5 ms·

Why developing an HTML5 game is too damn risky

26 points by fiblye 15y ago

freedrull 15y ago
Uh yeah, of course html5 sound is awful. I'm hoping projects like areweplayingyet.org will gain traction to help solve this.
ntkachov 15y ago
>And what about those people that use the beta (e.g., me) and see the bugs and glitches as a result of your incompetence? This line discredited the whole article for me. Firstly, you're writing a video game inside a browser. This is like making a space ship that does surgery. You've got two complex systems working together of course there will be bugs. Also why on earth would you expect the browser to play the game exactly the same over the course of time. Every update to iOS or android introduces new bugs into the system. I don't understand where you come of saying that an update should never break anything ever. Canvas is massively different across browsers. Its your job to figure out the difference and account for it. The spec isn't even finalized yet. I honestly expected the author to touch on some important issues like the fact that your game is naturally open source. But this seems more like a frustrated developer expecting too much from a platform.
- fiblye 15y ago
  Honestly, people "stealing" my source code isn't that much of a worry for me. People already have ten million dollar games cracked and distributed before they're released, and honestly, I don't think somebody taking my code would change much. If they try redistributing it, I still have legal rights to it whether or not they got uncompiled code. My biggest problem is that you can have a completely working project that's literally broken overnight with a silent update. Operating system updates generally require the user to knowingly upgrade and there's always the implied risk of something strange happening. Developers can easily publicly announce incompatibilities with certain OS updates on their download page to warn new users, while an HTML5 game requires you to test every single release of every browser ever, and since everybody uses a slightly different version of a slightly different browser, it only takes one glitch for one person for your entire market to be scared off. I never said I didn't anticipate things going wrong, but that when things do go wrong, it can completely out of control in the browser world. My development of games in HTML5/Javascript has been 98% pure bliss, but the thought of a single dangerous bug making it past the testing phase gives me nightmares. I knew what I was getting into and it was primarily a test of "can I do it?", but it doesn't mean I can't complain. ;)
- azakai 15y ago
  > I honestly expected the author to touch on some important issues like the fact that your game is naturally open source. Small correction, your source is readable, but it isn't "open source" - "open source" means available under and open source license (which your code is not, unless you actually do that). Your source also doesn't need to be readable - you can obfuscate it, to the point where it is as readable as native binaries - disassembleable in theory, but only by experts.
lukifer 15y ago
Isn't this true of any platform? Apple can (and does) pull the rug out at any time. Microsoft has a history of being responsive to devs, but they're certainly not immune from bugs. And Linux and Android are so fragmented in hardware and software, that all bets are off when it comes to user experience. (I'm aware that this is a sweeping generalization.) Ultimately you have to factor in not only the quality of the platform, but also the responsiveness of the company and devs who maintain the platform. And the good news is, Google and Mozilla are usually pretty responsive. But platforms have to move slow to prevent destabilizing their other citizens, and sometimes your project gets caught in the middle. So it goes.
lord2800 15y ago
These all sound like problems that can occur on any system, let alone browser-based, html5/javascript games (and often do occur in cross-platform games). I fail to see a problem here. DISCLAIMER: I work for an html5/javascript gaming company.
- esrauch 15y ago
  That is clearly not true, when does a game that worked one day to stop working the next day on for any native desktop program, or on a mobile or console platform? The only conceivable time that I could imagine it happening is when my phone does a major version update, which happens a maximum of once in the entire phone's lifetime, is very visible to me (it would be clear to me that it isn't completely the developer's fault), meanwhile chrome updates every week silently. If any website works one day and not the next I would always assume the developers had pushed a bad build.
  - lord2800 15y ago
    How about when an OS ships an update? A library you're using (you didn't write that whole audio and gfx layer yourself, did you?) ships an update? A crippling bug gets exposed in some API you use? This is by and large not the first time we've run into problems like this before--is the Internet's memory so short that DLL Hell is a forgotten concept? Any time you rely on any third-party code anywhere you run the risk of something working one day and not the next, just by virtue of an update.
    - esrauch 15y ago
      You explicitly are talking about historical issues which are mostly resolved. When you deploy an application that uses Direct X you target exactly one version, and you will never be using a different version of it unless you as the developer choose for it to happen. OS shipping updates causing games to break is a pretty rare thing, several orders of magnitude less likely to occur than a browser shipping with a change in behavior of an HTML5 feature. The risk clearly does exist everywhere, but its mostly a solved problem on Windows, and it's certainly a solved problem on Xbox. It's a monthly issue in browsers.
hyperturtle 15y ago
Maybe you can try to library for sound. SoundManager 2 does html5 sound and falls back to flash. http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ Apparantly there are issues with looping (http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/demo/api/ http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/demo/api/) but it points to (http://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/4499319436/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/4499319436/) as a way to fix sound loops. Regarding other technical problems: I've had that issue too with Chrome beta, using csstransforms caused my textboxes to be unclickable(but still tab-able). My solution was to downgrade to the normal Chrome version and hoped it'll be fixed by the time it hit stable.
azakai 15y ago
Chrome has bugs and so do all the other browsers - not sure it is fair to single it out here in this post. Overall, sure, browsers have bugs and it is a tricky platform because of that. But, it also reaches far more people than any other platform. That's a tradeoff, if it makes sense for you, make a game for it, if not then don't.
AshleysBrain 15y ago
Just a heads up, look in to using the Web Audio API on Chrome instead of the <audio> tag. It's far better and pretty bulletproof in my experience, if missing one or two features <audio> had.
- bradford 15y ago
  I haven't heard of the Web Audio API, so forgive me if this sounds ignorant, but isn't this the kind of thing that should piss off anyone who's interested in consistent web-standards across all browsers? Aren't browser specific API's the kind of thing that led to IE becoming such a hated piece of software?
T_S_ 15y ago
Surprising conclusion at the end: "I’ll consider development in Lua in the future." Interesting.
robterrell 15y ago
Been there, it's no fun. I spent last year making an HTML5 game. On the day we delivered the final beta, a silent Chrome update caused an error and all of our sprites started losing their z-index and thus flickering like mad. But only in Chrome, in the newly released version. I had to tell the publisher to use Safari or Firefox while we figured it out... Which was not what they wanted to hear. That said, I enjoy developing for the platform and think the huge benefit in audience size for social games makes life on the bleeding edge worth the pain. These are the early days. It'll settle down.

26 points by fiblye 15y ago

Uh yeah, of course html5 sound is awful. I'm hoping projects like areweplayingyet.org will gain traction to help solve this.

ntkachov 15y ago

>And what about those people that use the beta (e.g., me) and see the bugs and glitches as a result of your incompetence? This line discredited the whole article for me. Firstly, you're writing a video game inside a browser. This is like making a space ship that does surgery. You've got two complex systems working together of course there will be bugs. Also why on earth would you expect the browser to play the game exactly the same over the course of time. Every update to iOS or android introduces new bugs into the system. I don't understand where you come of saying that an update should never break anything ever. Canvas is massively different across browsers. Its your job to figure out the difference and account for it. The spec isn't even finalized yet. I honestly expected the author to touch on some important issues like the fact that your game is naturally open source. But this seems more like a frustrated developer expecting too much from a platform.

fiblye 15y ago
Honestly, people "stealing" my source code isn't that much of a worry for me. People already have ten million dollar games cracked and distributed before they're released, and honestly, I don't think somebody taking my code would change much. If they try redistributing it, I still have legal rights to it whether or not they got uncompiled code. My biggest problem is that you can have a completely working project that's literally broken overnight with a silent update. Operating system updates generally require the user to knowingly upgrade and there's always the implied risk of something strange happening. Developers can easily publicly announce incompatibilities with certain OS updates on their download page to warn new users, while an HTML5 game requires you to test every single release of every browser ever, and since everybody uses a slightly different version of a slightly different browser, it only takes one glitch for one person for your entire market to be scared off. I never said I didn't anticipate things going wrong, but that when things do go wrong, it can completely out of control in the browser world. My development of games in HTML5/Javascript has been 98% pure bliss, but the thought of a single dangerous bug making it past the testing phase gives me nightmares. I knew what I was getting into and it was primarily a test of "can I do it?", but it doesn't mean I can't complain. ;)
azakai 15y ago
> I honestly expected the author to touch on some important issues like the fact that your game is naturally open source. Small correction, your source is readable, but it isn't "open source" - "open source" means available under and open source license (which your code is not, unless you actually do that). Your source also doesn't need to be readable - you can obfuscate it, to the point where it is as readable as native binaries - disassembleable in theory, but only by experts.

lukifer 15y ago

Isn't this true of any platform? Apple can (and does) pull the rug out at any time. Microsoft has a history of being responsive to devs, but they're certainly not immune from bugs. And Linux and Android are so fragmented in hardware and software, that all bets are off when it comes to user experience. (I'm aware that this is a sweeping generalization.) Ultimately you have to factor in not only the quality of the platform, but also the responsiveness of the company and devs who maintain the platform. And the good news is, Google and Mozilla are usually pretty responsive. But platforms have to move slow to prevent destabilizing their other citizens, and sometimes your project gets caught in the middle. So it goes.

lord2800 15y ago

These all sound like problems that can occur on any system, let alone browser-based, html5/javascript games (and often do occur in cross-platform games). I fail to see a problem here. DISCLAIMER: I work for an html5/javascript gaming company.

esrauch 15y ago
That is clearly not true, when does a game that worked one day to stop working the next day on for any native desktop program, or on a mobile or console platform? The only conceivable time that I could imagine it happening is when my phone does a major version update, which happens a maximum of once in the entire phone's lifetime, is very visible to me (it would be clear to me that it isn't completely the developer's fault), meanwhile chrome updates every week silently. If any website works one day and not the next I would always assume the developers had pushed a bad build.
- lord2800 15y ago
  How about when an OS ships an update? A library you're using (you didn't write that whole audio and gfx layer yourself, did you?) ships an update? A crippling bug gets exposed in some API you use? This is by and large not the first time we've run into problems like this before--is the Internet's memory so short that DLL Hell is a forgotten concept? Any time you rely on any third-party code anywhere you run the risk of something working one day and not the next, just by virtue of an update.
  - esrauch 15y ago
    You explicitly are talking about historical issues which are mostly resolved. When you deploy an application that uses Direct X you target exactly one version, and you will never be using a different version of it unless you as the developer choose for it to happen. OS shipping updates causing games to break is a pretty rare thing, several orders of magnitude less likely to occur than a browser shipping with a change in behavior of an HTML5 feature. The risk clearly does exist everywhere, but its mostly a solved problem on Windows, and it's certainly a solved problem on Xbox. It's a monthly issue in browsers.

hyperturtle 15y ago

Maybe you can try to library for sound. SoundManager 2 does html5 sound and falls back to flash. http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ Apparantly there are issues with looping (http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/demo/api/ http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/demo/api/) but it points to (http://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/4499319436/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/4499319436/) as a way to fix sound loops. Regarding other technical problems: I've had that issue too with Chrome beta, using csstransforms caused my textboxes to be unclickable(but still tab-able). My solution was to downgrade to the normal Chrome version and hoped it'll be fixed by the time it hit stable.

azakai 15y ago

Chrome has bugs and so do all the other browsers - not sure it is fair to single it out here in this post. Overall, sure, browsers have bugs and it is a tricky platform because of that. But, it also reaches far more people than any other platform. That's a tradeoff, if it makes sense for you, make a game for it, if not then don't.

AshleysBrain 15y ago

Just a heads up, look in to using the Web Audio API on Chrome instead of the <audio> tag. It's far better and pretty bulletproof in my experience, if missing one or two features <audio> had.

bradford 15y ago
I haven't heard of the Web Audio API, so forgive me if this sounds ignorant, but isn't this the kind of thing that should piss off anyone who's interested in consistent web-standards across all browsers? Aren't browser specific API's the kind of thing that led to IE becoming such a hated piece of software?

T_S_ 15y ago

Surprising conclusion at the end: "I’ll consider development in Lua in the future." Interesting.

robterrell 15y ago

Been there, it's no fun. I spent last year making an HTML5 game. On the day we delivered the final beta, a silent Chrome update caused an error and all of our sprites started losing their z-index and thus flickering like mad. But only in Chrome, in the newly released version. I had to tell the publisher to use Safari or Firefox while we figured it out... Which was not what they wanted to hear. That said, I enjoy developing for the platform and think the huge benefit in audience size for social games makes life on the bleeding edge worth the pain. These are the early days. It'll settle down.