5 ms·

Jagex launches HTML5/WebGL game mode for RuneScape (beta)

80 points by Clorith 13y ago

Jagex, creators of the popular MMORPG RuneScape just launched their beta version of RS3, a purely HTML5/WebGL implementation of their (so far) java based game. I -think- this might be the first huge implementation of html5 in game form, and clearly marks Jagex as even bigger innovators in both the web and gaming industry.

james33 13y ago
This is exciting news for the validity of HTML5 games in the browser!
- Clorith 13y ago
  It is, it also shows what innovative ways Jagex go to in bring both the web and gaming industry closer, and forward. Just for clarification; I'm not an employee of Jagex, I'm a long time player of RuneScape though. I'm also a huge fan of what they've accomplished when you look at the systems they use, and the hardware required to enjoy their products.
  - kaolinite 13y ago
    Hm, are you an employee?
    - publicfig 13y ago
      I was wondering that same thing. Looking at the accounts infrequent commenting history and then all the responses in this thread seem to point towards that.
- jmsduran 13y ago
  This is nice news! I'm very interested in seeing how their HTML5 client turns out. On a side note, I used to play Runescape years ago back in High School/College. Looks like so much has changed since then, maybe this summer I'll look to re-activate my old character :).
- Cthulhu_ 13y ago
  Like how the previous iterations were exciting for the validity of Java for video games? Wasn't very successful in that respect.
lucid00 13y ago
I've been wondering why this hasn't been done yet. Their game being coded in Java should make it easy to port to many different platforms seeing as there's a library or framework for almost anything Java. I don't play RuneScape but I'm happy to see this, this should help bring the game to other platforms like Android, Firefox OS and hopefully iOS (they could make a native app for iOS).
azakai 13y ago
I click "go to beta" and then "register", and it says my Java is not up to date? I thought this was Java-free?
- Clorith 13y ago
  The beta is unfortunately not accepting new users at the moment, I'm guessing they don't want to put too much strain on anything before it's been thoroughly tested.
- EStudley 13y ago
  Also logging in to the website does require that you have java installed.
  - digitalclubb 13y ago
    Not strictly true - https://secure.runescape.com/m=weblogin/loginform.ws?mod=www https://secure.runescape.com/m=weblogin/loginform.ws?mod=www
ladon86 13y ago
Congrats, porting a Java codebase of that size is no small undertaking.
- reportingsjr 13y ago
  I think it was actually easier than that for them to do. From what I recall they actually have their own in house language that compiles to java. I can't remember what it was called off of the top of my head, but I would imagine it would be much easier to port a compiler than a codebase the size of runescape's.
  - Cyphusx 13y ago
    The content, e.g. quests, map, npcs, dialog, etc are all in proprietary formats (Runescript and various config formats) but this doesn't compile to Java - it's simply loaded by the engine. The engine, server and client, is 100% hand coded in Java, and the client portion of that is what we manually 'ported' to Javascript. I say 'ported' in quotes, as though lots of the new code performs the same or similar job to the existing Java client (bugs and all!), its implementation is sometimes quite different to that of the original Java version.
Zirro 13y ago
I remember having to give up playing RuneScape back when I switched to a Mac many years ago, due to how poorly Java integrated and performed within the available browsers (not to mention the glitching hardware-acceleration support). While I have generally lost interest in these sort of games since then, this is exciting enough to make me want to try it out again.
- Perihelion 13y ago
  I had to use the downloadable Runescape client to get it to work on OSX. It works reasonably well but still sucks that I can't play in my browser anymore. A lot has changed so it's probably worth looking into!
- dzhiurgis 13y ago
  I was forced to quit Runescape after extensive use of SCAR bot. It was the weirdest 2 years of my life.
der3k 13y ago
If anyone still remembers RSC (Runescape Classic) and would like to continue playing it, this is the most popular and well-kept private server for it FYI: http://www.rscemulation.net/ http://www.rscemulation.net/
- Clorith 13y ago
  Jagex also maintains the Classic worlds for those who maintained a character presence there, private servers are actually being taken down left and right as they violate Jagex's terms and their legal team is quite efficient (there are many news articles about their legal battles as of late)
- arianvanp 13y ago
  So i basically ended up as a programmer by hacking the runescape clients so i could use them in the creation of private servers. Illegal but great fun (but wasn't everything illegal but great fun as a teenager?). Contributed quite a lot to the private server community. I still tend to hang out in the programmer usergroups of those communities though I lost interest in modding runescape. But hey, I'm a programmer now, so thanks jagex p.s. : sorry for helping so many people steal your content, it was just for the lulz. I promise!
  - experiment0 13y ago
    Hey so did I! My first programming experience was working on RS2DBase. It was pretty popular back in the day. I met loads of great people through those forums and I don't think I'd have gotten into programming without them.
  - whaevr 13y ago
    Same here, Jagex's client and private servers are what I cut my teeth on when it came to programming. My entire fascination with programing evolved from runescape. Hacking, cheating, and modding it.
  - cgag 13y ago
    Cheating at runescape is how I ended up as a programmer as well, mostly writing scripts for scar back in middle school. I tried to making a client, but all I managed to do is allow you to spam trade requests and disconnect people. It ended up being popular for a couple days until everyone started blocking trade requests while in the wilderness. Man I miss that game.
EStudley 13y ago
It's unfortunate, but this may be too little too late for Runescape. After Jagex was slowly bought by VCs company decisions became less about the experience for the player and more about the bottom dollar. Maybe this will be enough to bring back some of their lost subscribers, but who knows.
- MisterWebz 13y ago
  Absolutely. As of last year, they have this thing in the game called Squeal of Fortune. You earn or buy "spins" and you use them to win coins, items or experience. It's basically gambling, but instead of winning real money, you win virtual money. Not only does it destroy any integrity the game had left, it aims to get kids addicted to gambling.
  - EStudley 13y ago
    It's not gambling that is at the heart of Squeal of Fortune; it's micro-transactions. Runescape has been moving in that direction for a long time to squeeze whatever is left of the remaining player base.
  - coffeeaddicted 13y ago
    Also to keep people coming back regularly they introduced lots of daily and weekly boni so everyone trying to pause got this feeling of missing out. I guess they got inspired a lot by Zynga for a while.
- jere 13y ago
  That's interesting. I haven't been following Runescape, but the VC purchase makes a lot sense. I had a lot of fun with the original Ace of Spades. It was an amazingly fun minecraft-like FPS. I was excited when I heard Jagex was picking it up and assumed there was no way they could mess that up. Turns out, they did mess it up. It looks like they added a bit of graphical polish, tacked on some gameplay, and shoved it out the door. Supposedly the new gameplay is less fun than the original and now it costs money. It has a 49 on metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ace-of-spades http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ace-of-spades
mdisraeli 13y ago
This is extremely good news. At one time, back in 2007, Runescape was the elephant in the room for western MMORPGs - if you counted it amongst them, it made all the commercial ones clearly the long tail, not the short peak of success - http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/29/mmo-long-tails/ http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/29/mmo-long-tails/

80 points by Clorith 13y ago

james33 13y ago

This is exciting news for the validity of HTML5 games in the browser!

Clorith 13y ago
It is, it also shows what innovative ways Jagex go to in bring both the web and gaming industry closer, and forward. Just for clarification; I'm not an employee of Jagex, I'm a long time player of RuneScape though. I'm also a huge fan of what they've accomplished when you look at the systems they use, and the hardware required to enjoy their products.
- kaolinite 13y ago
  Hm, are you an employee?
  - publicfig 13y ago
    I was wondering that same thing. Looking at the accounts infrequent commenting history and then all the responses in this thread seem to point towards that.
jmsduran 13y ago
This is nice news! I'm very interested in seeing how their HTML5 client turns out. On a side note, I used to play Runescape years ago back in High School/College. Looks like so much has changed since then, maybe this summer I'll look to re-activate my old character :).
Cthulhu_ 13y ago
Like how the previous iterations were exciting for the validity of Java for video games? Wasn't very successful in that respect.

lucid00 13y ago

I've been wondering why this hasn't been done yet. Their game being coded in Java should make it easy to port to many different platforms seeing as there's a library or framework for almost anything Java. I don't play RuneScape but I'm happy to see this, this should help bring the game to other platforms like Android, Firefox OS and hopefully iOS (they could make a native app for iOS).

azakai 13y ago

I click "go to beta" and then "register", and it says my Java is not up to date? I thought this was Java-free?

Clorith 13y ago
The beta is unfortunately not accepting new users at the moment, I'm guessing they don't want to put too much strain on anything before it's been thoroughly tested.
EStudley 13y ago
Also logging in to the website does require that you have java installed.
- digitalclubb 13y ago
  Not strictly true - https://secure.runescape.com/m=weblogin/loginform.ws?mod=www https://secure.runescape.com/m=weblogin/loginform.ws?mod=www

ladon86 13y ago

Congrats, porting a Java codebase of that size is no small undertaking.

reportingsjr 13y ago
I think it was actually easier than that for them to do. From what I recall they actually have their own in house language that compiles to java. I can't remember what it was called off of the top of my head, but I would imagine it would be much easier to port a compiler than a codebase the size of runescape's.
- Cyphusx 13y ago
  The content, e.g. quests, map, npcs, dialog, etc are all in proprietary formats (Runescript and various config formats) but this doesn't compile to Java - it's simply loaded by the engine. The engine, server and client, is 100% hand coded in Java, and the client portion of that is what we manually 'ported' to Javascript. I say 'ported' in quotes, as though lots of the new code performs the same or similar job to the existing Java client (bugs and all!), its implementation is sometimes quite different to that of the original Java version.

Zirro 13y ago

I remember having to give up playing RuneScape back when I switched to a Mac many years ago, due to how poorly Java integrated and performed within the available browsers (not to mention the glitching hardware-acceleration support). While I have generally lost interest in these sort of games since then, this is exciting enough to make me want to try it out again.

Perihelion 13y ago
I had to use the downloadable Runescape client to get it to work on OSX. It works reasonably well but still sucks that I can't play in my browser anymore. A lot has changed so it's probably worth looking into!
dzhiurgis 13y ago
I was forced to quit Runescape after extensive use of SCAR bot. It was the weirdest 2 years of my life.

der3k 13y ago

If anyone still remembers RSC (Runescape Classic) and would like to continue playing it, this is the most popular and well-kept private server for it FYI: http://www.rscemulation.net/ http://www.rscemulation.net/

Clorith 13y ago
Jagex also maintains the Classic worlds for those who maintained a character presence there, private servers are actually being taken down left and right as they violate Jagex's terms and their legal team is quite efficient (there are many news articles about their legal battles as of late)
arianvanp 13y ago
So i basically ended up as a programmer by hacking the runescape clients so i could use them in the creation of private servers. Illegal but great fun (but wasn't everything illegal but great fun as a teenager?). Contributed quite a lot to the private server community. I still tend to hang out in the programmer usergroups of those communities though I lost interest in modding runescape. But hey, I'm a programmer now, so thanks jagex p.s. : sorry for helping so many people steal your content, it was just for the lulz. I promise!
- experiment0 13y ago
  Hey so did I! My first programming experience was working on RS2DBase. It was pretty popular back in the day. I met loads of great people through those forums and I don't think I'd have gotten into programming without them.
- whaevr 13y ago
  Same here, Jagex's client and private servers are what I cut my teeth on when it came to programming. My entire fascination with programing evolved from runescape. Hacking, cheating, and modding it.
- cgag 13y ago
  Cheating at runescape is how I ended up as a programmer as well, mostly writing scripts for scar back in middle school. I tried to making a client, but all I managed to do is allow you to spam trade requests and disconnect people. It ended up being popular for a couple days until everyone started blocking trade requests while in the wilderness. Man I miss that game.

EStudley 13y ago

It's unfortunate, but this may be too little too late for Runescape. After Jagex was slowly bought by VCs company decisions became less about the experience for the player and more about the bottom dollar. Maybe this will be enough to bring back some of their lost subscribers, but who knows.

MisterWebz 13y ago
Absolutely. As of last year, they have this thing in the game called Squeal of Fortune. You earn or buy "spins" and you use them to win coins, items or experience. It's basically gambling, but instead of winning real money, you win virtual money. Not only does it destroy any integrity the game had left, it aims to get kids addicted to gambling.
- EStudley 13y ago
  It's not gambling that is at the heart of Squeal of Fortune; it's micro-transactions. Runescape has been moving in that direction for a long time to squeeze whatever is left of the remaining player base.
- coffeeaddicted 13y ago
  Also to keep people coming back regularly they introduced lots of daily and weekly boni so everyone trying to pause got this feeling of missing out. I guess they got inspired a lot by Zynga for a while.
jere 13y ago
That's interesting. I haven't been following Runescape, but the VC purchase makes a lot sense. I had a lot of fun with the original Ace of Spades. It was an amazingly fun minecraft-like FPS. I was excited when I heard Jagex was picking it up and assumed there was no way they could mess that up. Turns out, they did mess it up. It looks like they added a bit of graphical polish, tacked on some gameplay, and shoved it out the door. Supposedly the new gameplay is less fun than the original and now it costs money. It has a 49 on metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ace-of-spades http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ace-of-spades

mdisraeli 13y ago

This is extremely good news. At one time, back in 2007, Runescape was the elephant in the room for western MMORPGs - if you counted it amongst them, it made all the commercial ones clearly the long tail, not the short peak of success - http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/29/mmo-long-tails/ http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/29/mmo-long-tails/