HTML5 as a gaming platform
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HTML5 as a gaming platform
1–10 of 31 posts
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#2I would bet on javascript games for 2 reasons:
1. In a short timeframe, tools that convert html 5/js code base to IOS and Android will be good enough for most of casual gameplay type (match 3, tower defense, one button gameplay, etc.).
2. The web will slowly move from a primary game consumption platform (billions of flash games being played every day!, thousands of small studios living from their flash work), to a marketing platform for mobile games.
With one html/js code base, small indies will be able to push instantly to the web and app stores. They will keep selling sponsorship of theirs games to portals like kongregate and armorgames on the web, get their games expose to millions of visitors, build an audience and promote their app store offering in the meantime.
Win win for portals and game developers.
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#3I would bet on javascript games for 2 reasons: 1. In a short timeframe, tools that convert html 5/js code base to IOS and Android will be good enough for most of casual gameplay type (match 3, tower defense, one button gameplay, etc.). 2. The web will slowly move from a primary game consumption platform (billions of flash games being played every day!, thousands of small studios living from their flash work), to a ma…
I will always bet on JS as well.
The games you're talking about here, however fall in to the category of casual games described in the article. So for more featured games, we'll have to wait a bit longer and mature the platform as we go, but eventually we'll get there.
Good point about the same code base. I forgot to mention this in the article, but the reason the programmers say "HELL NO" is that maintaining two different code bases is a nightmare. (Semi-)automatic porting is easier and cheaper.
But that might shift in the future, we might be looking at a time when the only version you need to make is the web version, even for non-casual games.
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#4I would bet on javascript games for 2 reasons: 1. In a short timeframe, tools that convert html 5/js code base to IOS and Android will be good enough for most of casual gameplay type (match 3, tower defense, one button gameplay, etc.). 2. The web will slowly move from a primary game consumption platform (billions of flash games being played every day!, thousands of small studios living from their flash work), to a ma…
I will always bet on JS as well. The games you're talking about here, however fall in to the category of casual games described in the article. So for more featured games, we'll have to wait a bit longer and mature the platform as we go, but eventually we'll get there. Good point about the same code base. I forgot to mention this in the article, but the reason the programmers say "HELL NO" is that maintaining two dif…
But that might shift in the future, we might be looking at a time when the only version you need to make is the web version, even for non-casual games.
Unless your game requires or will requires heavy duty CPU and lot of RAM. In which case, you would need to wait several generation before a phone can run your game.
Think of FPS shooters of today, except the resource spending is inverted from the art department to the software side. Instead of racing for the biggest and greatest graphic, they aim for the most complex and detailed world as possible. Instead of gameplay being only 40 hours long game, it is measured in years.
That is the kind of game I am working on.
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#5Most HTML5 games i've seen seem to be more proof-of-concept. Is there a good example of a HTML5 game which is a proper product and which generates revenue?
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will always bet on JS as well. The games you're talking about here, however fall in to the category of casual games described in the article. So for more featured games, we'll have to wait a bit longer and mature the platform as we go, but eventually we'll get there. Good point about the same code base. I forgot to mention this in the article, but the reason the programmers say "HELL NO" is that maintaining two dif…
But that might shift in the future, we might be looking at a time when the only version you need to make is the web version, even for non-casual games. Unless your game requires or will requires heavy duty CPU and lot of RAM. In which case, you would need to wait several generation before a phone can run your game. Think of FPS shooters of today, except the resource spending is inverted from the art department to the…
Phones need serious improvement to run these kinds of games anyway, we're probably looking at at least half the time it's going to take for these games to run with the web technology stack on the mobile to get it running even natively on the mobile. So for mobile, the wait is on, no matter what.
It's going to take a while, but our toolkits need sharpening as well, so I'm not expecting a non-trivial web game to emerge very soon. But the platform is growing in the right direction.
You got me interested, what kind of a game are you working on? Sounds like my kind of a game.
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#7I was hoping for a more technical article - the core techs for HTML5 gaming aren't quite from what I can tell. WebGL and the Audio APIs in particular seem on shaky ground for the moment... it seems there are still rather major security and performance problems to deal with.
Most worrying however is the utter lack of any non-TCP networking in the browser, not even at the specification-proposal stages. Any sort of real time multiplayer really kinda needs UDP to work efficiently. P2P is also fairly important for certain applications and is in a similar state.
Anyway, not that this means to give up hope completely, just of disappointing there aren't many visible efforts to address these issues on the horizon.
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#8Personally I'd love to see more of this. I've been casually trying to help HTML5 Canvas as a gaming platform get off the ground for some time now. It's sort of a hobby at this point.
I've answered a little over 10% of all Canvas questions ever asked on StackOverflow, which has lead me to writing a few tutorials on Canvas-related issues that people come up with.
As a current side project I'm developing a set of HTML5 Canvas games that I plan to open source so that others can have some good examples and tutorials to start making their own Canvas games. The current status of that is in my profile page.
Soon I also hope to release a little booklet of all the Canvas performance issues I've come across and solutions for them, but sheer busy-ness may delay that more than I'd like.
If anyone is having issues with their 2D Canvas game development, especially performance issues that you are running in to, I'd love to hear from you!
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#9I was hoping for a more technical article - the core techs for HTML5 gaming aren't quite from what I can tell. WebGL and the Audio APIs in particular seem on shaky ground for the moment... it seems there are still rather major security and performance problems to deal with. Most worrying however is the utter lack of any non-TCP networking in the browser, not even at the specification-proposal stages. Any sort of real…
>Most worrying however is the utter lack of any non-TCP networking in the browser, not even at the specification-proposal stages.
WebRTC is supposed to have a proposal for this at some point, though currently it only has video conferencing specified.
Re: HTML5 as a gaming platform
#10Personally I'd love to see more of this. I've been casually trying to help HTML5 Canvas as a gaming platform get off the ground for some time now. It's sort of a hobby at this point. I've answered a little over 10% of all Canvas questions ever asked on StackOverflow, which has lead me to writing a few tutorials on Canvas-related issues that people come up with. As a current side project I'm developing a set of HTML5…
Keep up the good work!