rich Posted May 2, 2013 Share Posted May 2, 2013 "At the 2013 Game Developers’ Conference, Alon and I from Mozilla and Josh Adams from Epic Games presented a talk called “Fast and Awesome HTML5 Games”. We surprised people by showing off Unreal Engine 3 running in Firefox — compiled from C++ source with Emscripten, running smoothly and efficiently. Today, Epic is making the Epic Citadel demo available, so that you can try it out for yourself. For best results, it needs a recent Firefox Nightly (Firefox 23 or better). However, because the core technologies are just standard web technologies, it will run in Firefox 20 (the current released version) — but with some performance degradation and a lack of Web Audio-dependant audio effects. We’ve had success in running it in other browsers, but it’s somewhat hit and miss – it heavily depends on the quality of the WebGL implementation, memory management, and JavaScript engine. Now that the demo is available, we expect that they will fix any remaining issues quickly." http://blog.bitops.com/blog/2013/05/01/unreal-javascript/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted May 2, 2013 Share Posted May 2, 2013 Well... who wants to download a 60MB heavy javascript block only to get the logical engine into the browser?After that you have to download a great amount of textures, too to get anything displayed... I don't really understand the purpose of this project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazer Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 I think it's a good display of what can be done in the browser. Personally, I find it pretty inspiring and it gives me hope and confidence in the technology I'm using to make my hobby games. Even if I have no desire to make something this heavy (or even something 3D) right now, it's comforting to know (and see with my own eyes) that it's possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich Posted May 3, 2013 Author Share Posted May 3, 2013 I have to agree. If you're going to make a technology (asm.js) that claims you can do stuff at speeds never really before possible, you have to pull out all the stops to really show it off - and this absolutely manages that imho. It's still a very niche thing, with limited practical use at the moment, but as a benchmark for what can be done it's pretty sweet indeed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renaun Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 60Mb seems like a lot, but what I have seen other companies of AAA games do is optimize it so it starts users with about 5-10Mb and loads the rest as needed, up to a couple hundred MBs. Browsers need to get better caching APIs where the developer can control it or ask for more space (which there are working on). The biggest factor here is market though if you are after the PC gamer market it will last as long as the PCs are relevant for gaming which is years to come. It will be interesting to see if WebGL is used for full games or for trials or subset of the games to drive PC versions of the games. But either case is still niche not because of the tech but because of the reach. Cool tech demo but yet to see how it plays out in the mass market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich Posted May 3, 2013 Author Share Posted May 3, 2013 I have games on my iPhone several times larger than the Unreal demo! I don't believe for a second that things like this are created as a proof of market, they're simply a proof of tech. Then again, Runescape moving to WebGL is a massive thing. It's a logical fit - an already online game. For me though I can't wait to see what happens with WebGL on mobile. It's the one thing that will catapult html5 games into 'app store quality' levels imho, and we're already seeing it happen on Android. It's just Apple holding the keys to the party. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renaun Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Yeah i should have mentioned i was thinking of WebGL for desktop and marketability as companies are exploring that now. As for mobile the reach is better as WebGL is on newer chipsets and less driver issues, and as the browsers work out implementations it is where ppl will explore to get around app stores. Might not see the same performance as running a "desktop" version of Citadel. Having said that Citadel was a mobile demo game anyway so from a tech stand point if mobile browsers don't limited WebGL in any particular way it should be doable. How does caching hundreds of MBs work on mobile browsers? Can devs use local storage on the mobile HTML5 side? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich Posted May 3, 2013 Author Share Posted May 3, 2013 I suspect it's still really difficult to make good money from desktop html5 games, without some kind of already existing community / business model (ala Runescape). And that's a very good point re: WebGL on mobile, chipset blacklists are a really big problem on desktop, but I wonder if that's much less of an issue on mobile?! You'd think it could be. I don't expect Citadel or work on mobile of course, would be amazed if it does, but would be curious to find out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renaun Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Citadel is a iphone app demo, based on OpenGL ES 2 which is why they Epic could port it to Flash Stage3D and WebGL so easily. So there is no reason it can't run on mobile browsers. Only consideration is mobile ram and how much of the WebGL on mobile browsers is implemented, of course the bigger issue would not be WebGL but the JS speed on the mobile browser. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich Posted May 3, 2013 Author Share Posted May 3, 2013 Very interesting - I still don't hold out TOO much hope of it working though But I guess it doesn't matter really, it'd be like trying to cram a Ferrari into a horse box. I'd just be happy with unified WebGL across the mobile board. One day ... one day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renaun Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 I guess that hits the nail on the head for me too, all these cool tech demos but nobody addressing the unified WebGL issue. Like you say.. One day ... one day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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