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Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason

phoboslab.org

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Re: Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason

#31

Post by moffkalast »

phoboslab wrote: post #19
moffkalast wrote: post #13

With WASM it might actually run faster in the browser as well.

It does, but the main speedup comes from using WebGL instead of Canvas2D. Sadly, Canvas2D is still as slow as it ever was and I really wonder why. Years back I wrote a standalone Canvas2D implementation[1] that outperforms browsers by a lot. Sure, it's missing some features (e.g. text shadows), but I can't think of any reason for browser implementations needing to be _that_ slow. [1] https://github.com/phoboslab/Ejec…

Ah man, I'm still looking for a general canvas drop in replacement that would render using webgl or webgpu if supported. Closest I've found so far is pixi.js, but the rendering api is vastly different and documentation spotty, so it would take some doing to port things over. Plus no antialiasing it seems.

Re: Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason

#33

Post by mgaunard »

lelandfe wrote: post #30
mgaunard wrote: post #27

The history section does not feel quite accurate. From what I recall, what killed Flash wasn't iOS, but rather the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe.

Flash game sites were still huge and popular after Adobe’s purchase, so clearly it did not kill it. If you mean something like that the acquisition started the death… that’s a hard position to argue against, since it’s subjective. Perhaps you’re right.

Adobe had competing products mostly based on open standards. They shut down many active product lines and merged what was left into Adobe AIR, which didn't take off.

Re: Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason

#36

Post by Mindless2112 »

senkora wrote: post #3

> Many Web games were created with Impact [the game engine from the article] and it even served as the basis for some commercial cross-platform titles like Cross Code, Eliot Quest and my own Nintendo Wii-U game XType Plus. Cross Code is an excellent game. I knew that it used web tech and I was constantly amazed by how performant it was on the Nintendo Switch hardware. I would guess that this engine deserves some cred…

Here's a talk about how CrossCode was ported to Switch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBzlzvt8RU

Re: Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason

#37

Post by golergka »

fitsumbelay wrote: post #29

"Thoughts on Flash" may just have saved the Web platform at its hour of greatest need, ie. creeping dominance of a single piece of software. I believe that somewhere in there was frustration with Adobe who seemed to abandon the MacOS platform support for Windows' much larger user base, eg. Mac versions were always behind Windows versions. Perhaps Jobs also may've felt that there would be no Adobe without Apple as muc…

Even PSP had Flash, and it was fairly decent. I wonder how much effort and money Sony put into that.

Re: Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason

#38

Post by echelon »

flohofwoe wrote: post #20
echelon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WASM still needs better multi-threaded support. We built a game in Bevy and it took minutes to sequentially load in all of the assets.

You don't need multithreading to get concurrent asset streaming, a completion callback or async-await-style code will work too (after all, that's how most Javascript web games load their assets "in the background"). Also, browsers typically restrict concurrent download streams to about 6 (the exact number is entirely up to the browser though) - so you can have at most 6 asset files 'in flight'. In the end you are sti…

None of that worked out of the box, and we also spent most of the loading time CPU bound, processing the individual assets after they arrived over the wire. That was a blocking, non-async operation.

Re: Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason

#40

Post by lelandfe »

mgaunard wrote: post #33
lelandfe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash game sites were still huge and popular after Adobe’s purchase, so clearly it did not kill it. If you mean something like that the acquisition started the death… that’s a hard position to argue against, since it’s subjective. Perhaps you’re right.

Adobe had competing products mostly based on open standards. They shut down many active product lines and merged what was left into Adobe AIR, which didn't take off.

AIR and Silverlight and co. was a weird moment in the web’s history
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