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Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL

blog.artillery.com

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Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL

#21

Post by girvo »

IsTom wrote: post #13

Many people trying to make "classic" RTSes miss critical points about feel and gameplay which makes the games very unsatisfactory to play for somebody who tried SC2 with its polished engine. Partnership with Day[9] might be just the thing that they need. Graphics are passable, but it's enough. Many players play SC2 on low graphics for readability of screen already.

I saw this over on /r/starcraft the other day; as a massive fan of Day[9] I hope his input will be enough to create the F2P RTS that so many want. Balanced, fun, reasonably fast paced... We don't know much about what he's planning but we'll see!

Meanwhile, back to the ladder. Grandmaster can't be too far off... ;)

Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL

#22

Post by tbolse »

monsterix wrote: post #9

Wow! This is mesmerizing. These posts on HTML5 stuff that pop-up on HN from time to time hint on what is to come on the web in the near term. I think HTML5 is a huge Tsunami gathering energy and steam out there! It will and should beat all these "I-am-the-best" closed systems (already does in some areas) sometime soon, and be on the top. System agnostic, immersive, inclusive, what not. Love it.

100% agreed.

Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL

#23

Post by Cakez0r »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #20

This is impressive and cool, but I think web-based gaming will never catch on with the 'hardcore' for a few reasons. For one, C++ and the native toolchain is still more efficient. But it mostly comes down to perception and convenience. The perception of web-based games is that they're casual and cheap. And most hardcore gamers like to have a copy of the game on their computer - they paid for it, they want a copy that…

An excellent game could change perceptions though.

I'd be more concerned about how easy it would be to reverse engineer a web game compared to a native binary. If it's easy to bot or cheat, any competitive aspect will be ruined.

Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL

#26

Post by jamesgeck0 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #20

This is impressive and cool, but I think web-based gaming will never catch on with the 'hardcore' for a few reasons. For one, C++ and the native toolchain is still more efficient. But it mostly comes down to perception and convenience. The perception of web-based games is that they're casual and cheap. And most hardcore gamers like to have a copy of the game on their computer - they paid for it, they want a copy that…

Convenience is exactly why this is interesting. I don't buy many games outside of Steam because it's so convenient not to have to back up installers or hunt for a particular XNA version or what have you.

There's a low barrier to entry to trying something that runs in a browser. I just navigate to the page, wait for a progress bar, and maybe bookmark the game if I like it. The low barrier to entry is one reason that flash games are still so popular. http://xkcd.com/484/

Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL

#27

Post by _random_ »

monsterix wrote: post #9

Wow! This is mesmerizing. These posts on HTML5 stuff that pop-up on HN from time to time hint on what is to come on the web in the near term. I think HTML5 is a huge Tsunami gathering energy and steam out there! It will and should beat all these "I-am-the-best" closed systems (already does in some areas) sometime soon, and be on the top. System agnostic, immersive, inclusive, what not. Love it.

The bad thing is that there will be no technology competition. Just HTML and JS for everything? Boring...

Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL

#28

Post by statico »

joshuacc wrote: post #25

Interestingly, the demo video hints that they are using CoffeeScript (see the `./publish.coffee` command in terminal toward the end). Can anyone comment about whether this is actually the case?

Yes, the command "publish.coffee" is a CoffeeScript tool which publishes a given game target to the CDN. The different colorful letters represent the state of each asset as it moves through the upload pipeline, e.g. "U" for unchanged and "F" for finished.

Our engine and Project Atlas are written entirely in CoffeeScript, but that's not a requirement of game code.

Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL

#29

Post by slacka »

monsterix wrote: post #9

Wow! This is mesmerizing. These posts on HTML5 stuff that pop-up on HN from time to time hint on what is to come on the web in the near term. I think HTML5 is a huge Tsunami gathering energy and steam out there! It will and should beat all these "I-am-the-best" closed systems (already does in some areas) sometime soon, and be on the top. System agnostic, immersive, inclusive, what not. Love it.

We may be seeing the same HTML5 demos on HN, but we're living in two different universes. In my world, I always open up these demos in a browser that's incompatible. If I do manage to get them working, my reaction is always like wow, I saw better native demos 10 years ago, and those just worked.

Let's be honest. JavaScript, DOM, and CSS are terrible technologies to base any gaming system off of. As a gamer, performance is critical and stuttering ubiquitous in HTML5 games is unacceptable.

For a gamer who disables mouse acceleration, had a CRT until low latency gaming LCDs were available, and tracks his Star Craft APM, what does HTML 5 buy me other than performance issues?

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