Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

ambient.run

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 148 posts

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#21

Post by ReactiveJelly »

This confused me:

> Ambient is a single executable which can run on Windows, Mac and Linux

Until I read this:

> Note that content is always streamed so the only thing the joining user requires is Ambient itself to join the session.

So that's what the wasm is for. Even the client code is streamed to the client when you connect to a server.

Interesting take. I hope it's not, as someone else said, an "open core" SaaS where all the useful features will be behind a paywall and PRs for them rejected.

I guess the advantage over pure web games is that you don't need a website to host it?

> the runtime handles synchronization of data for you.

btw this sounds a lil bogus...

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#22

Post by nobu-mori »

What are the guarantees about the networking? I saw this in the blog post:

> The server state is automatically synchronized to clients, and the data model is the same on the server and client. This means that in the future you can move your code between backend and frontend, or even run it on both seamlessly.

Different types of games need different types of networking. It seems like it's going to be hard to reason about how to program the game without knowing the constraints and guarantees on the network code.

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#23

Post by None4U »

keyle wrote: post #20

A couple of questions... Is it using Vulkan at the back or WebGL? I'm surprised that it's not mentioned in large bold text, typically that is the case. How are you financing this project? You're hiring people, so clearly there is a budget, but the engine is license under MIT, is it based on subscription for support or royalties?

It is stated that it uses the Rust wgpu library.

Usually for wgpu apps: Vulkan does not exist on the web, but on the web it can use WebGPU or WebGL

WebGL does not exist on desktop, it will default to Vulkan but also able to use DirectX 11 and 12

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#24

Post by unconed »

keyle wrote: post #20

A couple of questions... Is it using Vulkan at the back or WebGL? I'm surprised that it's not mentioned in large bold text, typically that is the case. How are you financing this project? You're hiring people, so clearly there is a budget, but the engine is license under MIT, is it based on subscription for support or royalties?

It says it is using WebGPU, which is the successor to WebGL.

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#25

Post by wsc981 »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #2

I wonder how it can scale? Even with the battle royale craze, it seems like nothing has really replicated Planetside 2's black magic netcode (or at least amassed a playerbase big enough to show it off).

I think some time ago (2 years or more?) there was this guy, I believe from The Netherlands, who had made a game that seemed to be to support a massive number of players with minimal hardware requirements.

I wish I could find the post, but I tried to search it in the past, without success. He did have a video with many players in game on YouTube.

Perhaps someone else remembers and can find the post.

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#26

Post by armanboyaci »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #18
Cyberdogs7 wrote: post #4

Always good to see more game engines coming out. Might I make a suggestion though. For your hero video on the site, I would expect it to be showing off the multiplayer aspect of the engine. Rendering environments, even in extreme detail, is considered table stakes for a game engine. Show off your unique selling point, making multiplayer games much easier than with a different engine.

I found it very funny that the "multiplayer game engine" hero video had... 0 players in it.

I am seeing multi cars in the screenshots, maybe those are controlled by the players :)

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#27

Post by tacticalmook »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #2

I wonder how it can scale? Even with the battle royale craze, it seems like nothing has really replicated Planetside 2's black magic netcode (or at least amassed a playerbase big enough to show it off).

Improbable claims that their SpatialOS service can scale beyond what Planetside 2 achieves.

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#28

Post by vvanders »

sarchertech wrote: post #16
ambientqtns wrote: post #5

"Why not Rust?" is a question I ask about game development a lot these days. I'm an engineer with a decade of experience as a web services engineer, and 5 years of game development engineering. Rust seems like the right direction for game developers -- safer code, faster compile times, more portable binaries. Ambient looks very cool, but I had some questions -- 1) WebAssembly, but no native web player? One of the mos…

Rust faster compile time? Faster than what? The terrible compile time is a big reason why I avoid rust for game dev.

Last game engine(C++) I worked on was a full hour to build if you touched a core header, and that was with Incredibuild that farmed out the compile across the studio.

If you care about compile/iteration times you can get them down to a reasonable level, Bevy does a good job splitting the heavy lift part into a section that is linked dynamically[1] which leads to pretty reasonable compile times even in something Rust based.

That said most of the high-churn areas I've seen drop to some scripting language(ex: Lua or others) for both hot-reload and avoiding compile times. Usually the heavy compute pieces are out in native with orchestration in scripting or something more flexible.

[1] https://bevyengine.org/learn/book/getting-started/setup/#ena...

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#29

Post by echelon »

sarchertech wrote: post #16
ambientqtns wrote: post #5

"Why not Rust?" is a question I ask about game development a lot these days. I'm an engineer with a decade of experience as a web services engineer, and 5 years of game development engineering. Rust seems like the right direction for game developers -- safer code, faster compile times, more portable binaries. Ambient looks very cool, but I had some questions -- 1) WebAssembly, but no native web player? One of the mos…

Rust faster compile time? Faster than what? The terrible compile time is a big reason why I avoid rust for game dev.

> The terrible compile time is a big reason why I avoid rust for game dev.

Compile times are the least of your worry.

The big problem is lack of tools and libraries in Rust gamedev. You can't even achieve PS2-era graphics with Rust right now. Neither Bevy nor FyRox support blend shapes / morph targets, and that's a two decades old and absolutely essential animation tool.

Rust for gamedev is going to take a decade to really get going.

Re: Ambient: The Multiplayer Game Engine

#30

Post by nickstinemates »

tormeh wrote: post #14
krapp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam and the app stores seem to be doing just fine. Maybe there's a popular indie title only released for browsers but I can't think of it.

There's this small one called Farmville. Though granted I don't know if it's still printing cash the way it used to. It's possible smartphones killed that sort of game.

My wife has been playing the same farmville farm for 12 years, since I met her. Hasn't spent a penny, but they release updates all of the time. I'm amazed at her dedication and theirs to this game.
Post reply on HN