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I was one of WebGL's early users. I was working with a team doing renderings of 3d models from World of Warcraft online for a WoW fansite database. We could onl

I was one of WebGL's early users. I was working with a team doing renderings of 3d models from World of Warcraft online for a WoW fansite database. We could only do it in Flash before webgl became a thing.

pjmlp 5y ago
We have lost 10 years catching up to Flash. 2 generations of game developers were able to get a degree during that time. No wonder everyone is now yet again going for streaming with server side rendering using the 2021 hardware capabilities via Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  I mean, even at the time flash wasn't a good experience. It was proprietary, nonstandard, buggy, riddled with security holes, didn't work well on Linux at all, required installing a plugin that more often than not came bundled with malware, and I'm forgetting a lot. I see flash as the MVP of the modern web. It showed us a glimpse of the possibilities if we were to make the tooling available. And it worked: the modern web has more than caught up with Flash and there are absolutely incredible things being done with modern tech. Google Maps on the web is one of those, by the way. If you look closely and consider everything they are doing with these "catch-up" specs... Well, i for one am glad they're not doing it in Flash :)
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    See that is something I don't care at all, it is 1% and still trying. An MVP that 10 years later there is yet tooling to properly match it. Unless one goes to Animator, Unreal, Unity, PlayCanvas. And then regardless of how much everyone tries, it is an API for 2012 hardware capabilities, with constraints. In 10 years no one was able to produce something like NSight, PIX or Instruments for WebGL. The best we could get was SpectorJS, really?
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      I think you're comparing apples to oranges. The tooling we have on the modern web is leagues ahead of what was available in flash, and it's generally free and open source. It's just that the web can do so much more today than flash could back then, so you need so much more tooling as well. And yeah, the web wasn't really picked up by game developers very much. But that is because there is no value appeal to it, it's not due to a lack of capabilities. Web distribution doesn't make sense for most games when apps are a thing for mobile where most players are, and where more involved gamers either have their own consoles or hardware you can distribute executables to directly. So why would you need such solid tooling for something that doesn't have any market demand? This isn't a case of "build it and they will come",some of it does exist and is used, it's just unpopular.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Where is the miles ahead version of Flash tooling on modern Web? Unity and Unreal don't count, it is just another backwend, where rendering needs to be downgraded to GL ES 3.0 subset. Yet few Web games can replicate an Infinite Blade experience, other than a couple of demos like the flow.
        scrollaway 5y ago
        Again... You're focusing on games, which makes no sense, because there is little to no demand for web games. But there is high demand for a lot of crazy shit flash could and couldn't do back then. And the tooling is nuts. Even just VSCode and the devtools are huge and blow the IDEs/tooling from the flash days out of the water, and those are just the most standard tools we have. Then you look at all the JS tooling... There's a ridiculous amount of manpower and huge companies behind lots of it, so yes, the tooling today is far better. That you can't as easily make a game for the web as you could for flash is an asterisk. Nobody is asking for those nowadays. Don't get me wrong, i much prefer the web as a platform to mobile app stores, but I'm aware of the reality.
        pjmlp 5y ago
  - EamonnMR 5y ago
    All the reasons you listed are why I didn't use flash during its heydey. What do I have to show for shunning flash? Well, a bunch of projects that never got out of the idea stages, that's what. And a Pygame game that won't run on Py3. My contemporaries wrote amazing games, finished, and published them.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Here, https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/ https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/

pjmlp 5y ago

We have lost 10 years catching up to Flash. 2 generations of game developers were able to get a degree during that time. No wonder everyone is now yet again going for streaming with server side rendering using the 2021 hardware capabilities via Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate.

scrollaway 5y ago
I mean, even at the time flash wasn't a good experience. It was proprietary, nonstandard, buggy, riddled with security holes, didn't work well on Linux at all, required installing a plugin that more often than not came bundled with malware, and I'm forgetting a lot. I see flash as the MVP of the modern web. It showed us a glimpse of the possibilities if we were to make the tooling available. And it worked: the modern web has more than caught up with Flash and there are absolutely incredible things being done with modern tech. Google Maps on the web is one of those, by the way. If you look closely and consider everything they are doing with these "catch-up" specs... Well, i for one am glad they're not doing it in Flash :)
- pjmlp 5y ago
  See that is something I don't care at all, it is 1% and still trying. An MVP that 10 years later there is yet tooling to properly match it. Unless one goes to Animator, Unreal, Unity, PlayCanvas. And then regardless of how much everyone tries, it is an API for 2012 hardware capabilities, with constraints. In 10 years no one was able to produce something like NSight, PIX or Instruments for WebGL. The best we could get was SpectorJS, really?
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    I think you're comparing apples to oranges. The tooling we have on the modern web is leagues ahead of what was available in flash, and it's generally free and open source. It's just that the web can do so much more today than flash could back then, so you need so much more tooling as well. And yeah, the web wasn't really picked up by game developers very much. But that is because there is no value appeal to it, it's not due to a lack of capabilities. Web distribution doesn't make sense for most games when apps are a thing for mobile where most players are, and where more involved gamers either have their own consoles or hardware you can distribute executables to directly. So why would you need such solid tooling for something that doesn't have any market demand? This isn't a case of "build it and they will come",some of it does exist and is used, it's just unpopular.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Where is the miles ahead version of Flash tooling on modern Web? Unity and Unreal don't count, it is just another backwend, where rendering needs to be downgraded to GL ES 3.0 subset. Yet few Web games can replicate an Infinite Blade experience, other than a couple of demos like the flow.
      - scrollaway 5y ago
        Again... You're focusing on games, which makes no sense, because there is little to no demand for web games. But there is high demand for a lot of crazy shit flash could and couldn't do back then. And the tooling is nuts. Even just VSCode and the devtools are huge and blow the IDEs/tooling from the flash days out of the water, and those are just the most standard tools we have. Then you look at all the JS tooling... There's a ridiculous amount of manpower and huge companies behind lots of it, so yes, the tooling today is far better. That you can't as easily make a game for the web as you could for flash is an asterisk. Nobody is asking for those nowadays. Don't get me wrong, i much prefer the web as a platform to mobile app stores, but I'm aware of the reality.
        pjmlp 5y ago
- EamonnMR 5y ago
  All the reasons you listed are why I didn't use flash during its heydey. What do I have to show for shunning flash? Well, a bunch of projects that never got out of the idea stages, that's what. And a Pygame game that won't run on Py3. My contemporaries wrote amazing games, finished, and published them.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Here, https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/ https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/