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I'm really looking forward to seeing more gaming in the browser and hope it catches on. Imagine writing a game and it works on all platforms, PC, Mac, Tablet An

by xhrpost 14y ago

I'm really looking forward to seeing more gaming in the browser and hope it catches on. Imagine writing a game and it works on all platforms, PC, Mac, Tablet Android, iOS, etc. Also, TV manufacturers keep putting more powerful chips in their TV's for HD decoding. Couple with this a good browser, could we eventually see an end to console gaming because everyone's TV can play 3D games? Not to mention a lot of the TV's already have network capability. There's plenty of progress to make no doubt but it seems like a serious possibility to me.

ryandvm 14y ago
Agreed. Someone please make an AOE2 clone for the browser. It's the perfect environment for multiplayer RTS.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I think the big barrier for building a multiplayer RTS in the browser would be the lack of UDP sockets. You could certainly do something with websockets but it may involve making substantial compromises. With TVs you have the added issue that people probably don't want to replace their whole TV every couple of years just to upgrade the graphics or whatever.
  - xhrpost 14y ago
    > I think the big barrier for building a multiplayer RTS in the browser would be the lack of UDP sockets. This is brought up often but it appears some basic multiplayer is possible over websockets (I've written a very simple game using them). If UDP is that necessary, people will push for it and we'll eventually see it (or something equivalent) in the browser. > With TVs you have the added issue that people probably don't want to replace their whole TV every couple of years just to upgrade the graphics or whatever. This is turning out to be less of the case though as older PC hardware can still run newer games. The need for graphics is no longer growing faster than the resources to power them. This is especially noticable in the indie game market where rather simple graphics games have become very popular. Even high-end games don't "need" new power as much as they once did, the PS3 is what, 7 years old now?
  - daredevildave 14y ago
    Hopefully WebRTC data channels will enable UDP-like comms from the browser.
    - satori99 14y ago
      My understanding is that WebRTC includes udp-like connections between browsers directly. P2P, rather than client-server.
  - rprasad 14y ago
    AOE2 uses a "tick-based" system for synchronising input/commands, so it is possible to use websockets for multiplayer RTS simply by increasing the length of each tick. I believe AOE2 and SC2 used ticks of 200 ms or 250 ms; more modern RTS games use tick length of 100 ms. Generally, in each tick player (or AI) input is received and then transmitted to the server or all other players. In the next tick, that input is then processed by each player's individual simulation of the game world. A tick-based system does a decent job of handling latency by distracting the player the delay between input and processing through audio confirmation of the order or through a response/transition animation. It would not work for games requiring low-latency, i.e., FPS shooters.
  - jchavannes 14y ago
    I've built a few prototype multiplayer games that use web sockets (Socket.io actually) and the performance has been encouraging. One game I posted on HN had over 30 concurrent users without noticeable lag. It was also terribly inefficient. Each client had 5 msgs/sec outgoing and 150 msgs/sec incoming. The incoming messages could definitely have been optimized.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
daredevildave 14y ago
This is exactly the reason we started PlayCanvas [http://playcanvas.com http://playcanvas.com]. I don't think it will be long before there is a modern browser in every TV, phone and tablet, in addition to every desktop machine.
- xhrpost 14y ago
  I've seen you guys before, I'm gonna have to play around with this sometime. I like how you've decided to also be the publisher/CDN for the games. Right now it seems like everyone who launches some demo has to build and manage their own web presence. Something a native game developer doesn't necessarily have to do. This could help take that extra load off their back. I imagine you'll eventually offer internal APIs of sorts like Steam does, achievements, cloud storage for saved games, etc.
  - daredevildave 14y ago
    Please do get in touch. We love how easy it is to get a sample/demo/game published using PlayCanvas, we use it _all_ the time. We offer the option to download your game export and host it yourself but it's one button to publish to PlayCanvas so we're sure most people will want to do that.
rartichoke 14y ago
If you can deal with downloading a Java plugin there's some pretty advanced games that run in a browser. Example: http://www.drakensang.com http://www.drakensang.com
- kayoone 14y ago
  not really, its just a native code wrapper and most games still require Windows

by xhrpost 14y ago

ryandvm 14y ago

Agreed. Someone please make an AOE2 clone for the browser. It's the perfect environment for multiplayer RTS.

jiggy2011 14y ago
I think the big barrier for building a multiplayer RTS in the browser would be the lack of UDP sockets. You could certainly do something with websockets but it may involve making substantial compromises. With TVs you have the added issue that people probably don't want to replace their whole TV every couple of years just to upgrade the graphics or whatever.
- xhrpost 14y ago
  > I think the big barrier for building a multiplayer RTS in the browser would be the lack of UDP sockets. This is brought up often but it appears some basic multiplayer is possible over websockets (I've written a very simple game using them). If UDP is that necessary, people will push for it and we'll eventually see it (or something equivalent) in the browser. > With TVs you have the added issue that people probably don't want to replace their whole TV every couple of years just to upgrade the graphics or whatever. This is turning out to be less of the case though as older PC hardware can still run newer games. The need for graphics is no longer growing faster than the resources to power them. This is especially noticable in the indie game market where rather simple graphics games have become very popular. Even high-end games don't "need" new power as much as they once did, the PS3 is what, 7 years old now?
- daredevildave 14y ago
  Hopefully WebRTC data channels will enable UDP-like comms from the browser.
  - satori99 14y ago
    My understanding is that WebRTC includes udp-like connections between browsers directly. P2P, rather than client-server.
- rprasad 14y ago
  AOE2 uses a "tick-based" system for synchronising input/commands, so it is possible to use websockets for multiplayer RTS simply by increasing the length of each tick. I believe AOE2 and SC2 used ticks of 200 ms or 250 ms; more modern RTS games use tick length of 100 ms. Generally, in each tick player (or AI) input is received and then transmitted to the server or all other players. In the next tick, that input is then processed by each player's individual simulation of the game world. A tick-based system does a decent job of handling latency by distracting the player the delay between input and processing through audio confirmation of the order or through a response/transition animation. It would not work for games requiring low-latency, i.e., FPS shooters.
- jchavannes 14y ago
  I've built a few prototype multiplayer games that use web sockets (Socket.io actually) and the performance has been encouraging. One game I posted on HN had over 30 concurrent users without noticeable lag. It was also terribly inefficient. Each client had 5 msgs/sec outgoing and 150 msgs/sec incoming. The incoming messages could definitely have been optimized.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

daredevildave 14y ago

This is exactly the reason we started PlayCanvas [http://playcanvas.com http://playcanvas.com]. I don't think it will be long before there is a modern browser in every TV, phone and tablet, in addition to every desktop machine.

xhrpost 14y ago
I've seen you guys before, I'm gonna have to play around with this sometime. I like how you've decided to also be the publisher/CDN for the games. Right now it seems like everyone who launches some demo has to build and manage their own web presence. Something a native game developer doesn't necessarily have to do. This could help take that extra load off their back. I imagine you'll eventually offer internal APIs of sorts like Steam does, achievements, cloud storage for saved games, etc.
- daredevildave 14y ago
  Please do get in touch. We love how easy it is to get a sample/demo/game published using PlayCanvas, we use it _all_ the time. We offer the option to download your game export and host it yourself but it's one button to publish to PlayCanvas so we're sure most people will want to do that.

rartichoke 14y ago

If you can deal with downloading a Java plugin there's some pretty advanced games that run in a browser. Example: http://www.drakensang.com http://www.drakensang.com

kayoone 14y ago
not really, its just a native code wrapper and most games still require Windows