7 ms·

You left out the part where running WebGL via Unity was an absolute nightmare, and was fudged in as a stopgap when NPAPI was deprecated and there was no more Fl

You left out the part where running WebGL via Unity was an absolute nightmare, and was fudged in as a stopgap when NPAPI was deprecated and there was no more Flash web player target. Barring that, before you even got the build up on the web you got to sit through 20 minutes of emscripten and wasm magic compiling, hoping and praying you considered any bridging methods to .Net from the frontend that don’t appear until they’re useless emscripten errors in the unity console. Oh, you’d like audio/video comms in your product? Well, hope you’re ready to build the non-supported WebGL compatible version of Photon/Agora’s voice subsystems. Don’t get me wrong, I’m card carrying Unityman and just backed off of XR development recently in favor of more stable webdev work… but WebGL as a solution to high-performance browser gaming was an absolute shitshow from start to finish and I’m not even sure WebGPU lands in time for anything useful to be done with it to deprecate WebGL “support”. I assume that the lightweight 3D solutions based on threejs, etc. are going to drag the rest of the game engine industry kicking and screaming into whatever best solution arises and this wasm-as-k8s sounds like a neat component of that.

kllrnohj 5y ago
I meant Unity already solved the "make creating a cross platform game trivial" thing. Games on the web face far greater issues than WASM or WebGPU can solve (like a complete lack of an asset delivery pipeline), unless you're only after casual flash-style gaming anyway. But mobile largely replaced that market.
- nullifidian 5y ago
  Installing a native unity game requires more trust than running a game in a web browser. Web browser games would also work on platforms like Chromebooks, and don't require Google's or Apple's store approval, with their 30% cut.
  - jaegerpicker 5y ago
    And Streaming games does that even better over WebRTC in the browser and we have that today! With a good internet connection (like 5g that is rolling out) the experience is fantastic. I bought my kids iPad Mini's for christmas, they have both 5g and we have 1gb internet at home and GeForce Now and XBox Cloud Gaming have been absolutely great for them. A ps5 controller and the ipad mini can be the best gaming device available today IMO.
    - nullifidian 5y ago
      Streaming games is no different from distribution using a large platform/store with accompanying commissions -- you can't do it independently as a small company. Also more demanding towards one's internet connection and has higher running costs, since you have to pay for both traffic and a server side GPU, so not viable for a certain percentage of lower budget/cheaper/free games.
      - jaegerpicker 5y ago
        Almost no one can do game development as a small company without a large platform of some kind. The economies of scale are just too much for small indie dev style game studios to overcome. Speaking as someone that was an indie dev and has been around the game industry for 20 years. I highly doubt that is going to change anytime soon. Webassembly certainly won't fix that issue. I'm not sure what that comment has to do with the subject. With Webassembly you won't have to pay for server side gpu but you will have to pay for discovery, hosting/bandwidth, payment, likely some form of advertising, and some level of support. There is no free lunch and large platforms will nearly always win for software distribution.
        nullifidian 5y ago
        I'm not denying any of that, and said something similar in another comment. But Minecraft, Escape from Tarkov came into existence without dependence on a store or a platform. Same for Runescape, albeit in a different time. WASM+WebGPU will make an appearance of such things more possible in 2022+. It's just a technical capability. A web implementation (of an online game) could come in addition to the ones available on Steam and Android/Apple, etc.
  - kllrnohj 5y ago
    And where are you going to get your game assets from? Are you going to try and stream those over the network? Good luck with that. Or are you going to show a long loading screen as you try and fight with local storage limits to prefetch all your assets? To give you a scope of the problem of game assets, "small" indie games like Stardew Valley or Terraria are close to 500MB. How on earth are you going to deploy that on the web? And if you are assuming a reliable, super-fast internet connection to stream game assets over (along with paying for the CDN to host it), well cloud gaming already does this better and already exists in a meaningful way. Why struggle to fight with the incredibly pathetic limits of a web browser when you can just stream a video?
    - nullifidian 5y ago
      >"small" indie games like Stardew Valley or Terraria are close to 500MB. How on earth are you going to deploy that on the web? With lazy loading? Or just an installation progress bar. What's the problem? The user has to click on the permissions dialog, allowing extended space usage, and that's it. >reliable, super-fast internet connection It wouldn't need a connection more reliable than what Steam requires for proper functioning. >along with paying for the CDN to host it I assure you the costs for a minimally successful game are minuscule when compared to the 30% cut Steam takes. What you lose is the exposure that a release on a store like Steam gives you. That's not an insignificant problem, and is much more problematic than all the technical stuff you've mentioned. >Why struggle to fight with the incredibly pathetic limits of a web browser when you can just stream a video? Answered in a different comment.
      - kllrnohj 5y ago
        > With lazy loading? And now you're back to 2006 era performance on a good day. 72 Mbit/s would be considered a pretty good internet connection. It's also the speed of a PS3's blu-ray drive. People have been complaining about the 80-100MB/s on the outgoing generation of consoles for a long time now. Regressing by ~10x isn't a compelling argument. > Or just an installation progress bar. What's the problem? Without background downloads or updates? Every time someone wants to play your game, they're forced to stare at a progress bar that can easily take upwards of an hour depending on the game ("smaller" 3d games like subnautica push 10GB)? And you somehow don't see the problem? > I assure you the costs for a minimally successful game are minuscule when compared to the 30% cut Steam takes. And I assure you that you don't have to deploy on steam, either. You can both be a native game and get all the benefits of it and not pay anyone an app store fee! You don't have to suffer the web's treadmill of being a decade+ behind to have that.
- sleepybrett 5y ago
  .. for money.
pjmlp 5y ago
3D on the Web is only good for online shops and trivial first generation playstation games. 3D API for 2010 hardware or last generation raytracing hardware, what do you prefer? Unity cannot do anything against castrated 3D APIs. No wonder streaming is where everyone is going instead.
- echelon 5y ago
  > 3D on the Web is only good for online shops and trivial first generation playstation games. That is absolutely not going to continue being the case. > No wonder streaming is where everyone is going instead. "Pixel streaming" is great if you don't have latency requirements or your client has a poor GPU, but otherwise native 3D is superior.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Until WebGPU provides parity with native 3D, it is going to be the case no matter what. Heck, 10 years of Web 3D and still there are no proper debugging tools that match native ones.
    - echelon 5y ago
      WASM is going to provide more than enough impetus for tooling. The ecosystem will explode, and the tooling will come with it.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        The future is made of dreamers after all.

kllrnohj 5y ago

I meant Unity already solved the "make creating a cross platform game trivial" thing. Games on the web face far greater issues than WASM or WebGPU can solve (like a complete lack of an asset delivery pipeline), unless you're only after casual flash-style gaming anyway. But mobile largely replaced that market.

nullifidian 5y ago
Installing a native unity game requires more trust than running a game in a web browser. Web browser games would also work on platforms like Chromebooks, and don't require Google's or Apple's store approval, with their 30% cut.
- jaegerpicker 5y ago
  And Streaming games does that even better over WebRTC in the browser and we have that today! With a good internet connection (like 5g that is rolling out) the experience is fantastic. I bought my kids iPad Mini's for christmas, they have both 5g and we have 1gb internet at home and GeForce Now and XBox Cloud Gaming have been absolutely great for them. A ps5 controller and the ipad mini can be the best gaming device available today IMO.
  - nullifidian 5y ago
    Streaming games is no different from distribution using a large platform/store with accompanying commissions -- you can't do it independently as a small company. Also more demanding towards one's internet connection and has higher running costs, since you have to pay for both traffic and a server side GPU, so not viable for a certain percentage of lower budget/cheaper/free games.
    - jaegerpicker 5y ago
      Almost no one can do game development as a small company without a large platform of some kind. The economies of scale are just too much for small indie dev style game studios to overcome. Speaking as someone that was an indie dev and has been around the game industry for 20 years. I highly doubt that is going to change anytime soon. Webassembly certainly won't fix that issue. I'm not sure what that comment has to do with the subject. With Webassembly you won't have to pay for server side gpu but you will have to pay for discovery, hosting/bandwidth, payment, likely some form of advertising, and some level of support. There is no free lunch and large platforms will nearly always win for software distribution.
      - nullifidian 5y ago
        I'm not denying any of that, and said something similar in another comment. But Minecraft, Escape from Tarkov came into existence without dependence on a store or a platform. Same for Runescape, albeit in a different time. WASM+WebGPU will make an appearance of such things more possible in 2022+. It's just a technical capability. A web implementation (of an online game) could come in addition to the ones available on Steam and Android/Apple, etc.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  And where are you going to get your game assets from? Are you going to try and stream those over the network? Good luck with that. Or are you going to show a long loading screen as you try and fight with local storage limits to prefetch all your assets? To give you a scope of the problem of game assets, "small" indie games like Stardew Valley or Terraria are close to 500MB. How on earth are you going to deploy that on the web? And if you are assuming a reliable, super-fast internet connection to stream game assets over (along with paying for the CDN to host it), well cloud gaming already does this better and already exists in a meaningful way. Why struggle to fight with the incredibly pathetic limits of a web browser when you can just stream a video?
  - nullifidian 5y ago
    >"small" indie games like Stardew Valley or Terraria are close to 500MB. How on earth are you going to deploy that on the web? With lazy loading? Or just an installation progress bar. What's the problem? The user has to click on the permissions dialog, allowing extended space usage, and that's it. >reliable, super-fast internet connection It wouldn't need a connection more reliable than what Steam requires for proper functioning. >along with paying for the CDN to host it I assure you the costs for a minimally successful game are minuscule when compared to the 30% cut Steam takes. What you lose is the exposure that a release on a store like Steam gives you. That's not an insignificant problem, and is much more problematic than all the technical stuff you've mentioned. >Why struggle to fight with the incredibly pathetic limits of a web browser when you can just stream a video? Answered in a different comment.
    - kllrnohj 5y ago
      > With lazy loading? And now you're back to 2006 era performance on a good day. 72 Mbit/s would be considered a pretty good internet connection. It's also the speed of a PS3's blu-ray drive. People have been complaining about the 80-100MB/s on the outgoing generation of consoles for a long time now. Regressing by ~10x isn't a compelling argument. > Or just an installation progress bar. What's the problem? Without background downloads or updates? Every time someone wants to play your game, they're forced to stare at a progress bar that can easily take upwards of an hour depending on the game ("smaller" 3d games like subnautica push 10GB)? And you somehow don't see the problem? > I assure you the costs for a minimally successful game are minuscule when compared to the 30% cut Steam takes. And I assure you that you don't have to deploy on steam, either. You can both be a native game and get all the benefits of it and not pay anyone an app store fee! You don't have to suffer the web's treadmill of being a decade+ behind to have that.
sleepybrett 5y ago
.. for money.

pjmlp 5y ago

3D on the Web is only good for online shops and trivial first generation playstation games. 3D API for 2010 hardware or last generation raytracing hardware, what do you prefer? Unity cannot do anything against castrated 3D APIs. No wonder streaming is where everyone is going instead.

echelon 5y ago
> 3D on the Web is only good for online shops and trivial first generation playstation games. That is absolutely not going to continue being the case. > No wonder streaming is where everyone is going instead. "Pixel streaming" is great if you don't have latency requirements or your client has a poor GPU, but otherwise native 3D is superior.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Until WebGPU provides parity with native 3D, it is going to be the case no matter what. Heck, 10 years of Web 3D and still there are no proper debugging tools that match native ones.
  - echelon 5y ago
    WASM is going to provide more than enough impetus for tooling. The ecosystem will explode, and the tooling will come with it.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      The future is made of dreamers after all.