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Where's html5 game developers' party at?

Would be cool to meetup and talk Babylon

Who is at GDC? SLACK: https://html5gdc2017.slack.com/shared_invite/MTQ3MTk1MjQ3MTI0LTE0ODgyMjY4MDMtZjNmMmJjYTkzOA My Email: JJaywallace aaaaattt gmail dooot com

Is anyone going to be in San Francisco in a couple weeks for GDC 2016? Myself and one of our other devs will be there and would love to meet up with any other HTML5 game devs (we are the creators of CasinoRPG and howler.js). Feel free to reply here or tweet me @GoldFireStudios.

Hey all Babylonians, Everyone I spoke to prior to GDC bailed on me this year - as if work is more important. However, you all missed a great show, and the booth crawl (open bar time) was second to none. And it seems like developers of the female persuasion are looking better every year - as many of the women developers showing their games were far more interesting to view their demos with than I rmember in years past. So it was good to geek out with not only dudes, but also some very talented girls making games, and a great show all around. Oculus "owned" most of the show with the largest booth, and a line of people waiting to demo their VR and AR displays in which many people waited for hours - which I personally don't get as I think Oculus is "crap" (in the kindest terms) at best - but for now with very few competitors, it's at least a different and fun way to display content. So good for them, as their founder Brendan was our PA at my company back in 2011 -2012 while we were developing VR and AR head mounted displays for Lockheed Martin to be used on the Joint strike Fighter. So "ID" (who sued Brendan for patent infringement and other companies as well can sue Brendan all they want, but I persoanally know where he got the ideas and the tech to produce the Oculus line of products. And I wish him all the best as he worked hard to turn our technology into a consumer product. Unfortunately for him, the life of Oculus won't be a long one as it un-naturally projects light into the eye through the retina and can and will cause damage to some users. Zuckerburg is already begining to distance himself from the company most likely due to the pending and forthcoming lawsuits against the product. But in the meantime, people seem to love it, and it certainly does immerse the user into a far more believeable world than a simple 2D screen - at least until the nausea comes on. The next "huge" breakthrough in my opinion is a headmounted display made by Magic Leap, in which one of my best friends Richard Taylor sits on the board of the company and tells me what he can about the technology. Richard is Pete Jackson's business partner and owns Weta and Weta Workshop - as well as a brilliant mind and an incredibly talented artist. His most recent comment to me was that Magic Leap will change the world as much as the invention of radio changed the world - and Richard never BS's about anything - his word is more reliable than anyone else I work with in the film and entertainment industry. He hasn't been permitted to define much of the specifics to me on the techology, but I'm very honored and quite excited that soon (in about 2 weeks) I'll be one of the very first people ever to demo what a true VR and AR head display should and will be. And if there are any of you who happen to know Richard personally, please don't ask for a demo, as there is absolutely no possible way for him to set this up for anyone. I'm only able to work with them as our streaming server technology and API for authoring interactive content within the HTML5 framework provides us with the potential to support their display devices and interactive accessories. Less than 20 people worldwide have had the good fortune of demo-ing this technology, so again I'm quite honored to be provided the oportunity to join the very small club of people who have had the opportunity to use this technology to date. Unfortunately, due to the stringent NDA I have to sign, I won't be able to speak at all about what I experience, however, I will confirm if it is as world changing as I'm being told; which I'm fairly certain this will be the case. If you're not yet familiar with Magic Leap, there's allot of info leaking out now since their first patent is now public record. So it's well worth taking the time to look at what they're developing and how different it is from all other display technologies. They also just received another 542 million in investment from Google, and prior to this had raised millions from major players in the tech industry including investment from Qualcomm. So in the meantime, if you're developing for Oculus, I would only advise that you invest minimally in the infrastructure to support this display device and devices such as the Microsoft Hololens - since these and other similar technolgies have the same flaw which displays light un-naturally onto the retina with a high potential to cause physiological and neurological damage. And on that somewhat negative note, I still need to report that Oculus owned the show. Not only was their booth the most frequented, but there must have been an additional 50+ Oculus displays in most other booths which were demo-ing games and content. Both Magic Leap and Microsoft Hololens are not yet available to show, so there was no way to make comparisons between these technologies - we'll simply have to wait and see. I was very disappointed this year in the "Independant Game Developer's Mega Booth" which showcases independantly developed games. It was sponsored by Intel, so it was primarily games developed on and for Intel powered devices - although a few games showcased Unity as their primary development tool - still running on Intel of course. But in looking quite thoroughly throughout the show, there were no games I could find running in HTML5 other than support applications on mobile devices providing additional content for console and desktop gaming. And as a greater disappintment, there were only somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 - 30 independant games total in the "independant games mega booth", so I was disappointed in the limited # of independant games represented at GDC this year. Although, many of the games showcased were quite good, well developed, and fun to play. I believe you can get a look at what was there by visiting the GDC 2015 site. Otherwise, Intel has developed and is distributing a fantastic HTML5 Cross-Platform set of development tools called "Intel XDK." Since the show, my team has installed this on all of our machines as it is an extremely valuable tool for testing and debugging HTML5 scenes, javascript, and other code which expands on what is provided in the JS console - almost exponentially. It is currently free for individual users, and I recommend that anyone reading this post should download and take a serious look at what XDK offers as it's a huge time saver for us already. From everything I saw at the show, this is the one item (tool) I would recommend to everyone. Intel has also released their API for their RealSense camera and sensors and I'm sure this will be of value to many of you reading this post, as it provides additional sensor data that is being adopted by many OEM partners and it is becoming a standard on many destops and mobile devices already on the market. Unity had a really good showing of their new version release, and although I've never been a big fan of Unity, their new software and featureset is somewhat impressive and I believe worth checking out. Of course Epic was showing Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) of which I've been a huge fan, as I was on both the alpha and beta testing cycles the past 2 years, and found it to be 1000X better than UE3 - in my opinion. The new workflow is a bit difficult to pick up from scratch, but at least there is some documentation now - whereas I had to learn by trial and error which was not really fun at the time. But I highly recommend UE4 to ANYONE who wants to develop outside of HTML5 - which is often fun to harness the full power of your CPU and GPU. The quality of rendering as well as some of the new third party lighting plugins now available, permit the creation of truly photo real rendering in real-time. It's fantastic given the tools provided to work with with these days. There is so much else I could speak to about GDC 2015 this year, but I'll leave it at this for now - unless anyone has specific questions I might be able to address - just ask. It was a fantastic show, and lots of talented independant developers attended this year, and we (our development team) made allot of new alliances - and it was great to catch up with old friends. The value for me was far greater than I had anticipated for this year. And the good news is that we (the BabylonJS and WebGL community) is not yet fully represented in the gaming and content industry quite yet - so we are all truly on the forefront of where we all know the gaming, application, and content creation industries are heading - and I fully expect to see our frameworks emerging with a bang beginning next year. Intel, Qualcomm, and many other key players were pushing in this direction this year, and I'm sure we'll see a much larger presence and representation of HTML5 games and apps next year. I also hope we as a community can come together at GDC next year to begin making our mark as we all know where this is going. Hope to see you all at the next GDC. Cheers, Dbawel

Hi everyone, So GDC is now just around the corner. Me and Dave (AKA the PlayCanvas guys) are going to be in town. There is a lot going on that is relevant to HTML5 game developers. For example, there is a WebGL Meetup run by Khronos. Intel and Ludei will be showing off their latest mobile HTML5 wrapping technologies. Oh, and we'll be unveiling some really cool games, demos and tools. And there'll be a lot of developers in town. Maybe we can get together in a bar for a mini-meetup! (I'm a fan of the Thirsty Bear personally). So yeah: Who's going to GDC?Do you want to meet up and talk HTML5, WebGL, frameworks, tools, games and so on over a few beers?Will

Is anyone else going this year? I wouldn't mind meeting a few other folks doing cool things in html5.