13 ms·

I upvoted this because it is awesome, and it is, well... Bomberman. But I'm genuinely curious: at what point will we stop being fascinated by what can be done

I upvoted this because it is awesome, and it is, well... Bomberman. But I'm genuinely curious: at what point will we stop being fascinated by what can be done in HTML5, and actually start focusing more on what is actually being done -- regardless of the technology used. Or to put it another way: when will HTML5 games stop feeling like HTML5 games? For example, if this were on a console, I think it would still be cool, but it's lacking a certain "game" feel to it. It still feels like playing an old school game on a PC keyboard, and there still seems to be a sort of keyboard-to-response latency that I find in most HTML5 games. Not to mention, no music/sound. Again, I'm not knocking it for the effort. I still think it's pretty dang fun, even for an HTML5 game. But it still feels like an HTML5 game.

kerno 14y ago
This is how we get there. HTML5 is pretty fresh and it's games like this that let us understand it's capabilities and to improve upon them. I mean, this is a mini MMO implemented in HTML5. That's a pretty big step forward from Pacman in HTML5 already.
- jader201 14y ago
  Yeah, I definitely agree that this is a big step from anything I've seen thus far. This was more to kick off a discussion about "are we there yet?", and if not, what is still missing? I mean, I know what I think is missing, but I've not tried building HTML5 games to understand if HTML5 is the bottleneck, or if other dependencies are the bottleneck.
  - MrScruff 14y ago
    Perhaps what's missing is a good reason for choosing HTML5 over traditional technologies when you're investing in a new project. Pros: Runtime is very widely available Cons: Relatively poor performance Monetization strategy is not clear Browser differences increase cost of development
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      You also have to mess with Javascript on some level, even if you are compiling down from something else. People who are professional game developers have invested a lot in C++ , have a lot of experience in that area and tend to see Javascript as something for developing websites with. So on top of the other problems you have persuade them that it's something worth spending the time to get proficient in.
      - pifflesnort 14y ago
        If you're coming from a deep machine and C++ understanding, it's not that JavaScript is tough to become proficient in, but rather, that you of all people have every reason to fully comprehend why it's such an awful implementation choice for this proposed purpose. It's not as if the PC or mobile game market is suffering for lack of cross-platform browser-based compatibility, so why switch to a suboptimal tool?
      - sixothree 14y ago
        Do you still have to deal with all of the DOM stuff in html5/javascript?
        jiggy2011 14y ago
        Yes and no. It's all still there of course. I imagine though if you want to build a game you don't use DOM elements for sprites etc. You just create a giant <canvas> element that you draw to as you would draw to a frame buffer in DirectX etc. You could use DOM elements for the UI though I guess.
        joshuacc 14y ago
        Yep. If you examine the source of this game that's exactly how they handle the game itself.
- undershirt 14y ago
  Here is a link to html5 pacman if you're interested. It was DMCA'd on github, but it's here now: http://pacman.shaunew.com/ http://pacman.shaunew.com/ It's broken on chrome now for some reason, but works in IE9, Firefox, Safari and Wii-U.
basicallydan 14y ago
We need to treat HTML5 games like games. We need to market them and release them and form a community around them, and then we need to release updates and make them moddable.
mrspeaker 14y ago
The medium is just waiting for the game devs now: remember back in 2004 when someone wrote a brilliant pretty-much-exact copy of Lemmings in the browser? Well, it's taken 9 years and the HTML5 buzzword to start getting game devs to start poking round in the space. Now that it's started we can move past all of the basic nostalgic tech demos and start writing some more innovative stuff! [Edit: it's back online, woo! http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/ http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/]
- sltkr 14y ago
  I thought that Emberwind port that Opera wrote/commissioned to show off their HTML5 support was pretty impressive already (and that was in 2010): http://operasoftware.github.com/Emberwind/ http://operasoftware.github.com/Emberwind/
sehugg 14y ago
This is a pretty good start: http://play.goko.com/Dominion/gameClient.html http://play.goko.com/Dominion/gameClient.html
- shizcakes 14y ago
  I'm glad that it's done in HTML5, but man, if you try and dissect the code - it's insane. No wonder they had large amounts of bugs for quite some time.
- chrisduesing 14y ago
  Looks nice, and not only is the source code not minified/obfuscated, it's actually well commented.
- 1wheel 14y ago
  Or, you know, the less laggy and more functional http://dominion.isotropic.org/ http://dominion.isotropic.org/ I actually wrote a chrome extension to add a log to goko https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goko-log-viewer/kaignighoceeemhinbbophdeogpnedjn https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goko-log-viewer/ka... Post about some of the goko's issues http://www.roadtolarissa.com/speed-issues-with-gokos-online-dominion-implementation/ http://www.roadtolarissa.com/speed-issues-with-gokos-online-...
swah 14y ago
We need to stop excusing games being slow because they're written in HTML5. They are still behind Flash games from 10 years ago.
- robin_reala 14y ago
  They’re really not. Go look at anything on (for example) Turbulenz ( https://turbulenz.com/ https://turbulenz.com/ ) and that’s as good as anything Flash has done.
  - kybernetyk 14y ago
    All it did was blow up my browser's RAM usage to 2GB and then deliver ~2fps. IIRC Flash did better.
    - qu4z-2 14y ago
      If by "better" you mean "blew up my browser's RAM usage to 2GB AND maxed out an entire core" then that's consistent with my flash experience (on 64-bit Linux, which I realise is not exactly a first-class citizen)
      - olitreadwell 14y ago
        I agree complaints like this are currently valid in some respects, but the good thing is that feedback loops like this will eventually result in the same efficiency we come to expect from flash games on HTML5.
        dgesang 14y ago
        Eventually, but not any time soon.
Shish2k 14y ago
Web Apps set us back 20 years in pretty much every respect except ease of deployment (1992 - people are impressed that Wolfenstein 3D gets 60FPS on a 100MHz Pentium; 2012 - people are impressed that Wolfenstein 3D (in Javascript!!!!111omg) gets 15FPS without sound on an 8-core 3GHz box). With the exponential rate of development I doubt it'll take a full 20 years to catch up, but it'll still be a while before we've completely reinvented all of the wheels... But yeah, for the forseeable future, "look at how I re-implemented this ancient technology with modern foundations, and it only took half the time! (And 10% of the efficiency and 100x more RAM)" is all we have to look forward to :-(
- ruok0101 14y ago
  I think this overlooks all the pluses of this new "medium". How did you get your copy of wolfenstein in 1992? Travel to the radioshack, get a stack of disks, feed them one by one into your trs80? Within seconds this morning I was playing this game - with a 1000 other people simultaneously. Amazing in my book.
  - teamonkey 14y ago
    It's not competing with 1992 distribution though, it's competing with 2013 distribution.
    - ruok0101 14y ago
      I just bought my son a digital edition of Diablo 3 the other day. It was far from smooth sailing.
      - brokenparser 14y ago
        But is Diablo 3 played in a browser? Thought so.
        stan_rogers 14y ago
        In exactly what way is this question a follow-on from the parent comment? The statement was, to paraphrase: "Purchasing and installing native applications can still suck, even with '2013 distribution'." IOW, all that's been saved in 20-odd years is the drive to the retail store, the drudgery of swapping floppies and (usually) the task of manually configuring a memory manager. We're far from an instant-on, pay-and-play world for native apps (and in some cases you still need to be connected to get moment-by-moment permission to run the app you "purchased"—the internet as dongle).
delian66 14y ago
The most impressive html5 game I've played so far with nice graphics, music, and most importantly pretty responsive feedback is 'Save the day' : https://turbulenz.com/games/save-the-day/play https://turbulenz.com/games/save-the-day/play The first time I played it, I had assumed it was a Flash game, and not html5, based on the quality of it.
- kayoone 14y ago
  that game is totally awesome!
- robterrell 14y ago
  Is that really an HTML5 engine? It forced me to download a DMG containing "TurbulenzEngineInstaller.app" which itself contains "npturbulenz.plugin" and an "install_script" that installs that plugin into "/Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/". About as good as you can get plugin installation to be, I guess, but it's not what I'd expect from an HTML5 game.
  - jamesaustin 14y ago
    The site offers to install a plugin as a fallback for browsers that don't appear to offer the required HTML5 APIs (mainly WebGL). This allows the JavaScript/WebGL games to run on a wider range of browsers (particularly IE and when required APIs are locked behind a developer switch.)
mtgx 14y ago
They could always use WebGL to get a 10x improvement in graphics for the same performance requirement.
- arasmussen 14y ago
  They could. But then they would lose support for 30% of their users.
  - ivanpopelyshev 14y ago
    I already implemented webgl renderer, but it has some bugs. I will switch it on ASAP. Both 2d and webgl renderer has the same interface, but different kind of optimizations, so there's no point to use webgl without acceleration. If your browser can draw 20,000 rects in 500ms, then bombermine will use webgl.
saraid216 14y ago
> But I'm genuinely curious: at what point will we stop being fascinated by what can be done in HTML5 Go in any store that sells video games. Look at the backs of all the boxes. Find similarities.
ronyeh 14y ago
HTML5 just needs a better sound API (e.g., programmatic playback, midi) so that we can make better games/apps. Many games just fall back to Flash for their sound.
- DucktourDreams 14y ago
  I'll just leave this here. https://www.google.com/search?q=html5+midi https://www.google.com/search?q=html5+midi
  - rartichoke 14y ago
    The support for this is questionable. It's barely acceptable in Chrome and even in Chrome it falls really short. The timing is awful in a lot of cases which makes it pretty much unusable for anything but maybe background tracks. I've had audio clips that had to be played in a 50ms time frame fail to play back a third of the time on occasion. I'd rather have no sound than buggy sound.
  - ronyeh 14y ago
    Thanks for your link, but I've investigated MIDI support in JS. I actually work on piano/guitar apps, and would love to build a high performing, low latency app that hooks up with a physical keyboard. If you know how this can be done, please let me know! The last time I looked into this, the best solution I could come up with was a Java applet. :-(
    - chipsy 14y ago
      The way forward is going to be via the Google-led Web Audio spec, as well as the complementary MIDI device spec - it's not "there" yet, though, since these specs are still non-finalized. But I'm working on building up the playback capabilities as a side project. I made a "true" Soundfont2 + SMF playback engine for Flash/Haxe, which is open-source(zlib) and somewhat usable in real-world: http://spacecreeps.com/apps/triad-synth/index.html http://spacecreeps.com/apps/triad-synth/index.html Now I'm working on the next generation of it, since I was still learning my way around audio with that one and made a mess of the architecture. I'm starting off with a Web Audio-for-Haxe project( early stages, you can watch it here https://github.com/triplefox/hxAudio https://github.com/triplefox/hxAudio ) - I'll be building off of that to add the synthesis and MIDI parts, so that you have pretty much everything needed for the playback parts of an audio app; recording isn't on my radar yet - especially since the specs are very early still. It will be possible to compile out the lib to pure JS, so you won't necessarily have to be using Haxe if that's not your workflow.
Yahivin 14y ago
Look into Red Ice, a local multiplayer HTML5 game played with Xbox gamepads.
SolarUpNote 14y ago
When will tools like Flash be created for HTML5/javascript? (with drawing tools, animation tools, etc)
- ponyous 14y ago
  I think adobe is already making something like this. I'm not sure but I think its adobe edge?
- paperkettle 14y ago
  Some stuff in that direction http://www.createjs.com/#!/EaselJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/EaselJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/TweenJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/TweenJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/SoundJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/SoundJS sad that flash has so many issues (security, performance, etc) because there are some really nice compositional tools for creators in that ecosystem.
rogueSkib 14y ago
If you're interested in HTML5 games that don't feel like HTML5 games, I think that Kiwi Run is a great example. You can play it on the web here: http://www.icepopbeat.com/ http://www.icepopbeat.com/ but they also used Game Closure's devkit to deploy the game on iOS and Android; the performance looks great on all three platforms. As far as browsers though, I've only played it in Chrome :)
yati 14y ago
With more and more "nativish" APIs being added to HTML5 (like the whole suite of mobile device APIs coming with Firefox OS), browsers are becoming functionally more and more similar to operating systems, just that the design is terrible for an OS. Unless browser design is revolutionized in and out, we will have to keep making compromises like this one. We need to integrate Web capabilities within the OS, not the other way round. That said, I'm off to play Bomberman now.
yason 14y ago
I've observed that people actually want old school style games but they en masse don't want to install emulators to play them. I think HTML5 is just a redeployment device to the time when computer games were just simple and fun.
goggles99 14y ago
I just don't get it - someone please smack me down and give me a convincing argument on how HTML5/CSS/JavaScript is a more innovative technology than Flash/Silverlight? The only pro I know of is that it runs on IOS and flash does not (actually flash does run on JailBroken IOS). In 3 years IOS will power less than 20% of mobile devices. What then? My big rub with HTML5/CSS/JavaScript and all this standards crap is that it moves sooooo slowly. I prefer innovation at whatever speed the minds of man can allow. Now we are restricted to creating frameworks built on top of (and limited by) HTML5 to create any kind of innovation (same with JavaScript) it makes me sick. I saw apps like this a decade ago written in Flash. I know that widespread compatibility is the reason that things like HTML5 win out, that and lazy developers who don't want technology to change/innovate because that would mean that they would have to learn something new more often. What is my solution? I prefer the plug-in model. I think the spec that browsers should follow is one for an secure and OPEN Plugin architecture. If this concept was adopted, we would have a lot more (and better) options besides HTML, Flash and Silverlight to write web apps in. I think of it like this. Look at the iPhone, I picture every app you download as basically being a plug-in for IOS. Each can be written with their own completely different language and UI markup (and many are). Over 30% of IOS apps are not written in C/Objective C. There are a myriad of tools, frameworks and development environments which compile other languages and link them against the IOS libraries. This is how the web should be. That is more OPEN than following a spec that is publicly available, it gives inventors/innovators much more FREEDOM to make the world a better place.
- vidarh 14y ago
  We tried the plugin model back in the 90's. It was uniformly rejected by users and developers alike. Flash was pretty much the only plugin that managed to get wide enough adoption. And flash is going the way of the dodo because innovation couldn't happen at top speed, because it was limited by a gatekeeper that insisted on keeping it closed. The lacklustre support for Silverlight was a demonstration of how badly we were burned by flash. While it's taking a long time to catch up, we're now free to expand the capabilities without being in a situation where a single party can hold everyone for ransom by refusing to support specific browsers or OS's. There are many negatives to having HTML5/CSS/Javascript as the foundation, but they are dwarfed by the problems of the alternatives we've had to deal with.

kerno 14y ago

This is how we get there. HTML5 is pretty fresh and it's games like this that let us understand it's capabilities and to improve upon them. I mean, this is a mini MMO implemented in HTML5. That's a pretty big step forward from Pacman in HTML5 already.

jader201 14y ago
Yeah, I definitely agree that this is a big step from anything I've seen thus far. This was more to kick off a discussion about "are we there yet?", and if not, what is still missing? I mean, I know what I think is missing, but I've not tried building HTML5 games to understand if HTML5 is the bottleneck, or if other dependencies are the bottleneck.
- MrScruff 14y ago
  Perhaps what's missing is a good reason for choosing HTML5 over traditional technologies when you're investing in a new project. Pros: Runtime is very widely available Cons: Relatively poor performance Monetization strategy is not clear Browser differences increase cost of development
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    You also have to mess with Javascript on some level, even if you are compiling down from something else. People who are professional game developers have invested a lot in C++ , have a lot of experience in that area and tend to see Javascript as something for developing websites with. So on top of the other problems you have persuade them that it's something worth spending the time to get proficient in.
    - pifflesnort 14y ago
      If you're coming from a deep machine and C++ understanding, it's not that JavaScript is tough to become proficient in, but rather, that you of all people have every reason to fully comprehend why it's such an awful implementation choice for this proposed purpose. It's not as if the PC or mobile game market is suffering for lack of cross-platform browser-based compatibility, so why switch to a suboptimal tool?
    - sixothree 14y ago
      Do you still have to deal with all of the DOM stuff in html5/javascript?
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        Yes and no. It's all still there of course. I imagine though if you want to build a game you don't use DOM elements for sprites etc. You just create a giant <canvas> element that you draw to as you would draw to a frame buffer in DirectX etc. You could use DOM elements for the UI though I guess.
        joshuacc 14y ago
        Yep. If you examine the source of this game that's exactly how they handle the game itself.
undershirt 14y ago
Here is a link to html5 pacman if you're interested. It was DMCA'd on github, but it's here now: http://pacman.shaunew.com/ http://pacman.shaunew.com/ It's broken on chrome now for some reason, but works in IE9, Firefox, Safari and Wii-U.

basicallydan 14y ago

We need to treat HTML5 games like games. We need to market them and release them and form a community around them, and then we need to release updates and make them moddable.

mrspeaker 14y ago

The medium is just waiting for the game devs now: remember back in 2004 when someone wrote a brilliant pretty-much-exact copy of Lemmings in the browser? Well, it's taken 9 years and the HTML5 buzzword to start getting game devs to start poking round in the space. Now that it's started we can move past all of the basic nostalgic tech demos and start writing some more innovative stuff! [Edit: it's back online, woo! http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/ http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/]

sltkr 14y ago
I thought that Emberwind port that Opera wrote/commissioned to show off their HTML5 support was pretty impressive already (and that was in 2010): http://operasoftware.github.com/Emberwind/ http://operasoftware.github.com/Emberwind/

sehugg 14y ago

This is a pretty good start: http://play.goko.com/Dominion/gameClient.html http://play.goko.com/Dominion/gameClient.html

shizcakes 14y ago
I'm glad that it's done in HTML5, but man, if you try and dissect the code - it's insane. No wonder they had large amounts of bugs for quite some time.
chrisduesing 14y ago
Looks nice, and not only is the source code not minified/obfuscated, it's actually well commented.
1wheel 14y ago
Or, you know, the less laggy and more functional http://dominion.isotropic.org/ http://dominion.isotropic.org/ I actually wrote a chrome extension to add a log to goko https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goko-log-viewer/kaignighoceeemhinbbophdeogpnedjn https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goko-log-viewer/ka... Post about some of the goko's issues http://www.roadtolarissa.com/speed-issues-with-gokos-online-dominion-implementation/ http://www.roadtolarissa.com/speed-issues-with-gokos-online-...

swah 14y ago

We need to stop excusing games being slow because they're written in HTML5. They are still behind Flash games from 10 years ago.

robin_reala 14y ago
They’re really not. Go look at anything on (for example) Turbulenz ( https://turbulenz.com/ https://turbulenz.com/ ) and that’s as good as anything Flash has done.
- kybernetyk 14y ago
  All it did was blow up my browser's RAM usage to 2GB and then deliver ~2fps. IIRC Flash did better.
  - qu4z-2 14y ago
    If by "better" you mean "blew up my browser's RAM usage to 2GB AND maxed out an entire core" then that's consistent with my flash experience (on 64-bit Linux, which I realise is not exactly a first-class citizen)
    - olitreadwell 14y ago
      I agree complaints like this are currently valid in some respects, but the good thing is that feedback loops like this will eventually result in the same efficiency we come to expect from flash games on HTML5.
      - dgesang 14y ago
        Eventually, but not any time soon.

Shish2k 14y ago

Web Apps set us back 20 years in pretty much every respect except ease of deployment (1992 - people are impressed that Wolfenstein 3D gets 60FPS on a 100MHz Pentium; 2012 - people are impressed that Wolfenstein 3D (in Javascript!!!!111omg) gets 15FPS without sound on an 8-core 3GHz box). With the exponential rate of development I doubt it'll take a full 20 years to catch up, but it'll still be a while before we've completely reinvented all of the wheels... But yeah, for the forseeable future, "look at how I re-implemented this ancient technology with modern foundations, and it only took half the time! (And 10% of the efficiency and 100x more RAM)" is all we have to look forward to :-(

ruok0101 14y ago
I think this overlooks all the pluses of this new "medium". How did you get your copy of wolfenstein in 1992? Travel to the radioshack, get a stack of disks, feed them one by one into your trs80? Within seconds this morning I was playing this game - with a 1000 other people simultaneously. Amazing in my book.
- teamonkey 14y ago
  It's not competing with 1992 distribution though, it's competing with 2013 distribution.
  - ruok0101 14y ago
    I just bought my son a digital edition of Diablo 3 the other day. It was far from smooth sailing.
    - brokenparser 14y ago
      But is Diablo 3 played in a browser? Thought so.
      - stan_rogers 14y ago
        In exactly what way is this question a follow-on from the parent comment? The statement was, to paraphrase: "Purchasing and installing native applications can still suck, even with '2013 distribution'." IOW, all that's been saved in 20-odd years is the drive to the retail store, the drudgery of swapping floppies and (usually) the task of manually configuring a memory manager. We're far from an instant-on, pay-and-play world for native apps (and in some cases you still need to be connected to get moment-by-moment permission to run the app you "purchased"—the internet as dongle).

delian66 14y ago

The most impressive html5 game I've played so far with nice graphics, music, and most importantly pretty responsive feedback is 'Save the day' : https://turbulenz.com/games/save-the-day/play https://turbulenz.com/games/save-the-day/play The first time I played it, I had assumed it was a Flash game, and not html5, based on the quality of it.

kayoone 14y ago
that game is totally awesome!
robterrell 14y ago
Is that really an HTML5 engine? It forced me to download a DMG containing "TurbulenzEngineInstaller.app" which itself contains "npturbulenz.plugin" and an "install_script" that installs that plugin into "/Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/". About as good as you can get plugin installation to be, I guess, but it's not what I'd expect from an HTML5 game.
- jamesaustin 14y ago
  The site offers to install a plugin as a fallback for browsers that don't appear to offer the required HTML5 APIs (mainly WebGL). This allows the JavaScript/WebGL games to run on a wider range of browsers (particularly IE and when required APIs are locked behind a developer switch.)

mtgx 14y ago

They could always use WebGL to get a 10x improvement in graphics for the same performance requirement.

arasmussen 14y ago
They could. But then they would lose support for 30% of their users.
- ivanpopelyshev 14y ago
  I already implemented webgl renderer, but it has some bugs. I will switch it on ASAP. Both 2d and webgl renderer has the same interface, but different kind of optimizations, so there's no point to use webgl without acceleration. If your browser can draw 20,000 rects in 500ms, then bombermine will use webgl.

saraid216 14y ago

> But I'm genuinely curious: at what point will we stop being fascinated by what can be done in HTML5 Go in any store that sells video games. Look at the backs of all the boxes. Find similarities.

ronyeh 14y ago

HTML5 just needs a better sound API (e.g., programmatic playback, midi) so that we can make better games/apps. Many games just fall back to Flash for their sound.

DucktourDreams 14y ago
I'll just leave this here. https://www.google.com/search?q=html5+midi https://www.google.com/search?q=html5+midi
- rartichoke 14y ago
  The support for this is questionable. It's barely acceptable in Chrome and even in Chrome it falls really short. The timing is awful in a lot of cases which makes it pretty much unusable for anything but maybe background tracks. I've had audio clips that had to be played in a 50ms time frame fail to play back a third of the time on occasion. I'd rather have no sound than buggy sound.
- ronyeh 14y ago
  Thanks for your link, but I've investigated MIDI support in JS. I actually work on piano/guitar apps, and would love to build a high performing, low latency app that hooks up with a physical keyboard. If you know how this can be done, please let me know! The last time I looked into this, the best solution I could come up with was a Java applet. :-(
  - chipsy 14y ago
    The way forward is going to be via the Google-led Web Audio spec, as well as the complementary MIDI device spec - it's not "there" yet, though, since these specs are still non-finalized. But I'm working on building up the playback capabilities as a side project. I made a "true" Soundfont2 + SMF playback engine for Flash/Haxe, which is open-source(zlib) and somewhat usable in real-world: http://spacecreeps.com/apps/triad-synth/index.html http://spacecreeps.com/apps/triad-synth/index.html Now I'm working on the next generation of it, since I was still learning my way around audio with that one and made a mess of the architecture. I'm starting off with a Web Audio-for-Haxe project( early stages, you can watch it here https://github.com/triplefox/hxAudio https://github.com/triplefox/hxAudio ) - I'll be building off of that to add the synthesis and MIDI parts, so that you have pretty much everything needed for the playback parts of an audio app; recording isn't on my radar yet - especially since the specs are very early still. It will be possible to compile out the lib to pure JS, so you won't necessarily have to be using Haxe if that's not your workflow.

Yahivin 14y ago

Look into Red Ice, a local multiplayer HTML5 game played with Xbox gamepads.

SolarUpNote 14y ago

When will tools like Flash be created for HTML5/javascript? (with drawing tools, animation tools, etc)

ponyous 14y ago
I think adobe is already making something like this. I'm not sure but I think its adobe edge?
paperkettle 14y ago
Some stuff in that direction http://www.createjs.com/#!/EaselJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/EaselJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/TweenJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/TweenJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/SoundJS http://www.createjs.com/#!/SoundJS sad that flash has so many issues (security, performance, etc) because there are some really nice compositional tools for creators in that ecosystem.

rogueSkib 14y ago

If you're interested in HTML5 games that don't feel like HTML5 games, I think that Kiwi Run is a great example. You can play it on the web here: http://www.icepopbeat.com/ http://www.icepopbeat.com/ but they also used Game Closure's devkit to deploy the game on iOS and Android; the performance looks great on all three platforms. As far as browsers though, I've only played it in Chrome :)

yati 14y ago

With more and more "nativish" APIs being added to HTML5 (like the whole suite of mobile device APIs coming with Firefox OS), browsers are becoming functionally more and more similar to operating systems, just that the design is terrible for an OS. Unless browser design is revolutionized in and out, we will have to keep making compromises like this one. We need to integrate Web capabilities within the OS, not the other way round. That said, I'm off to play Bomberman now.

yason 14y ago

I've observed that people actually want old school style games but they en masse don't want to install emulators to play them. I think HTML5 is just a redeployment device to the time when computer games were just simple and fun.

goggles99 14y ago

I just don't get it - someone please smack me down and give me a convincing argument on how HTML5/CSS/JavaScript is a more innovative technology than Flash/Silverlight? The only pro I know of is that it runs on IOS and flash does not (actually flash does run on JailBroken IOS). In 3 years IOS will power less than 20% of mobile devices. What then? My big rub with HTML5/CSS/JavaScript and all this standards crap is that it moves sooooo slowly. I prefer innovation at whatever speed the minds of man can allow. Now we are restricted to creating frameworks built on top of (and limited by) HTML5 to create any kind of innovation (same with JavaScript) it makes me sick. I saw apps like this a decade ago written in Flash. I know that widespread compatibility is the reason that things like HTML5 win out, that and lazy developers who don't want technology to change/innovate because that would mean that they would have to learn something new more often. What is my solution? I prefer the plug-in model. I think the spec that browsers should follow is one for an secure and OPEN Plugin architecture. If this concept was adopted, we would have a lot more (and better) options besides HTML, Flash and Silverlight to write web apps in. I think of it like this. Look at the iPhone, I picture every app you download as basically being a plug-in for IOS. Each can be written with their own completely different language and UI markup (and many are). Over 30% of IOS apps are not written in C/Objective C. There are a myriad of tools, frameworks and development environments which compile other languages and link them against the IOS libraries. This is how the web should be. That is more OPEN than following a spec that is publicly available, it gives inventors/innovators much more FREEDOM to make the world a better place.

vidarh 14y ago
We tried the plugin model back in the 90's. It was uniformly rejected by users and developers alike. Flash was pretty much the only plugin that managed to get wide enough adoption. And flash is going the way of the dodo because innovation couldn't happen at top speed, because it was limited by a gatekeeper that insisted on keeping it closed. The lacklustre support for Silverlight was a demonstration of how badly we were burned by flash. While it's taking a long time to catch up, we're now free to expand the capabilities without being in a situation where a single party can hold everyone for ransom by refusing to support specific browsers or OS's. There are many negatives to having HTML5/CSS/Javascript as the foundation, but they are dwarfed by the problems of the alternatives we've had to deal with.