5 ms·

The same can be said for all development over the past 15-20 years. The reality is development time and cost is drastically lowered when intermediate developers

by meritt 13y ago

The same can be said for all development over the past 15-20 years. The reality is development time and cost is drastically lowered when intermediate developers can produce working software with minimal consideration toward optimization, lowering resource usage or decreasing overall package size.

taeric 13y ago
And better tooling helps here more than anything else. The giant elephant in the room nobody likes to speak towards is that Flash dominated not because it was a great language, but because they had awesome tooling around it. This is doing very little to address that. Now, the Unreal Engine is a great tool in and of itself. Having it target the browser is the questionable part to me.
- cwyers 13y ago
  If you look at the browser makers who primarily target operating systems other than their own (Safari doesn't count, as Safari for Windows is mainly a developer tool, not a product; and Opera doesn't count, as it's now based on Chrome, rather than being its own), they're pushing heavily for the browser to be the userspace, both in terms of shipping an OS based around their browsers (ChromeOS/FirefoxOS) and shipping apps to current OSes using their browsers rather than native code. This demo may focus on the high-end graphics, but I doubt that's the reason anyone is investing effort into this. Mozilla wants cross-platform mobile games on Firefox OS, and Epic (I'm guessing) wants to be able to run games on Firefox OS/Chrome OS/Sailfish/Tizen/Ubuntu Touch/flavor-of-the-month that supports HTML 5, as a long-term hedging of bets. Not all of those explicitly support asm.js, but Chrome is going to get better at supporting asm.js even if it never gets to feature parity with Firefox, and the non-iOS world is likely to be running a derivative of Chrome or Firefox.
  - taeric 13y ago
    So, if you look at the four main browser vendors... Well, two of the four browser vendors, you will find that browser vendors would like to extend the reach of the browser. Not sure how that is surprising. The argument for wanting to target all of the platforms seems nice. Except the major tooling companies that want to target multiple platforms have already learned how. Seeing games come out on PC, Xbox, and Playstation is proof enough of that. So, again, what does this buy that the tooling does not already support? Especially if you simply design things such that they can be cross compiled with C.
- azakai 13y ago
  Regarding tooling, I agree Flash's tools were a huge benefit for it. The same is true for engines like UE4 and its competitors, they all focus a lot on tooling. When those engines are ported to the web, the tools are part of that. Some tools might not just work, of course, like profiling tools or anything else that runs while the game executes on the target device, as opposed to the dev environment. But: 1. I have seen even things like profilers being ported together with the engines. Takes some porting but the result is you have the engine's normal full set of tools. 2. You have the in-browser tools as well - all modern browsers have profilers, debuggers, etc. And also they support source maps, which means they can see the original source code and not the hard-to-read compiler-output JS.
  - taeric 13y ago
    Right, but it is safe to assume there will always be native targets for UE4. So, how will the web target really be a benefit? I can't imagine the DOM inspector will really be that useful in designing a 3d game. Am I wrong?
    - azakai 13y ago
      The web target is mainly of benefit in getting to users, not in designing the game. For design, you would use the engine's normal tools for all targets anyhow, web included.
      - taeric 13y ago
        As I said elsewhere, I only take this if you are saying "users" and meaning "developers." I can see the point, but I see access to the tools as way more valuable than this. And with the tools, I'm curious just how many more "users" developers will truly be able to aim for. One off demos not withstanding.
        azakai 13y ago
        No, I meant users: You ship your game on the web, it reaches its users - the people playing it - directly. That's the benefit of the web. I agree tools are important too, but the main benefit of the web is it is runs everywhere, and no one controls it.

by meritt 13y ago

taeric 13y ago

And better tooling helps here more than anything else. The giant elephant in the room nobody likes to speak towards is that Flash dominated not because it was a great language, but because they had awesome tooling around it. This is doing very little to address that. Now, the Unreal Engine is a great tool in and of itself. Having it target the browser is the questionable part to me.

cwyers 13y ago
If you look at the browser makers who primarily target operating systems other than their own (Safari doesn't count, as Safari for Windows is mainly a developer tool, not a product; and Opera doesn't count, as it's now based on Chrome, rather than being its own), they're pushing heavily for the browser to be the userspace, both in terms of shipping an OS based around their browsers (ChromeOS/FirefoxOS) and shipping apps to current OSes using their browsers rather than native code. This demo may focus on the high-end graphics, but I doubt that's the reason anyone is investing effort into this. Mozilla wants cross-platform mobile games on Firefox OS, and Epic (I'm guessing) wants to be able to run games on Firefox OS/Chrome OS/Sailfish/Tizen/Ubuntu Touch/flavor-of-the-month that supports HTML 5, as a long-term hedging of bets. Not all of those explicitly support asm.js, but Chrome is going to get better at supporting asm.js even if it never gets to feature parity with Firefox, and the non-iOS world is likely to be running a derivative of Chrome or Firefox.
- taeric 13y ago
  So, if you look at the four main browser vendors... Well, two of the four browser vendors, you will find that browser vendors would like to extend the reach of the browser. Not sure how that is surprising. The argument for wanting to target all of the platforms seems nice. Except the major tooling companies that want to target multiple platforms have already learned how. Seeing games come out on PC, Xbox, and Playstation is proof enough of that. So, again, what does this buy that the tooling does not already support? Especially if you simply design things such that they can be cross compiled with C.
azakai 13y ago
Regarding tooling, I agree Flash's tools were a huge benefit for it. The same is true for engines like UE4 and its competitors, they all focus a lot on tooling. When those engines are ported to the web, the tools are part of that. Some tools might not just work, of course, like profiling tools or anything else that runs while the game executes on the target device, as opposed to the dev environment. But: 1. I have seen even things like profilers being ported together with the engines. Takes some porting but the result is you have the engine's normal full set of tools. 2. You have the in-browser tools as well - all modern browsers have profilers, debuggers, etc. And also they support source maps, which means they can see the original source code and not the hard-to-read compiler-output JS.
- taeric 13y ago
  Right, but it is safe to assume there will always be native targets for UE4. So, how will the web target really be a benefit? I can't imagine the DOM inspector will really be that useful in designing a 3d game. Am I wrong?
  - azakai 13y ago
    The web target is mainly of benefit in getting to users, not in designing the game. For design, you would use the engine's normal tools for all targets anyhow, web included.
    - taeric 13y ago
      As I said elsewhere, I only take this if you are saying "users" and meaning "developers." I can see the point, but I see access to the tools as way more valuable than this. And with the tools, I'm curious just how many more "users" developers will truly be able to aim for. One off demos not withstanding.
      - azakai 13y ago
        No, I meant users: You ship your game on the web, it reaches its users - the people playing it - directly. That's the benefit of the web. I agree tools are important too, but the main benefit of the web is it is runs everywhere, and no one controls it.