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Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

airma.sh

281–290 of 316 posts

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me just point out that you can care deeply about performance and still lack the skills to achieve it.

Yes, I agreed with you in my post. > I don't doubt that there are junior web developers who don't know much better. I just think it's very... puritanical the way that people bemoan the state of websites as a personal failing of web developers as a profession rather than the a result of what kind of deliverables their employers care about and are willing to pay for.

Whenever I see the term "web developers" in this context, I'm assuming it means all of the decisions they make given the requirements and inputs from others in the business.

I think the web is currently terrible and I think modern web-development is to blame, but that includes the people behind the web-devs making the decisions that are being pushed onto the web-devs.

There are a lot of things to blame for the current state of the web, but ultimately the current practice of web-development (and whatever behind-the-scenes processes that involves) is clearly the biggest reason why.

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#282
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the gaming experience Flash already brought?

You had to install Flash though.

> You had to install Flash

That's a choice by the browser, just like wasm.

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's fast enough It's fast enough for people with as good computers and Internet connections as me, who are also employed at the same company as I am, and so do not use anything but the product on their computer at the same time. > optimize developer time Saving 1h for a developer for each 30min wasted over the lifetime of the application * number of users. Yeah, that scales right. Electricity is free too.

So you're writing all your web applications in hand-optimized assembly language? respect If improving performance is not a significant concern to your customers or benefit to you, further optimizing performance should probably not be a significant concern for you. Your time is the least scalable thing you've got - you're not getting any more of it.

No, of course not. I just try to write code in a performant way the first time around[0] - it's usually more than enough.

The problem here is lack of effective feedback on the market. You may be writing your application totally bloated, and due to the nature of software, you might not notice any significant impact on your business. It turns out that your application may be lagging just enough to make it unusable for the 1% of your userbase that has shitty connection... that's basically an accessibility problem.

But then that "accessibility problem" actually impacts your customers too, just not in a way most of them can tie back to you. It's your app, plus that other app, plus that third app, and suddenly their stupidly powerful[1] computer becomes sluggish, and they can't get any work done.

Performance is commons. Unless you're writing bare-metal embedded, your software is not running alone on the machine. By producing bloated code, you're implicitly taking away your users' productivity beyond what you could with little extra care. It's something that I try to keep in mind when writing software, too.

(Also, RE developer time tradeoff - people seem to not appreciate how software scales. If you save 100 man hours of development time at the expense of 1h per user over their whole use of the application, with 1M user you just wasted the world 1Mh - 100h = 999.9k man hours. Something to keep in mind, too.)

Related: http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm.

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[0] - It's usually entirely possible to write code both fast and clean, if you don't overdo abstractions. As a bonus, the code is usually simple.

[1] - Compared to what they had 5 years ago. User-facing software seems to be not gaining useful features, but rather constantly losing them. And yet it becomes only ever slower, for no actually good reason, just accumulation of bloat at every level of the stack.

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#284
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on Mohawk. Mohawk would be more worth it if score degraded a little more slowly. As it exists, Mohawk is a one-way ticket to the bottom of the scoreboard because it's so difficult to stay alive. (By the way, if you're reading and didn't realize, you can select any other ship any time. The buttons look disabled but they aren't.) Prowler is awesome against the Goliath. So, so good. In fact, I'd say the Prowler…

Were you BeatDaddy on the Euro server? I was zkdbnz. Reason I bring this up is to back up this point with a caveat: a skilled Prowler pilot is able to solo take down a Goliath only if the Prowler is faster (with upgrades). On the EU server, the meta was missile spam fest over Europe. So I took the stealth ship to the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. There, the playstyle of the Prowler is one of patience. Your first g…

You should definitely get a proper plane ;). k

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#285
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you hosting it? That looks quite custom to gaming

It better be! It's my homegrown panel that I use for all my projects.

Do you have a blog or write ups about this process / your workflow / etc.? I feel as a novice I could learn a lot.

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is there any situation where you would say that the gains from performance optimization are marginal? Also, you fail to consider the opportunity cost of developer time. It's not free. Your business needs you to do other things. Also, like GP said, there are factors to performance beyond payload size. Do you actually develop web applications for a job where someone else decides the priorities?

> So is there any situation where you would say that the gains from performance optimization are marginal? Yes! But the current trends around software - and in particular web stuff, both in-browser and in-browser-but-pretending-to-be-native - very, very far from that point. Look, I know that business has its priorities. But I have a right to dislike a business based on its priorities, and I believe chasing ultra-shor…

We're on the same side. The difference is that I see most developers to essentially be like me: wanting and knowing how to do the right thing, arguing with their Bosses and PMs, but still failing to get performance to be as big a priority as they'd like. You seem to think that since you care and have been able to deliver the kind of performance you want, that other people must not be trying hard enough or know how to write well-performing apps.

Maybe you can share some advice about how you get your boss or PM to care about performance. Because I've tried your arguments, and it's not like by explaining the amortized cost of performance I'll get an extra week or sprint to improve performance.

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#288
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebRTC really isn't suitable for multiplayer gaming due to it being entirely P2P. You need the server to operate as a single source of truth and enforce clients to play by the rules.

Having both models works well... TCP from a master server to every client. and UDP low latency links from every client to every other client. The client code sends a sample of received UDP packets to the server over the TCP connection, who will then verify that all info contained in the packets is true and accurate and nobody was cheating. It's a nice model because you get the super low latency between clients, and a…

Know of any games that have implemented this method?

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#289
post #156

Gameplay feedback: Mohawk (helicopter) and Prowler (stealthy) don't seem worth it. The helicopter dies from a single stray rocket, random spam and attacks from behind. Alt+arrow for strafe worked in DooM because field of view always pointed away from the player. Here, strafing is hard to get used to. Since there are already 2 keys for ability, why not make one of them "strafe left" and the other "strafe right" ? Also…

I was playing Goliath last night (boop, FFA) and both of these craft do have their uses - they're actually far more worrisome to the Goliath than a Predator or Tornado.

The Prowlers are great at whittling down a Goliath and otherwise being a psychological nuisance; while there is some counterplay involved a lot of it comes down to a mixture of luck and intuition.

The Mowhawks are just downright nightmares over open water. They fire much faster than you can deflect, can maintain enough range to avoid the missiles you do deflect, won't die outright to one of their own missiles you've deflected, and will often outrun your missiles. In open waters they should win a 1v1 situation through overwhelming bullet hell mechanics; your best bet is to take them into mountains where you can limit their movement advantage.

I do think it would be interesting if each craft had its own upgrade line, but I imagine that'd muck with being able to change frames during gameplay.

Re: Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agreed with you in my post. > I don't doubt that there are junior web developers who don't know much better. I just think it's very... puritanical the way that people bemoan the state of websites as a personal failing of web developers as a profession rather than the a result of what kind of deliverables their employers care about and are willing to pay for.

Whenever I see the term "web developers" in this context, I'm assuming it means all of the decisions they make given the requirements and inputs from others in the business. I think the web is currently terrible and I think modern web-development is to blame, but that includes the people behind the web-devs making the decisions that are being pushed onto the web-devs. There are a lot of things to blame for the curren…

See in my mind that’s like blaming construction workers for condos built quickly with shoddy materials. I don’t choose the materials I work with most of the time. I have worked on maybe one greenfield application in my entire life. It was really small and performed well. Everything else has been making the best out of bad decisions made by other people.
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