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Show HN: Multiplayer game in WebGL/JavaScript with full source

62 points by nergal 12y ago

MayorOfMonkeys 12y ago
Looks cool. How was your experience with three.js? Did you check out the PlayCanvas engine: https://github.com/playcanvas/engine https://github.com/playcanvas/engine - it's a bit more geared towards games.
- nergal 12y ago
  I like threejs since I want to create stuff myself rather than having a full blown engine. I never tested playcanvas but I've seen some impressive demos made with it. But I guess threejs is much more lowlevel than playcanvas, even though threejs is high level compared to raw webgl :)
  - MayorOfMonkeys 12y ago
    You can still do your own stuff in PlayCanvas (write your own shaders, procedurally create geometry, etc etc). But there's extra stuff you get: physically based renderer, powerful chunk based shader system, point light shadows, entity-component system, and lots more besides. Definitely worth checking out. :) Sounds like you're not interested in higher level tools, but the PlayCanvas Editor is really cool too (that's on https://playcanvas.com https://playcanvas.com - and it's optional). It's essentially Unity in the browser.
    - nergal 12y ago
      Sounds nice, I think I will take a look at it some day :)
- octaveguin 12y ago
  I've experimented with PlayCanvas and the upfront load time is a deal breaker. It feels bloated. Three is impressively small (although I know it doesn't try to do nearly as much). Phaser, on the other hand, seems alright for 2D though their docs could be better.
  - Stoo 12y ago
    The docs for Phaser are a bit lacking but I found just about everything I needed by reading through the provided examples.
  - MayorOfMonkeys 12y ago
    three.min.js: 410KB playcanvas-stable.min.js: 521KB So 111KB difference. What would the load time difference be?
octaveguin 12y ago
Games fun. Although, unstable. The site died twice so far. I'd be interested to know the problems you're running into right now as it's hard to figure out the bottlenecks of node/socket under this strange kind of load.
- nergal 12y ago
  Yes, I've seen the problems and I tried to correct them. Suddenly with high load (which isn't really tested) I found some issues that I added some work arounds for in order to not crash the server. But there are a lot left to do for a real playable experience. As stated on my github page, it's an abandoned project. I just released the full source code for others to enjoy :)
kidproquo 12y ago
Nice, I just created a web version of my upcoming mobile game using cocos2d-js. You can play it here: http://www.adhyet.com/flamingnotes/ http://www.adhyet.com/flamingnotes/ I ported the C++ code from cocos2d-x to JavaScript. Took me about a week. The web version doesn't have all the features, but it does serve as a decent demo.

62 points by nergal 12y ago

Looks cool. How was your experience with three.js? Did you check out the PlayCanvas engine: https://github.com/playcanvas/engine https://github.com/playcanvas/engine - it's a bit more geared towards games.

nergal 12y ago
I like threejs since I want to create stuff myself rather than having a full blown engine. I never tested playcanvas but I've seen some impressive demos made with it. But I guess threejs is much more lowlevel than playcanvas, even though threejs is high level compared to raw webgl :)
- MayorOfMonkeys 12y ago
  You can still do your own stuff in PlayCanvas (write your own shaders, procedurally create geometry, etc etc). But there's extra stuff you get: physically based renderer, powerful chunk based shader system, point light shadows, entity-component system, and lots more besides. Definitely worth checking out. :) Sounds like you're not interested in higher level tools, but the PlayCanvas Editor is really cool too (that's on https://playcanvas.com https://playcanvas.com - and it's optional). It's essentially Unity in the browser.
  - nergal 12y ago
    Sounds nice, I think I will take a look at it some day :)
octaveguin 12y ago
I've experimented with PlayCanvas and the upfront load time is a deal breaker. It feels bloated. Three is impressively small (although I know it doesn't try to do nearly as much). Phaser, on the other hand, seems alright for 2D though their docs could be better.
- Stoo 12y ago
  The docs for Phaser are a bit lacking but I found just about everything I needed by reading through the provided examples.
- MayorOfMonkeys 12y ago
  three.min.js: 410KB playcanvas-stable.min.js: 521KB So 111KB difference. What would the load time difference be?

octaveguin 12y ago

Games fun. Although, unstable. The site died twice so far. I'd be interested to know the problems you're running into right now as it's hard to figure out the bottlenecks of node/socket under this strange kind of load.

nergal 12y ago
Yes, I've seen the problems and I tried to correct them. Suddenly with high load (which isn't really tested) I found some issues that I added some work arounds for in order to not crash the server. But there are a lot left to do for a real playable experience. As stated on my github page, it's an abandoned project. I just released the full source code for others to enjoy :)

kidproquo 12y ago

Nice, I just created a web version of my upcoming mobile game using cocos2d-js. You can play it here: http://www.adhyet.com/flamingnotes/ http://www.adhyet.com/flamingnotes/ I ported the C++ code from cocos2d-x to JavaScript. Took me about a week. The web version doesn't have all the features, but it does serve as a decent demo.