody is getting rich from them. But that isn't our goal. Our goal is to drive positive change in the most efficient way possible. Genuinely free video games via the web is how to safely reach and empower hundreds of thousands of young people around the world about issues important to them.
- kroltan 6y ago
  Godot already exports games to the web, this is about the engine itself running on web.
  - sempron64 6y ago
    The editor UI is mostly implemented in the game engine, so dogfooding the web version of the engine for the editor will bring improvements in engine functionality and probably performance to all games.
  - techlaw 6y ago
    Was responding to parent: "Unfortunately, the web is not a viable platform for games."
- pjmlp 6y ago
  My experience with WebGL has been hit and miss, because many people are blocked to use it properly, whereas native 3D APIs just work on the same system. All due to how browsers block access to drivers or specific cards.

onion2k 6y ago

Unfortunately, the web is not a viable platform for games. Why not? The usual answer is "performance", but that's a non-answer. Not all games need cutting edge levels of performance, web performance for accelerated graphics is actually pretty good as once a shader is on the GPU there's very little practical difference between web and native, and most importantly nothing pushes performance to improve quite like developers trying to maximize performance. If we don't try to make web games (or any other performant apps) then there's no reason for browser vendors to work on improving the situations where things are slow. If Godot's devs think web is an interesting and fun thing to target then they absolutely should be making tools like this.

slezyr 6y ago
> The usual answer is "performance", but that's a non-answer. Try to play https://slither.io https://slither.io The performance is horrible even in simple games.
- andybak 6y ago
  Surely that's a poor implementation? The parent post's point still stands. Browsers are "good enough" a very broad range of games. There's ample evidence of this if you wanted to look.
  - slezyr 6y ago
    So, can you provide "good enough" games with "good implementations" that are somewhat popular?
    - athrowaway3z 6y ago
      agar.io
      - slezyr 6y ago
        It lags even more that slither
    - TheSisb2 6y ago
      Venge.io
      - slezyr 6y ago
        It looks even worse that Quake3 to me and it's gameplay is just dull.
        andybak 6y ago
        Aren't you just moving the goalposts now?
        felipellrocha 6y ago
        Yeah, they did. Goalpost went from "is it even feasible" to "did the devs implement a compelling game" as if it was impossible to create a compelling game over the web.
liveoneggs 6y ago
the web is not viable for games because browsers are unstable targets that change things constantly, breaking the games. Back when there was a stable deployment target (flash) games were everywhere.
- learc83 6y ago
  This is very true. I built a game to go along with our wedding invitations. I’ve been maintaining it for the past 6 months, and it has stopped working on one browser or the other multiple times. This is despite the fact that I’m using a popular actively maintained JavaScript engine. It noticed just a few days ago that is wasn’t working on my iPhone because mobileSafari decided to stop reporting itself as safari and only as “mobile safari”.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Why do things break? The underlying primitives are as simple as a canvas element, no? I'd think it would be hard to break an array of literal pixels.
    - jan_Inkepa 6y ago
      Sound stuff is still pretty unstable.
    - jayd16 6y ago
      Well for starters even getting a canvas based UI working that supports all DPIs, all aspect ratios, live resize, clicks, and multi-touches is non-trivial.
      - sfjailbird 6y ago
        Not to mention text input.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        And unless we do some strange CSS tricks to force acceleration, there isn't even the guarantee that canvas is doing hardware acceleratd drawings.
sfjailbird 6y ago
Most importantly, nobody wants to pay for anything on the web. Sad but true.
- jan_Inkepa 6y ago
  Advertisers were willing to pay quite a bit back in the days! While privacy is good, the advertising industry supported a p. large cottage industry of cool online game developers back in the days. A lot of people I know got their first buck that way in a way that's harder to do nowadays.
- UnpossibleJim 6y ago
  I hate to admit it (and it truly does pain me), but anything casual will be on a mobile platform. Anything on the web should just be ported to the mobile space. The rise of web games, way back when, was to blow off some steam at work. With the rise of monitoring software, that niche has been filled with mobile games that can waste time at work, on the bus, on the toilet, at the dinner table and while watching the television. Flash games are where I started making graphics and learning programming, so this is a wonderful introduction for younger people to programming (Godot doesn't come with a suite of drawing programs like the stolen version of the Adobe Suite that I "liberated" as a script kiddy a thousand years ago). They can readily host them for cheap or free and show them to their friends, but as for business viability, you're very right. Apologies for the length of this.... it kind of got away from me =)
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  There are free-to-play web games making a killing off microtransactions.
Negitivefrags 6y ago
People played browser games before because it was a way to play games without installing them. This is a use case that existed because of locked down computers in schools, universities and workplaces. Now everyone has phones.

thejosh 6y ago

I've seen a lot of people comment that they would love these for students, as their computers are locked down and they can't do much. Even trying to get the latest versions of the software installed is a burden if they DO manage to get the software installed. This unlocks so much, in terms of being able to build games via the web browser without students needing to download software is pretty amazing.

techlaw 6y ago
Yes -- our non-profit publishes nearly all of our games to the web because they run reliably on browsers in schools and public libraries without plug-ins. We've deliberately gone in this direction to make games available to educators without risking the ire of network admins.

hiccuphippo 6y ago

Not everything has a business perspective. Sometimes people build things for fun or to learn something.

techlaw 6y ago

The web is reliably the best platform for the games our nonprofit produces. And we've produced dozens of them played by young people around the world for the past 15 years. (Yes, we've had setbacks with deprecation of Flash and Unity Web Player but webGL has been fantastic.) Although the games are also available through the appstores or for direct download, those channels are not as accessible for many people, especially those on the other side of the digital-divide. No smartphone, tablet, or home PC? Then turn to the web instead: our evidence-based and award-winning games are used by educators in classrooms, by parents at home, and by young people who access them via public libraries. The web is the best outlet for these games because it is by far the most accessible of platforms. These games are also much safer from a privacy perspective via the web than installing an always-on & always-tracking game from Google Play. And though these are not AAA games and they don't include microtransactions or advertisements that merely means nobody is getting rich from them. But that isn't our goal. Our goal is to drive positive change in the most efficient way possible. Genuinely free video games via the web is how to safely reach and empower hundreds of thousands of young people around the world about issues important to them.

kroltan 6y ago
Godot already exports games to the web, this is about the engine itself running on web.
- sempron64 6y ago
  The editor UI is mostly implemented in the game engine, so dogfooding the web version of the engine for the editor will bring improvements in engine functionality and probably performance to all games.
- techlaw 6y ago
  Was responding to parent: "Unfortunately, the web is not a viable platform for games."
pjmlp 6y ago
My experience with WebGL has been hit and miss, because many people are blocked to use it properly, whereas native 3D APIs just work on the same system. All due to how browsers block access to drivers or specific cards.