What is it with these militaristic company names? Artillery, Firebase, etc. Or is it just my European mindset?
Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
81–90 of 151 posts
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#82I think Javascript is too slow for 3d gaming. If you look at this HTML5/WebGL minecraft engine, it stutters even without any other players or bots in the environment. http://voxeljs.com/#gallery Meanwhile Minecraft running in Java is smooth on even the slowest machines. Benchmarks indicate that Javascript is 4x slower than Java. http://j15r.com/blog/2013/07/05/Box2d_Addendum The alternatives like ASM.js and PNACL are…
This is exactly what they said about Java ten years ago (and I still hear it today): "Java is way to slow for games/anything performance-critical". The choice of Java in your argument is kind of ironic to me.
Minecraft isn't exactly a very demanding game.
Also 10 years ago Java was nowhere near as fast as it is now. If you are saying that Javascript might be an option 10 years from now, I am not disagreeing with you.
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also unlike Steam you might have to re-download the whole thing if your browser decides to clear the cache for whatever reason. Can't play underground, on a plane or while camping as well (not a typical scenario though - nitpicking a bit).
There's work going on for better app caching systems at the browser level. This is a UI and platform issue, but there's no tricky technical aspects. The user expresses the intent of wanting to cache a web app, and it is cached locally.
"The user expresses the intent of wanting to cache a web app, and it is cached locally."
So I will use [x] to find a game in [y] and then [z] it to play.
Where: x = {Chrome|Firefox|Steam}, y = {some-sort-of-web-app-store|Steam store}, z = {cache|install}.
I guess the success will depend on how easy and rich x-y-z experiences are, but you will still have to register, pay and download.
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Can you comment about your experience using CoffeeScript? Personally, I'd love to see a whole blog post about that. :-)
Totally. I've got a "18 Months of CoffeeScript" post drafted, in fact. Keep an eye on our blog :)
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#85I think Javascript is too slow for 3d gaming. If you look at this HTML5/WebGL minecraft engine, it stutters even without any other players or bots in the environment. http://voxeljs.com/#gallery Meanwhile Minecraft running in Java is smooth on even the slowest machines. Benchmarks indicate that Javascript is 4x slower than Java. http://j15r.com/blog/2013/07/05/Box2d_Addendum The alternatives like ASM.js and PNACL are…
Actually minecraft gets pretty shaky on my mbp 2009.
My minecraft server can get bogged down just my wife and I playing. That's on a core2duo 2.0GHz with 4GB.
It plays better on my phone.
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#86I think Javascript is too slow for 3d gaming. If you look at this HTML5/WebGL minecraft engine, it stutters even without any other players or bots in the environment. http://voxeljs.com/#gallery Meanwhile Minecraft running in Java is smooth on even the slowest machines. Benchmarks indicate that Javascript is 4x slower than Java. http://j15r.com/blog/2013/07/05/Box2d_Addendum The alternatives like ASM.js and PNACL are…
This is exactly what they said about Java ten years ago (and I still hear it today): "Java is way to slow for games/anything performance-critical". The choice of Java in your argument is kind of ironic to me.
Java has gotten faster in the last decade, but it's still not used for games where performance matters.
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#87I think Javascript is too slow for 3d gaming. If you look at this HTML5/WebGL minecraft engine, it stutters even without any other players or bots in the environment. http://voxeljs.com/#gallery Meanwhile Minecraft running in Java is smooth on even the slowest machines. Benchmarks indicate that Javascript is 4x slower than Java. http://j15r.com/blog/2013/07/05/Box2d_Addendum The alternatives like ASM.js and PNACL are…
> They also have no debugging support.
When emscripten is passed the debug flag, it will generate source maps, which will let you step through your code, although inspecting variables still isn't a solved problem.
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I saw better native demos 10 years ago, and those just worked. Agreed. But you're missing the point. In those 10 years those of us who played in the native universe will not be the target market any more. Just like we listeners of Pink Floyd and Metallica aren't the target buyers of Justin Biebers and Lady Gagas of the day. The latter are as successful, immersive and relevant to those who matter. > JavaScript, DOM,…
>Now this is an opinion based on the current_level_of_performance (which I agree is not at the expected level.). But it's not a great way to judge what the future could hold. Native will always fundamentally beat non-native, that's a plain fact.
> Native will always fundamentally beat non-native, that's a plain fact.
I believe so, yes.
Assuming there will be 9 billion web users sometime into the future, non-native will be enough for most of the stuff though.
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#89Wow! 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.
>System agnostic, immersive, inclusive, what not. Love it.
Yay! Let's cheerlead the democritisation (read: degeneration) of computer programming! The "open", democratic people got everything wrong, which is why the browser has such a laughable hodge podge of features. Hooray for people who took web programming instead of OS design at college. WOOO!
Re: Artillery is building a hardcore RTS with HTML5 and WebGL
#90Many 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... ;)
For us non-gamers, who is Day[9]? <:)