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Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

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Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#31

Post by nonethewiser »

EarthLaunch wrote: post #19

This is amazing! I read everything. I completely agree about the state of the 'big three' engines. > My focus is still on browser multiplayer experiences. Here's mine: earth.suncapped.com ( https://github.com/Suncapped/babs ) It's been ongoing for 12 years, with several burnouts and rewrites, hah. If you want, I would love to talk offline (email in profile) about player-freedom, MMO projects, and browser games. I fee…

> This is such an interesting aspect of web games: HTML-based UIs.

I am neither a web dev nor (especially) game dev expert , but I recently came across this crossroads when building a small js canvas game. Should I use html elements styled with css for my game UI?

After a very short time thinking about it I decided not to implement the UI this way. It seems like a good idea because html and css are easy to use. Much easier to style a button and assign it a js function than draw buttons on the canvas and check if they’ve been clicked. But I felt like it spanned a boundary that might prove hard to reconcile in some scenarios, but that was more of an instinct than a well reasoned conclusion. I’m curious what others think about it.

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#32

Post by bee_rider »

crazygringo wrote: post #11
drusepth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantry activated: in my game dev circles, I've only ever heard .io pronounced "dot i-o" when talking about itch.io. The style, however, I usually hear as "i-o style" or an "i-o game".

Interesting -- if I see "open a .jpg file" I never hear people pronounce the dot, it's "open a jay-peg file". You'd definitely say "open an .exe file", again because no "dot". On the other hand, "Microsoft .NET" includes the "dot", as well as "bought five .com domains". Yet in contrast, "bought five .edu domains" would usually be said without the dot. Hypothesis: we don't pronounce leading dots unless for some reason…

I wonder if it just became “itch dot io” because itchdottyo sounds kinda cool, while itchio sounds more like “itchy, yo.”

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#33

Post by hmmokidk »

EarthLaunch wrote: post #30
hmmokidk wrote: post #23

Super cool! I love all multiplayer browser game efforts. Ahh I want to share my browser 3d (tiny) mmo project! It doesn’t work on mobile: http://rotb.io I totally agree with the issue with browser build sizes. It is not nice with bigger engines! I was even hesitant to use React because I wanted to keep things minimal but it is too nice. Lol

This is cool! Thanks for sharing! I love how there's already gameplay.

Thank you so much! :D

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#34

Post by charcircuit »

peterashford wrote: post #28
charcircuit wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's WASM based which puts it at a disadvantage to a javascript based renderer.

Really? My understanding was that WASM support was good these days. And performance is a key issue with games

JavaScript will typically have better performance than WASM. WASM is good for porting existing software to the web. So if you have tens thousands of engineering hours dumped into some game engine that engine can be brought to the web instead of having to duplicate that work with a rewrite. Using javascript apis from WASM isn't possible and requires you to do extra copies. Yes, there are optimizations that browsers can do, but it's game of catch up with the performance of javascript. Or if you want to share code between a native version of the game and the web version WASM may be good. Performance should not be the reason you pick WASM.

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#35

Post by nonethewiser »

This write up is great. Frankly I’m impressed that you were motivated to develop this over such a long period of time. Where did the motivation come from?

Also, I’m impressed that you can remember the obstacles you overcame several years ago. Landon entropy, m1 conversion, etc.

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#36

Post by Vekz »

TheRoque wrote: post #25

I also tried to make a browser game with WebRTC. This is a bit annoying to do IMO, but I am surprised that no really famous game leverages it (to my knowledge ? I mean I know that some games like openarena.live exists, but it's niche), even though it's essentially UDP in the browser, so it offers a lot more networking options than the games we see currently.

The dependent work to setup a signaling server and ICE/STUN/TURN NAT punch through is a big barrier to using WebRTC.

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#37

Post by Vekz »

nonethewiser wrote: post #35

This write up is great. Frankly I’m impressed that you were motivated to develop this over such a long period of time. Where did the motivation come from? Also, I’m impressed that you can remember the obstacles you overcame several years ago. Landon entropy, m1 conversion, etc.

> Where did the motivation come from?

I host a bay area indie gamedev coworking group. The coworking group's regular recurring meetup interval kept me in a peer pressure and positive feedback loop. I also felt the need in the market had not been addressed until this new wave of engines started appearing.

> I’m impressed that you can remember the obstacles you overcame several years ago.

I kept a daily journal in org-mode and separate dev log file. Can search through this and my commit history for lots of info.

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#38

Post by peterashford »

charcircuit wrote: post #34
peterashford wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? My understanding was that WASM support was good these days. And performance is a key issue with games

JavaScript will typically have better performance than WASM. WASM is good for porting existing software to the web. So if you have tens thousands of engineering hours dumped into some game engine that engine can be brought to the web instead of having to duplicate that work with a rewrite. Using javascript apis from WASM isn't possible and requires you to do extra copies. Yes, there are optimizations that browsers ca…

“Preliminary results show that WebAssembly, while still in its infancy, is starting to already outperform JavaScript, with much more room to grow,”

https://thenewstack.io/javascript-vs-wasm-which-is-more-ener...

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#39

Post by fenomas »

nonethewiser wrote: post #31
EarthLaunch wrote: post #19

This is amazing! I read everything. I completely agree about the state of the 'big three' engines. > My focus is still on browser multiplayer experiences. Here's mine: earth.suncapped.com ( https://github.com/Suncapped/babs ) It's been ongoing for 12 years, with several burnouts and rewrites, hah. If you want, I would love to talk offline (email in profile) about player-freedom, MMO projects, and browser games. I fee…

> This is such an interesting aspect of web games: HTML-based UIs. I am neither a web dev nor (especially) game dev expert , but I recently came across this crossroads when building a small js canvas game. Should I use html elements styled with css for my game UI? After a very short time thinking about it I decided not to implement the UI this way. It seems like a good idea because html and css are easy to use. Much…

Personally I went with HTML for my web game UI and I've not had any reason to regret it. I mean game UIs are thorny and annoying, but it would be a lot worse working inside the canvas.

My biggest surprise was, before I jumped in I figured there would probably be some existing "RPG inventory" libraries I could build from, that handled dragging icons around between icon slots etc. But I never found any game-oriented UI projects I could use, and ended up building entirely from scratch.

Re: Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine

#40

Post by SenHeng »

nonethewiser wrote: post #31
EarthLaunch wrote: post #19

This is amazing! I read everything. I completely agree about the state of the 'big three' engines. > My focus is still on browser multiplayer experiences. Here's mine: earth.suncapped.com ( https://github.com/Suncapped/babs ) It's been ongoing for 12 years, with several burnouts and rewrites, hah. If you want, I would love to talk offline (email in profile) about player-freedom, MMO projects, and browser games. I fee…

> This is such an interesting aspect of web games: HTML-based UIs. I am neither a web dev nor (especially) game dev expert , but I recently came across this crossroads when building a small js canvas game. Should I use html elements styled with css for my game UI? After a very short time thinking about it I decided not to implement the UI this way. It seems like a good idea because html and css are easy to use. Much…

Not a game but I once worked on a Miro clone. We used canvas for the... canvas part... but plain old HTML for all the UI elements as those don't need to be redrawn every time you blink.
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