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Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

adityaravishankar.com

51–60 of 65 posts

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#51
post #41

Isn't it strange that we are celebrating being able to build things made 20 years ago, but in the browser? I can imagine someone in 2032 posting somewhere: "Hey! I ported Crysis to the XXX " Being XXX = an Augmented Reality 3D Browser or what comes next in 20 years from now. Just a thought.

It is also awesome that he did it as one person in a month. I'm sure it took a lot more time to develop the original and a lot more people.

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#52
post #41

Isn't it strange that we are celebrating being able to build things made 20 years ago, but in the browser? I can imagine someone in 2032 posting somewhere: "Hey! I ported Crysis to the XXX " Being XXX = an Augmented Reality 3D Browser or what comes next in 20 years from now. Just a thought.

Well, it's a lot sooner than you think. Flash 11 already has the unreal tournament engine ported. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQiUP2Hd60Y

Awesome. But Adobe is slowly moving away from Flash.

BTW, Google ported Quake II to the browser (WebGL, WebSockets, etc) back in 2010.

BLOG: http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-ma-no-plug... CODE: http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/

Why don't we have something like a MMO-SimCity 4, instead of all those *Ville-s out there. Hey, EA, are you listening ? :)

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#53
post #41

Isn't it strange that we are celebrating being able to build things made 20 years ago, but in the browser? I can imagine someone in 2032 posting somewhere: "Hey! I ported Crysis to the XXX " Being XXX = an Augmented Reality 3D Browser or what comes next in 20 years from now. Just a thought.

To me, the impressive part is that the whole thing is (as far as I could tell) just 177KB of jQuery/Javascript code -- plus sounds and images.

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#54
post #41

Isn't it strange that we are celebrating being able to build things made 20 years ago, but in the browser? I can imagine someone in 2032 posting somewhere: "Hey! I ported Crysis to the XXX " Being XXX = an Augmented Reality 3D Browser or what comes next in 20 years from now. Just a thought.

It is also awesome that he did it as one person in a month. I'm sure it took a lot more time to develop the original and a lot more people.

Keep in mind it's a lot easier to trace a picture with tracing paper than it is to draw it in the first place. (Although this is really cool- one of my favorite games.)

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#55

I would advise you to stop working on this project immediately, and instead focus your efforts on creating a game with original game content. EA owns the trademarks and copyright to the material. You'll be much better off by starting your own project, instead of cloning a commercial product. Yes, the source code of command and conquer might have been released by EA, but EA still owns the trademaks. (speaking as someo…

which game did you try to recreate?

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#56

Very interesting. These games in the browser will change the world for gamers.

Like the flash/java games we've had for the last ~12 years? I'll be impressed when we get a full 3D FPS/RTS with full shader effects.

If you check out http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/ you'll see that WebGL/Canvas is way beyond the flash/java games. Both do have low-level shaders right now and more improvements are coming all the time.

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter if its a dupe of something everyone missed before and people up vote it this time. So much stuff gets submitted now that links are only on the first page of the new list for a few minutes and can easily be missed. This time its hit at the right time and there could be a good discussion about it.

I agree with your argument, but why is he being down voted? All he did was to point out that this article has been published before. Maybe there are some interesting comments in the "dupe" thread? (in this case no, but you get the point) I'm still new to HN and I find the up/down vote behaviour rather peculiar from time to time. This is such a time.

(He's being downvoted because it didn't add anything to this discussion, and it seemed like a case of sour-grapes because he originally submitted the link.

If there was discussion on the original submission it would have been useful)

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#58
post #41

Isn't it strange that we are celebrating being able to build things made 20 years ago, but in the browser? I can imagine someone in 2032 posting somewhere: "Hey! I ported Crysis to the XXX " Being XXX = an Augmented Reality 3D Browser or what comes next in 20 years from now. Just a thought.

It is also awesome that he did it as one person in a month. I'm sure it took a lot more time to develop the original and a lot more people.

I did a simple RPG game engine (It handled basic scripting, navigating through different maps, some screen tricks, etc), back in 1999 when I was 15 y.o. (yeah, I had a LOT of spare time back then)... I'll leave a screen here: http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/2714/proyge0.jpg in case someone wants to see what it looked like (I had 'borrowed' some tile art from several games of the time: Final Fantasy 5 and Harvest Moon :P but some were entirely made by me!!).

It was made in C++ and some ASM (I needed to use assembler to improve the performance in some critical areas, like graphics, working with 0x13h mode, I wrote my graphic library from scratch).

I can assure you that it was laborious and pretty difficult (specially talking to the hardware directly). But I REALLY wanted to learn programming, and I didn't went on vacation that summer, so I spent a lot of time coding for fun :)

Do you want to know the funniest part of it? Some years later, I lost the majority of that code. While formatting my PC, I forgot to save that... Now I only preserve some exes, but I've lost the level editor and the tile editor I made =(

Oh gosh, I feel nostalgic now.

Having said all of this, I can really understand the guy who ported this game. The will to learn is a powerful motivator.

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#59
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a lot sooner than you think. Flash 11 already has the unreal tournament engine ported. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQiUP2Hd60Y

Awesome. But Adobe is slowly moving away from Flash. BTW, Google ported Quake II to the browser (WebGL, WebSockets, etc) back in 2010. BLOG: http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-ma-no-plug... CODE: http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/ Why don't we have something like a MMO-SimCity 4, instead of all those *Ville-s out there. Hey, EA, are you listening ? :)

Where are the sources saying that Adobe's moving away from flash?

If anything they've been amping up their efforts to keep flash alive by focusing on Air (Machinarium was the number one app in the app store, and it was created in flash) and allowing to port Unity games over.

Moblyng an html5 gaming company blew 7.5 million in one year. The regular casual web-gamer isn't going to play a game that's half-baked. It's just not a viable alternative to flash right now. And there's no amazing IDE, which definitely led to the growth and explosion of all these flash games / apps, that's out there for html5.

Part of the beauty of a closed environment is not having to worry about trying to convince other browsers what features to standardize. They can just march on and implement features they feel are most important. And they're doing a pretty damn good job.

Sorry for the rant, but it really irks me how the media has completely skewed the public's perception on the state of flash.

Re: Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

#60
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome. But Adobe is slowly moving away from Flash. BTW, Google ported Quake II to the browser (WebGL, WebSockets, etc) back in 2010. BLOG: http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-ma-no-plug... CODE: http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/ Why don't we have something like a MMO-SimCity 4, instead of all those *Ville-s out there. Hey, EA, are you listening ? :)

Where are the sources saying that Adobe's moving away from flash? If anything they've been amping up their efforts to keep flash alive by focusing on Air (Machinarium was the number one app in the app store, and it was created in flash) and allowing to port Unity games over. Moblyng an html5 gaming company blew 7.5 million in one year. The regular casual web-gamer isn't going to play a game that's half-baked. It's ju…

Think about this:

Flash is not Adobe's core business. It's just a result. Their business is to make and sell amazing Editors. CS is their main product. They bought Macromedia, just to own much of the market of Designer-oriented applications. And Macromedia filled a Gap.

But from now on, they are investing heavily in building tools for HTML5.

-You can see them building Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools. [1] (this link is almost a year old, so I'd expect them to have something much more advanced by now).

- They are building HTML5 Editors [2]

- They stopped developing Flash Player mobile. [3] In the same post where they state that they will stop developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, they state: Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5.

Ok, ok, they also state that they will keep working in Flash for desktop. But it's like when any software company says: "We'll drop X, Y, Z so we can focus on A". That's something said to please their shareholders, so it doesn't sounds like "As our products are no longer needed, we'll just kill them".

Part of the beauty of a closed environment is not having to worry about trying to convince other browsers what features to standardize

Sure, but if you are a guest inside the browser, and the browser developer just throws you away, you have to move somewhere else. That happened with Apple, and it's happening again this year Microsoft. Windows 8 won't support flash running on Metro. Even more, they won't support ANY plugin.

Apple just wants to keep selling their Creative Suite. So, the best thing for them to do, is to focus on HTML5, because they now know that Flash is doomed sooner or later. And they are doing it. I expect to see in the near future something like Adobe Flash Professional but designed for HTML5.

I don't want to be rude, but I keep seeing people refusing to see this. People who won't accept the fact that Apple has realized they need to move on, and they are on their way to do so.

Sooner or later, flash will be to Adobe as VB6 is to Microsoft. Legacy code.

Just my thoughts.

[1] http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/ [2] http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/ [3] http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.htm...

Edit:

One more thing: Imagine for a moment that you are Adobe. You have an amazing suite of products, and one few of them are based on Flash. You realize that the browser developers have chosen to work and invest in something else. You go through all 5 stages of grief [4]. You deny it, you get angry, you bargain, you get depressed, but finally at least, you accept it. You HAVE to adapt and you have to work with them. But you won't have anything to sell for at least 1 or 2 years. And you still have this wonderful suite on the market.

What do you do? Do you go out and yell: DON'T BUY IT! WAIT UNTIL WE RELEASE OUR FUTURE-PROOF PRODUCT!!!

Of course not!!! You say We are already working on Flash Player 12 and a new round of exciting features which we expect to again advance what is possible for delivering high definition entertainment experiences

But at the same time, in the same paragraph you say: We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible, just as we have done with CSS Shaders. And, we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged.

Read it again: a smooth transition to HTML5.

TRANSITION.

That's their way to say: "Keep buying and using our products, while we develop our HTML5 editors. Then, you buy our new products and move to HTML5."

They have went through the last phase. They have accepted it. It's time for their community to do the same.

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model

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