complex games with html5

[coelacanth]

Hi,

is it possible to create a bit complex game (with any of frameworks pixi, phaser, babylon etc) like Darkest Dungeon, Dead Cells , UnEpic or Moonlighter

and what would the limitations be? Or it's better to start with a specific game engine?

[spinnerbox]

I have worked with Phaser. Since it is open source it missed some functionalities which I built myself in JavaScript.

I have never built a game with an RPG complexity, yet be it of production quality to sell it for money, so I cannot tell about maturity of Phaser. 

I haven't used those other tools, Pixi and Babilon, so I cannot tell about them.

But I know that Blizzard's Hearthstone is built with Unity 3D so you might try that one too.

But your game will run in Unity player browser plugin, so you have to decide if the game should run in a browser without using plugins. 

 

And yes, whatever you choose, you will always need to build your own custom tools to simplify your work.

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by spinnerbox

[kaasis]

22 hours ago, spinnerbox said:

I have worked with Phaser. Since it is open source it missed some functionalities which I built myself in JavaScript.

I have never built a game with an RPG complexity, yet be it of production quality to sell it for money, so I cannot tell about maturity of Phaser. 

I haven't used those other tools, Pixi and Babilon, so I cannot tell about them.

But I know that Blizzard's Hearthstone is built with Unity 3D so you might try that one too.

But your game will run in Unity player browser plugin, so you have to decide if the game should run in a browser without using plugins. 

 

And yes, whatever you choose, you will always need to build your own custom tools to simplify your work.

  

I just don't understand, what is the point of your comment? It literally does not answer his question that he asked. Do you even read your own post before you post it?

Putting that aside, to answer topic's author question. Yes, any of those libraries are fine to build complex games, they even are based on WebGL renderer which allows for bigger limits to render stuff on screen at the same time than regular canvas allows you to and even allows 3D stuff as well if you choose right framework to work with. Talking about limits, it depends on how you make the game but if you optimize well enough you could create as large game as you'd like, there's many ways to do that and goes very in depth with it so i'm not gonna explain that but if you want to find more about it, i'd suggest googling that.

[spinnerbox]

3 hours ago, kaasis said:

I just don't understand, what is the point of your comment? It literally does not answer his question that he asked. Do you even read your own post before you post it?

Putting that aside, to answer topic's author question. Yes, any of those libraries are fine to build complex games, they even are based on WebGL renderer which allows for bigger limits to render stuff on screen at the same time than regular canvas allows you to and even allows 3D stuff as well if you choose right framework to work with. Talking about limits, it depends on how you make the game but if you optimize well enough you could create as large game as you'd like, there's many ways to do that and goes very in depth with it so i'm not gonna explain that but if you want to find more about it, i'd suggest googling that.

Will not spam. You are quite right about my post. Babilon, Pixi and Phaser are all JavaScript. You can mix them together. Maybe even organize them with some Angular code. Well depends on your JavaScript coding skills.

I probably can google about complex projects made with these three, but If you can name some of them, I would like to see. Probably @coelacanth would also like to see some examples made with these three.

I cannot recall the name of that browser game made by Firefox team?

It was with multiplayer and it was RPG. You are a knight and you walk on a pixelated map. You gather potions and weapons and as you go, you kill monsters which give you experience points. As you get more experienced you get to kill bosses I think and visit hidden places like dungeons and caves. And this all was built I think with Phaser and some other tools, probably Socket.io or the like.

EDIT:

Yes got it: BrowserQuest, Article on the game

Phaserquest - BroswerQuest made with Phaser

 

Edited January 21, 2020 by spinnerbox

[b10b]

On 1/20/2020 at 12:10 AM, spinnerbox said:

But your game will run in Unity player browser plugin, so you have to decide if the game should run in a browser without using plugins.

Unity exports to a WebAssembly and WebGL output, no "plugin" needed.  But that's not to say it's ideal for web, especially not mobile web (search up Unity "Tiny" instead)

On 1/18/2020 at 8:17 PM, coelacanth said:

is it possible to create a bit complex game (with any of frameworks pixi, phaser, babylon etc) like Darkest Dungeon, Dead Cells , UnEpic or Moonlighter

Possible yes ... but consider this first ... Motion Twins' "Dead Cells" is authored with Heaps, a Haxe based game framework (which has Javascript WebGL output options).  Also Motion Twins' catalog before this title was predominantly web games so they clearly have web capabilities.  Therefore ... it's reasonable to conclude there's no all-blocking "technical" reason why there isn't a browser version, but there are likely many commercial or user-experience reasons why such a game isn't being published on web (yet).  Same issues would likely apply / hinder any other similarly scoped game intended for web, irrespective of authoring tools?  Conclusion, as always, is ** understand the audience ** ... on what platform do they want their game (big, complex, small, tiny) to be on.

Or ... make web games that absolutely require, embrace and leverage the "web".

 

[Karg]

you can use any frameworks or game engines that can export to various flavours of browser content (js/canvas/webgl, webassembly) to make any game.

if you meant complex game-play, the only limit is the sky ? 

if it's complex content (lots of graphics, animations, music, sounds), then yeah, there are limitations on what you can achieve for web. the main limit i see is the size, but here the discussion would diverge into: would you like you game available as web desktop, web mobile over wi-fi, web mobile over mobile data? a common denominator would be to keep the total size of the game below 20MB (code + assets), but with such low size, even you optimize the living hell out of your assets (choose a base resolution way lower than 1920x1080, use dragonbones/spriter for animations, downgrade the quality of music) you won't achieve the quality and quantity of assets of any of the aforementioned games. alternatively, you can use asset bundles and stream music/sounds on demand, but then if the player plays it on mobile data, can he afford the data charges for these dynamic loaded assets? as alternative 2, you can offer your game as a pwa (progressive web app), in which case some of these restrictions can be avoided (although the support for this is not wide-spread and probably only available to newer mobile devices and mobile operating systems).

the second restriction is performance for canvas/webgl, where you have to use as fewer textures as possible to keep the draw calls low and maintain a steady fps. in this case, you'll probably want only a couple of 2048x2048 textures active at a time, and as you can guess, you won't reach the same level of quality as the games you've pointed to.

[geralsoft]

my most complex html5 game 

https://www.crazygames.com/game/space-jumper

[b10b]

4 hours ago, geralsoft said:

my most complex html5 game 

https://www.crazygames.com/game/space-jumper

Ok?!?  I understand this is a perfect example of why the OP is uncertain whether making a complex game in HTML5 is even possible.

"Space Jumper" may be complex to @geralsoft and there's no shame in that, but by modern standards this is not a complex game.  This is a gamejam scope game - a week or less by a single pro dev?  It is not representative of the multi-team feature-rich examples provided by the OP or of the upper-tier potential that web games can deliver in 2020.

[geralsoft]

1 hour ago, b10b said:

Ok?!?  I understand this is a perfect example of why the OP is uncertain whether making a complex game in HTML5 is even possible.

"Space Jumper" may be complex to @geralsoft and there's no shame in that, but by modern standards this is not a complex game.  This is a gamejam scope game - a week or less by a single pro dev?  It is not representative of the multi-team feature-rich examples provided by the OP or of the upper-tier potential that web games can deliver in 2020.

oh...

well, the most complex game that I have made, not the most complex in the world, also has features that are not visible, such as

automatic aspect ratio detection (4: 3, 16: 9, 18: 9, 19: 9);

Multiple forms of control: keyboard / mouse, gamepad and touchpad. (you can play with any peripheral at any time in the gameplay)

stereo sound

particle system

a creator of levels, (not published).

multiple ads platform (admob, facebook ads and others)

 

and.. without frameworks like pixi, phaser, some libraries to sound, bezier lines...

 

Unfortunately, I'm not good at drawing, I hired a graphic designer but I didn't reach the budget, that's why I know about his graphic shortcomings, besides the requirement to finish the missions is not clear

Edited January 22, 2020 by geralsoft