Website for html5 games (reqmts)

[croco]

Hey, 

 

Let me introduce myself first. We are a group of flash developers and we create Flash games. We've extended recently and now are capable of converting our games into html5.

 

So we are ready to start a new portal that would be created specially for html5 games.

 

Can you please guys tell me what are the requirements for such a website? I mean in technical requirements.

 

The ideal example for us is (IMHO):

gamesgames . com

 

 

Website works very smooth and fast, has all the features we would like to have and it's also ideally tied with social networks and other trending aspects.

 

So in one sentence: Where do we start to create similar website that would take high load without problems?

 

All your suggestions are Highle appreciated!

 

Thanks,

Mike.

[mattstyles]

I guess you'd have to decide whether the games run purely in the client or have some sort of backing service/s, this could potentially make a huge difference in how developers submit or upload their games/patches/extensions.

 

As a developer I would like to have the ability to upload my game somehow to a staging area, one that I have visibility of whilst you are approving (or not) my game, I'd then also like the ability to push updates to the game, preferably without your intervention. This would allow me to push out patches/fixes/new features without the overhead of waiting for re-approval. You may or may not be happy with that loss of control but it would allow for higher quality games, so it does have its plus points for you.

 

Technically this would require sandboxed environments for each game, if you're going down the route of allowing developers to submit anything then it would probably require ssh access to that sandbox and some control over what can be installed and run there. Which basically puts you in the position of starting a web hosting company, which is roughly what you're doing anyway.

 

Your static serving has to be top-notch, my preferences for static are nginx or varnish and you'll almost certainly need to push it all through a cdn service.

 

API integration for stuff like leaderboards, social pushes (ideally you want games to push to social via you right? I hate social and rarely see the benefit—and yes, evidence does back me up—but I know some people love it) and maybe even access to user profiles or auth would be essential. Node would make a good choice here as it would be many fast connections of small packets, my preference on framework is koa, but express is also very easy to get a RESTful API going (there are many many choices here, most of comparable performance). Your API would need to be backed by a resilient and high availability db, I'd usually punt for levelDB or redis for this sort of thing but rethinkdb looks superb, couchdb is very popular and even mongo (which is taking a hammering currently) would maybe suit the type of data you'd be collecting. Postgres is also extremely popular currently. Without knowing your data heirarchy its impossible to make a meaningful suggestion.

 

You might need to think about a build server if allowing backing services to be included with games. You'd need this to avoid any nastiness of building/testing on one platform and then moving, although for client-only implementations this is not a concern.

 

The bulk of your work will be the static serving and high availability though. Cache as much as you can and make sure that browsers/clients are similarly caching (although, be aware, cache invalidation is one of only two hard programming concerns), if the games you serve can be stuck into app-cache then that can potentially really limit the amount you're serving every day. Creating a suite of tools and documentation to help developers do this would let you tighten your acceptance criteria (once you've built a good portfolio) and increase your profit margins, which, of course, you'd (partially) pass on to devs, wouldnt you?

 

As most people here are client-side developers and your questions mainly revolve around system and serving concerns I'm not sure how much useful info you'll collect. If you ask about how it should work, or what we, as game developers, would like from such a platform, then you'll get loads of info.

[croco]

I appreciate your time and efforts in replying for me with this much details, mattstyles! Thank you!

 

I guess you'd have to decide whether the games run purely in the client or have some sort of backing service/s, this could potentially make a huge difference in how developers submit or upload their games/patches/extensions.

Yes, we have this intention to integrate more tightly with other game developers, but for now are most focused on our own content. So I think we would start with a static serving and game will be running in the client with very minimal backing services (primitive game stats such as scores, levels completed, etc.)

 

 

As a developer I would like to have the ability to upload my game somehow to a staging area, one that I have visibility of whilst you are approving (or not) my game, I'd then also like the ability to push updates to the game, preferably without your intervention. This would allow me to push out patches/fixes/new features without the overhead of waiting for re-approval. You may or may not be happy with that loss of control but it would allow for higher quality games, so it does have its plus points for you.

 

We are definetly planning on extending it in future and going to invite all game developers willing to publish with us. But, honestly it's not in our current priority list. Our flash games portal is popular enough, so we expect it to be at least not less popular. If I'm not wrong then we will think about inviting independent game dev in our niche very soon

 

Your static serving has to be top-notch, my preferences for static are nginx or varnish and you'll almost certainly need to push it all through a cdn service.

This is our most important requirement and you rephrased it to the very point! Thanks again.

 

As most people here are client-side developers and your questions mainly revolve around system and serving concerns I'm not sure how much useful info you'll collect. If you ask about how it should work, or what we, as game developers, would like from such a platform, then you'll get loads of info.

Right. I was expecting if here is anyone hosting games on its own. Anyway, I already got much info from you reply and grateful to you for that!

[pog]

My first attempt was with Drupal and a custom theme and post types. I'm now moving to wordpress and arcade-pulse. It looks like it might be easier to use and customize, I'm building a child theme for it now. The theme can work with MyArcade plugin or as a stand alone theme. There's a few arcade options available for wordpress and a lot of plugins that you probably wont find with another arcade script. I've also found a few different html5 game feeds I'll be using when I update the site soon.

 

I don't know how well this would scale to private hosting sites for developers but it does work for in house games.