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> while browsers are essentially mini-operating systems. Some folks primarily use GoogleDocs as their text editor. The mini operating system is written in anot

> while browsers are essentially mini-operating systems. Some folks primarily use GoogleDocs as their text editor. The mini operating system is written in another language than the browser. An analogy here would be writing such an operating system within the game engine, and then claiming the game engine that is only used to render the operating system is the operating system. The real issue with browsers is the load of historical cruft they have to continue to support, as well as many new and duplicated technologies such as in this case C.S.S encroaching more and more upon the domain of browser scripting. > I don't know if there was ever a time when browsers weren't heavier to write than games - except back in the dark days when the web was but a baby. Is that really so? I would say that at the time game rendering technology was making vast advances in 3.d. rendering with clever hacks around the turn of the millennium, browsers were probably easier to write than these engines.

munk-a 5y ago
At least in my mind the nascent days of the web was the early 90's when a large portion of games were still mostly text based with most of the graphical fidelity coming from clever uses of flat 2D images that had sprites overlaid on them. You certainly had 3D games going back to 1981 - but there were still quite rare compared to isometric 2.5d games.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  Even the side scrolling games of the early 90s required ingenious hacks to make them work on the hardware of the time. Game consoles at the time had hardware accelerated sprite scrolling; personal computers did not and had to redraw sprites manually to scroll but the games used some very interesting hacks to avoid having to redraw most of the screen and create the illusion of fluid movement by only redrawing parts of it. Some of the absolute hacks to make games run on the Gameboy were even more impressive.

munk-a 5y ago

At least in my mind the nascent days of the web was the early 90's when a large portion of games were still mostly text based with most of the graphical fidelity coming from clever uses of flat 2D images that had sprites overlaid on them. You certainly had 3D games going back to 1981 - but there were still quite rare compared to isometric 2.5d games.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
Even the side scrolling games of the early 90s required ingenious hacks to make them work on the hardware of the time. Game consoles at the time had hardware accelerated sprite scrolling; personal computers did not and had to redraw sprites manually to scroll but the games used some very interesting hacks to avoid having to redraw most of the screen and create the illusion of fluid movement by only redrawing parts of it. Some of the absolute hacks to make games run on the Gameboy were even more impressive.