8 ms·

If you're interested in writing games in Javascript, you might like to take a look at PlayCanvas [playcanvas.com] which has Unity/UE4-like tools for building We

If you're interested in writing games in Javascript, you might like to take a look at PlayCanvas [playcanvas.com] which has Unity/UE4-like tools for building WebGL/Javascript games.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
Has WebGL solved the local storage limitation yet? I've been waiting for a few years for that. There's still no way to "install" a game into a browser, as far as I know, and redownloading 1GB+ of assets every time the game loads isn't an option.
- easong 12y ago
  You could always package the game as a node-webkit app.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  If, for whatever reason, you're hell-bent on producing a AAA-quality game with javascript and WebGL, you could always use something along the lines of node-webkit[0] and distribute it the usual way. Personally, I rather significantly doubt that people would play more AAA games if they could download them in their browser rather than Steam. [0] https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    Why wouldn't you want to produce a AAA-quality game with javascript and WebGL? It should be the default, not some crazy thing. The best argument against javascript + WebGL is "javascript is bad." But the disadvantages of JS are sometimes strengths. The lack of static typing, for example, allows a REPL. It's true that with an average gamedev team, you'll get below average results. But with an above-average team, powerful languages tend to translate into stellar results. Oh well, I guess I'll wait a few more years for browser vendors to implement some kind of concept of a webapp installation.
    - shard972 12y ago
      > Why wouldn't you want to produce a AAA-quality game with javascript and WebGL? It should be the default, not some crazy thing. Performance. Show me some like gears of war running in a browser and then I will be convinced. > The best argument against javascript + WebGL is "javascript is bad." That is the worse attempt to portray the other side's argument I have seen a while. > The lack of static typing, for example, allows a REPL. You can also just have a console implemented, like most AAA games. They are also built into engines like Source. > It's true that with an average gamedev team, you'll get below average results. But with an above-average team, powerful languages tend to translate into stellar results. I don't understand how javascript would allow someone like John Carmack to make anything new, I write Javascript every day but when it comes to games I much prefer something like c#.
      - sillysaurus3 12y ago
        Look up Unreal engine in the browser. It runs quite nicely. You're right that I did a poor job explaining why people are against JS for gamedev. Sorry about that.
        squeaky-clean 12y ago
        The only game demo I can currently find for UE4 in the browser is Flappy Chicken (I know they had some up earlier, but they seem to be taken down). Not really a compelling AAA demo. And their 3D games still only run about half as fast as a native C++ engine. That's very impressive, but you won't be putting out AAA games with a 50% performance hit. And even then, unreal engine in the browser doesn't run Javascript written by developers. It compiles the C++ code into asm.js. Huge difference. Unless you can code asm.js by hand, you won't be able to do that. Here's a sample of the Flappy Chicken UE4Game-HTML5-Shipping.js file, because the code is just too long and ugly to paste.[0] Definitely not 'JS for gamedev.' [0] http://i.imgur.com/O3w61XI.png http://i.imgur.com/O3w61XI.png
    - the_af 12y ago
      > The lack of static typing, for example, allows a REPL Uh? Languages with static typing can have REPLs. See: Scala, Haskell and more. I don't think that is what makes JS an option for game development, but rather its ubiquity in browsers. If you remove that, I don't see why you would choose it for serious development.
- nbody 12y ago
  AppCache?
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    It sounds like AppCache limit is 5MB. I can't find very much info, though, but a reasonable limit for gamedev circa 2014 would be 16GB or so. http://grinninggecko.com/2011/02/24/developing-cross-platform-html5-offline-app-1/ http://grinninggecko.com/2011/02/24/developing-cross-platfor... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6757945/cache-manifest-size-limit-and-web-apps http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6757945/cache-manifest-si...
    - mschuster91 12y ago
      There are the HTML5 local filesystem extensions, in addition to that. Just no idea how these are called.

If you're interested in writing games in Javascript, you might like to take a look at PlayCanvas [playcanvas.com] which has Unity/UE4-like tools for building WebGL/Javascript games.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Has WebGL solved the local storage limitation yet? I've been waiting for a few years for that. There's still no way to "install" a game into a browser, as far as I know, and redownloading 1GB+ of assets every time the game loads isn't an option.

easong 12y ago
You could always package the game as a node-webkit app.
vertex-four 12y ago
If, for whatever reason, you're hell-bent on producing a AAA-quality game with javascript and WebGL, you could always use something along the lines of node-webkit[0] and distribute it the usual way. Personally, I rather significantly doubt that people would play more AAA games if they could download them in their browser rather than Steam. [0] https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Why wouldn't you want to produce a AAA-quality game with javascript and WebGL? It should be the default, not some crazy thing. The best argument against javascript + WebGL is "javascript is bad." But the disadvantages of JS are sometimes strengths. The lack of static typing, for example, allows a REPL. It's true that with an average gamedev team, you'll get below average results. But with an above-average team, powerful languages tend to translate into stellar results. Oh well, I guess I'll wait a few more years for browser vendors to implement some kind of concept of a webapp installation.
  - shard972 12y ago
    > Why wouldn't you want to produce a AAA-quality game with javascript and WebGL? It should be the default, not some crazy thing. Performance. Show me some like gears of war running in a browser and then I will be convinced. > The best argument against javascript + WebGL is "javascript is bad." That is the worse attempt to portray the other side's argument I have seen a while. > The lack of static typing, for example, allows a REPL. You can also just have a console implemented, like most AAA games. They are also built into engines like Source. > It's true that with an average gamedev team, you'll get below average results. But with an above-average team, powerful languages tend to translate into stellar results. I don't understand how javascript would allow someone like John Carmack to make anything new, I write Javascript every day but when it comes to games I much prefer something like c#.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      Look up Unreal engine in the browser. It runs quite nicely. You're right that I did a poor job explaining why people are against JS for gamedev. Sorry about that.
      - squeaky-clean 12y ago
        The only game demo I can currently find for UE4 in the browser is Flappy Chicken (I know they had some up earlier, but they seem to be taken down). Not really a compelling AAA demo. And their 3D games still only run about half as fast as a native C++ engine. That's very impressive, but you won't be putting out AAA games with a 50% performance hit. And even then, unreal engine in the browser doesn't run Javascript written by developers. It compiles the C++ code into asm.js. Huge difference. Unless you can code asm.js by hand, you won't be able to do that. Here's a sample of the Flappy Chicken UE4Game-HTML5-Shipping.js file, because the code is just too long and ugly to paste.[0] Definitely not 'JS for gamedev.' [0] http://i.imgur.com/O3w61XI.png http://i.imgur.com/O3w61XI.png
  - the_af 12y ago
    > The lack of static typing, for example, allows a REPL Uh? Languages with static typing can have REPLs. See: Scala, Haskell and more. I don't think that is what makes JS an option for game development, but rather its ubiquity in browsers. If you remove that, I don't see why you would choose it for serious development.
nbody 12y ago
AppCache?
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  It sounds like AppCache limit is 5MB. I can't find very much info, though, but a reasonable limit for gamedev circa 2014 would be 16GB or so. http://grinninggecko.com/2011/02/24/developing-cross-platform-html5-offline-app-1/ http://grinninggecko.com/2011/02/24/developing-cross-platfor... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6757945/cache-manifest-size-limit-and-web-apps http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6757945/cache-manifest-si...
  - mschuster91 12y ago
    There are the HTML5 local filesystem extensions, in addition to that. Just no idea how these are called.