Blitz Games in a Browser?
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Blitz Games in a Browser?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081209-safer-than-activex-a-look-at-googles-native-client-plugin.htmlSounds promising. If the plug-in proves a success and is installed on enough machines (every chance with Google behind it), then Blitz games could become as accessible as Flash games are now. Here's hoping...
Well, even then BRL first needs to add all the weblike functionality first.
taumel - why would that be?
Never really understood why anybody would want to play a 'serious' game in a browser, other than for the novelty factor.
Implementing security issues much like Java would be the first...
Dabz
This is good, will make MS kick things up a notch as well. Playing games via the desktop or browser will be transparent to the end user soon enough anyway.
Because Flash, Director, Unity... offer a lot more than just beeing a 2d or 3d app for the web. Communication abilities with servers (web, sql, ftp, ...), other apps (Flash app talking to Director app, Flash instance one talking to Flash instance two, Unity talking to the browser's Javascript, ...) is heavily used in todays web applications. Then we have all the securtiy stuff. It's so hard introducing a new technology which is accepted by a noticable amount of people and even worse by companies. This is a hard and long road.
Never really understood why anybody would want to play a 'serious' game in a browser, other than for the novelty factor.
There are dozens of reasons. First and foremost is the sociability. It's a lot easier to send someone a link they can click on and play than it is for them to install something. Especially in today's networked world it's hugely important to just pass links around. Also, most people are busy and they like to stay in communication or use other web services while playing a game. With the game in the browser the rest of the computer's functionality is exposed.
I don't think it's the be-all-end-all but InstantAction.com got a lot of things right. The games are hardcore 3D games in a browser and they let you use the power of web technologies to keep your friends together and communicate even outside the game to bring other people in. Have a go with Legions or RokkitBall they're fun, serious games, with great social aspects.
taumel - what I meant was: why is this BRLs responsibility? Surely, google would take on [most of] these issues? Maybe I'm wrong.
Would they? How do you call these functions, receive those callbacks?
Perhaps applications would run in a Flash-like sandbox model where they can only connect to servers running under the same domain or explicitly granting access, the sandbox in this case being provided by Google. (Also restricting access to local files.)
"To get the encoder to compile and run in Native Client, they only had to add approximately 20 lines of code and modify the Makefile."
So it's down to a new Blitz complier then first.
Never really understood why anybody would want to play a 'serious' game in a browser, other than for the novelty factor.
I did an educational game a while back - have had several queries as to whether it could be 'played on the web' - or if I could write a game that could be delivered that way.
So it's down to a new Blitz complier then first.
Maybe not so in BlitzMax's case. It looks like Google uses GCC to run the code/compile etc (GCC is crossplatform), so it could be just a few simple changes to Max's compiler for it to work.
Almost downloaded the source to try it myself just now, but if BRL are going to look at this too, I don't see any point wasting my time...
I'd estimate, assuming everything works as expected and there are no big caveats, that it should take about half an hour to get it running on my Mac... Dunno about Win32.
Opening this up for BlitzMax apps would totally rock, and could end up meaning a lot for BlitzMax in the long run.
I don't see any mention of BRL taking on the task, but it sure would be nice to hear from them on this.
"So it's down to a new Blitz complier then first."
"Maybe not so in BlitzMax's case.... so it could be just a few simple changes to Max's compiler for it to work."
QED
...St...r.eam....ing!
Plash: oops, I apologise.
Brucey: no, feel free to go ahead. This thread wasn't a statement of intent from BRL, just a personal 'ooh cool' thread.
Yah..Brucey...that would be a great contribution for Blitzmax. :)
How does this work with OS native API's etc?
I am guessing that this would be really great for BlitzMax, but fail a little on blitz3D as it requires DirectX etc?
Surely blitz is dependent a lot on the operating system calls - like to set up screens, handle sounds, do threads, whatever, does this google thing interface with the o/s or does it only run pure assembler code with no operating system?