Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity • Hacker News Board

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#11

Post by personZ » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 5:22 PM UTC

yulaow wrote: post #4

lnanek2 wrote: post #3

I wonder if they could have just used CocoonJS, which is basically a reimplementation of WebView with better performance for games. But, anyway, yeah, it's well know the WebView on Android is a disaster. A top Facebook guy famously gave a key note at Android DevCon about why they switched to more native on mobile and said, "We don't hate the web [and HTML], we hate the webview." after going through countless bugs and…

At this point my question is the following: why on android and ios we have not a javascript/html5 -> native framework? I mean, the guys of windows phone made it. It is awesome and with great performance... why android and ios that came up in the market way before have still not implemented it?

It is awesome and with great performance.

Do you have some examples of this performance claim? Particularly games of the sort built with Unity? I've searched around and found no examples, though maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

The other "walled garden" comments are curious, especially given that we're talking about Unity which can target just about anything with equal ease. Even going to raw metal, a significant portion of a game written for iOS can be easily ported to Android and the NDK, or Blackberry OS, or various other systems. The basic standards of C/C++, standard libraries, and OpenGL, mean that there is very broad "standardization".

For those who want cross-platform targeting, a cross-platform tool is critical - build an HTML5 app for Windows Phone and you have built an app that is just for Windows Phone. That it is built on web technologies is no more magical than being built on C++/OpenGL. There are tools like Intel's XDK if you want actual cross platform HTML5 support.

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#12

Post by ntaso » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

I can recommend Impact.js. It's a commercial engine for 99$ but so far, I enjoyed working with it. It's canvas-based and optimized for tile-based 2D-games, but you can do other 2D-games as well with it. It comes with a nice level editor.

You can get near-native performance with Ejecta, which is something like a WebGL enhanced Canvas-only version of a web browser to put the game on the App Store.

http://impactjs.com/

(Note: not affiliated, I just like the engine)

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#13

Post by agmcleod » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 5:37 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #6

lnanek2 wrote: post #3

I wonder if they could have just used CocoonJS, which is basically a reimplementation of WebView with better performance for games. But, anyway, yeah, it's well know the WebView on Android is a disaster. A top Facebook guy famously gave a key note at Android DevCon about why they switched to more native on mobile and said, "We don't hate the web [and HTML], we hate the webview." after going through countless bugs and…

Isn't PhoneGap the same thing? What makes CocoonJS better?

Not 100% on this, but I don't think phone gap has a hardware accelerated canvas, and I'm pretty certain it doesn't support WebGL. The WebGL part doesn't really apply to this article, but it's important to note.

Ludei built CocoonJS with games in mind. It's definitely not perfect, and somethings can be tricky to debug & figure out, but I think it's the better alternative out there.

Me personally, I'm just not big on using unity. I think it's a really awesome tool, but it's just not for me.

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#14

Post by GlickWick » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 5:48 PM UTC

ntaso wrote: post #12

I can recommend Impact.js. It's a commercial engine for 99$ but so far, I enjoyed working with it. It's canvas-based and optimized for tile-based 2D-games, but you can do other 2D-games as well with it. It comes with a nice level editor. You can get near-native performance with Ejecta, which is something like a WebGL enhanced Canvas-only version of a web browser to put the game on the App Store. http://impactjs.com/…

I used impact.js for a while. Really solid framework for building web games.

I'm not sold on Ejecta though. I spent some time with it and found it debilitatingly difficult to debug issues, especially performance problems.

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#15

Post by evo_9 » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 6:04 PM UTC

ntaso wrote: post #12

I can recommend Impact.js. It's a commercial engine for 99$ but so far, I enjoyed working with it. It's canvas-based and optimized for tile-based 2D-games, but you can do other 2D-games as well with it. It comes with a nice level editor. You can get near-native performance with Ejecta, which is something like a WebGL enhanced Canvas-only version of a web browser to put the game on the App Store. http://impactjs.com/…

Another option is Phaser - A free, open source game engine similar to Impact: http://phaser.io/

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#16

Post by camus2 » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 6:23 PM UTC

do you have a link to numolition in HTML5? i'm curious about how it runs on mobile.

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#17

Post by kin » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 6:30 PM UTC

evo_9 wrote: post #15

ntaso wrote: post #12

I can recommend Impact.js. It's a commercial engine for 99$ but so far, I enjoyed working with it. It's canvas-based and optimized for tile-based 2D-games, but you can do other 2D-games as well with it. It comes with a nice level editor. You can get near-native performance with Ejecta, which is something like a WebGL enhanced Canvas-only version of a web browser to put the game on the App Store. http://impactjs.com/…

Another option is Phaser - A free, open source game engine similar to Impact: http://phaser.io/

I've been seeing Phaser a lot. Does anyone know of any commercially successful games built with these HTML5/JS engines? I understand success should have nothing to do w/ framework but certainly there are limitations/struggles of trying to build a non-native game.

I'm basically trying to see if I should bet that mobile browsers will mature enough or if I should simply invest my time in learning native mobile dev

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#18

Post by octopus » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 6:42 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #6

lnanek2 wrote: post #3

I wonder if they could have just used CocoonJS, which is basically a reimplementation of WebView with better performance for games. But, anyway, yeah, it's well know the WebView on Android is a disaster. A top Facebook guy famously gave a key note at Android DevCon about why they switched to more native on mobile and said, "We don't hate the web [and HTML], we hate the webview." after going through countless bugs and…

Isn't PhoneGap the same thing? What makes CocoonJS better?

PhoneGap uses the underlying OS WebView. If the WebView is slow your PhoneGap application will be slow.

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#19

Post by azakai » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 6:52 PM UTC

Unity announced they will support exporting to HTML5/WebGL, so it will be possible to do a direct comparison of the original HTML5 version of this game with one written in Unity and then exported to HTML5.

http://unity3d.com/5

Re: Rebuilding An HTML5 Game In Unity

#20

Post by DatBear » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 7:23 PM UTC

>Nothing is wrong with charging for add-ons, such as vector drawing and tweening libraries, but it sets the standard for others to charge for their code and is the complete opposite of the realm of the open Web, which everybody is trying to push forward.

I don't like it when companies complain about having to pay for code, assets, etc. Not everything should be open source, not everything should be free, sometimes people should be able to be paid for the work that they do for your benefit.