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The fact that some of my favorite games that I’ve paid for in the last 5 years have been built using browser technologies proves this completely unfounded. The

The fact that some of my favorite games that I’ve paid for in the last 5 years have been built using browser technologies proves this completely unfounded. The V8 is an incredibly good VM. It has compute performance comparable with Rust in Debug mode for a single core, or comparable to the JVM with a single core. That’s plenty for a great many game genres, and for ALL of the game genres that I am personally interested in playing.

bullen 5y ago
I would be very interested in real examples!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- IggleSniggle 5y ago
  Off the top of my head, I bought (and totally loved): CrossCode, Game Dev Tycoon, Curious Expedition, Screeps, FoundryVTT I feel somewhat confident that there are others, but the devs of these games were somewhat public about what technologies they used. I can easily imagine other very popular games like FTL, Darkest Dungeons, Slay the Spire, etc having made use of browser tech, even though I have no idea if they did or not. The fact that I bought these games (in some cases on multiple platforms), spent countless hours playing them, and never had a complaint about performance, should be evidence enough that browser tech is plenty good for delivering high quality games that people are happy to pay good money for. Heck, the fact that it was possible to do this three decades ago ought to be evidence enough that you don't need something better than V8 (or even a potato) to make great games that "scale" in terms of number of players and in terms of purchases. If you mean VM performance, you can always play the Computer Language Benchmarks Game: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/javascript.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/... You'll find that of course languages like C++ and Rust can perform better. But is that level of performance necessary to pull off a great game with a big paying audience in 2021? Absolutely not.
  - bullen 5y ago
    I think you have yet to see electricity prices rise, in Europe we are paying alot per KWh right now only the bills haven't arrived yet (not to mention gas prices), November is going to be energy inflation resulting in debt deflationary hell (because they cannot lower rates) over here and with Evergrande and peak coal in China and the printing + fracking mess in US it's downhill from here. Eventually you won't be able to afford anything beyond 10W! Javascript is not an option on 10W for action MMO games with real character graphics. We are talking "metaverse" levels of complexity, and all the games both of you list are very simple compared to that.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      In a median 10W consumer compute future where that’s limited by electricity prices you’ll have much more pressing issues than “what does the metaverse look like”. I do think your low powered engine project is very cool though.
      - bullen 5y ago
        No you don't, the only thing separating mad max without cars from hell is if you can communicate and not feel lonely, a global 3D action MMO is the only thing that makes sense, meatspace is about to become a mess! The 3D action part of this equation is very important, without it you cannot trick the reptile brain that you are actually there, 3D MMORPGs don't trigger this at all, f.ex! Also if you use that excuse to keep building wasteful software you are not part of a solution.
        meheleventyone 5y ago
        I lean the other way TBH in such a scenario local, meatspace relationships are going to be all the more important! Not just for loneliness but for basic survival. Likewise I’m skeptical in such an energy scenario we’d have affordable internet access or supply chains to build and equip people with low power computers. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out!
- astlouis44 5y ago
  Does the original Diablo PC demo ported to WebAssembly count..? https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/ https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/
- astlouis44 5y ago
  Also, Curse of Monkey Island which was just posted to Hacker News earlier today: Post link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723689 Game link: https://personal-1094.web.app/scummvm.html https://personal-1094.web.app/scummvm.html

bullen 5y ago

I would be very interested in real examples!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
IggleSniggle 5y ago
Off the top of my head, I bought (and totally loved): CrossCode, Game Dev Tycoon, Curious Expedition, Screeps, FoundryVTT I feel somewhat confident that there are others, but the devs of these games were somewhat public about what technologies they used. I can easily imagine other very popular games like FTL, Darkest Dungeons, Slay the Spire, etc having made use of browser tech, even though I have no idea if they did or not. The fact that I bought these games (in some cases on multiple platforms), spent countless hours playing them, and never had a complaint about performance, should be evidence enough that browser tech is plenty good for delivering high quality games that people are happy to pay good money for. Heck, the fact that it was possible to do this three decades ago ought to be evidence enough that you don't need something better than V8 (or even a potato) to make great games that "scale" in terms of number of players and in terms of purchases. If you mean VM performance, you can always play the Computer Language Benchmarks Game: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/javascript.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/... You'll find that of course languages like C++ and Rust can perform better. But is that level of performance necessary to pull off a great game with a big paying audience in 2021? Absolutely not.
- bullen 5y ago
  I think you have yet to see electricity prices rise, in Europe we are paying alot per KWh right now only the bills haven't arrived yet (not to mention gas prices), November is going to be energy inflation resulting in debt deflationary hell (because they cannot lower rates) over here and with Evergrande and peak coal in China and the printing + fracking mess in US it's downhill from here. Eventually you won't be able to afford anything beyond 10W! Javascript is not an option on 10W for action MMO games with real character graphics. We are talking "metaverse" levels of complexity, and all the games both of you list are very simple compared to that.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    In a median 10W consumer compute future where that’s limited by electricity prices you’ll have much more pressing issues than “what does the metaverse look like”. I do think your low powered engine project is very cool though.
    - bullen 5y ago
      No you don't, the only thing separating mad max without cars from hell is if you can communicate and not feel lonely, a global 3D action MMO is the only thing that makes sense, meatspace is about to become a mess! The 3D action part of this equation is very important, without it you cannot trick the reptile brain that you are actually there, 3D MMORPGs don't trigger this at all, f.ex! Also if you use that excuse to keep building wasteful software you are not part of a solution.
      - meheleventyone 5y ago
        I lean the other way TBH in such a scenario local, meatspace relationships are going to be all the more important! Not just for loneliness but for basic survival. Likewise I’m skeptical in such an energy scenario we’d have affordable internet access or supply chains to build and equip people with low power computers. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out!
astlouis44 5y ago
Does the original Diablo PC demo ported to WebAssembly count..? https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/ https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/
astlouis44 5y ago
Also, Curse of Monkey Island which was just posted to Hacker News earlier today: Post link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723689 Game link: https://personal-1094.web.app/scummvm.html https://personal-1094.web.app/scummvm.html