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Facebook Open Source The Internet Games

The Death of an HTML5 Game Breeds an Open Source Project 147

Posted by Soulskill from the game-devs-take-heed dept.
colinneagle writes "German social gaming company Wooga has thrown in the towel on its HTML5 project after seeing little return on the increasing amount of effort put into its Magic Land Island game. Some early success convinced Wooga to devote additional resources to the game, which was launched in October of last year. However, 'As the project continued to progress, so did the industry. Whilst the benefits of an open platform future are clear for games developers, it became clear halfway through Magic Land Island's development cycle that the technology wasn't yet ready for mainstream exposure.' The announcement sheds some interesting light on HTML5, as Wooga hardly holds back on any of the details behind the game's failure. The biggest barriers to HTML5's entry to the mainstream include internet connectivity and limitations on sound. The consensus? The time for HTML5 will come; it's just not quite there yet. In the meantime, Wooga has made the game open source so other HTML5 developers can learn from it."
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The Death of an HTML5 Game Breeds an Open Source Project More

The Death of an HTML5 Game Breeds an Open Source Project

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  • I'd settle for (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:18PM (#40414475) Homepage Journal

    Nethack 3D! 8^)

  • But Flash is dead, right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by crazyjj ( 2598719 ) * on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:23PM (#40414531)

    Didn't they get Steve Jobs' memo?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )

      Didn't they get Steve Jobs' memo?

      Despite it supposedly being dead, it continues to claw at us from the grave "Install Update Now?"

      • That's way better than having the same thing happen with Steve himself. It might be the only way they can get some people to install Lion though.

      • Adobe has to be the most annoying updater in the software world. I think I see that update screen for Flash and Reader more than I do my login screen.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

          Adobe has to be the most annoying updater in the software world. I think I see that update screen for Flash and Reader more than I do my login screen.

          If only it didn't need an update every day...

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Creepy ( 93888 )

            Not to mention Acrobat only checks for and updates after a reboot and often asks you to reboot again.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by archont ( 1215492 )

      Flash is dead, yes. It didn't run on all devices like HTML does and frankly for a web standard that is unacceptable. Good riddance.

      Fortunately now we've replaced Flash with the Apple AppStore and it's apps. Using apps ensures literally 100% compatibility with the target device and a much smoother experience than Flash could ever provide.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Anonymous Coward

        ... and no portability to other operating systems or non-Apple devices.

        Yay?

      • Re:But Flash is dead, right? (Score:5, Informative)

        by gaspyy ( 514539 ) on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:48PM (#40414873)

        I hate to break it to you but many apps in the AppStore, including award-winning ones [apple.com] are built in Flash and packaged as apps.

        The whole crusade against flash is just the new generation rebelling the old one, not completely unlike the nosql movement.

        • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

          by Hatta ( 162192 )

          The whole crusade against flash is just the new generation rebelling the old one

          Sorry, but I've been waging a crusade against flash since the 90s. It has never been a good solution for anything.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by tepples ( 727027 )

            [Adobe Flash] has never been a good solution for anything.

            In that case, I'd like your honest opinion: What solution for efficiently delivering vector animation to the viewer is better than SWF? Rendering to a cosine transform format like MPEG-4 AVC or WebM VP8 is less space-efficient than SWF by an order of magnitude. And what solution for authoring vector animation is better than Flash CS?

          • Seems to work ok for me. I can watch videos, play simple games and other stuff at the click of a button. What's the issue?

      • Media capture API (Score:4, Informative)

        by tepples ( 727027 ) <.tepples. .at. .gmail.com.> on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:50PM (#40414917) Homepage Journal

        Flash is dead, yes. It didn't run on all devices like HTML does

        Flash's media capture API runs on a lot more devices than HTML5's. So do Flash vector animations, without having to bloat them by a factor of ten by rendering them to cosine-transform-based video.

        Using apps ensures literally 100% compatibility with the target device

        And 100% more headaches with the device manufacturer's screening process, as the article points out.

      • wha ? wow ? Where should I begin with this ? Ok, first flash is a multimedia platform. The AppStore is a distribution platform. Both are very different. The appStore is composed of thousands of software that sometimes uses flash. Flash is a good technology that is still used today by lots of people. Some websites are dedicated to the use of flash like newgrounds [newgrounds.com]. I don't know if this is a troll but I admit, you almost got me. Also, flash is here to stick around for some time and no it's not dead.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Toonol ( 1057698 )
        No, Flash isn't dead. It's dying. And by 'dying', it is dropping from vastly dominate to simply dominate. It is doomed, eventually, but right now it's only lost it's dominance in certain niches. It's only real competitor is HTML5/javascript, and right now that combination has nowhere near the power or performance of Flash.

        Flash has all sorts of sucky attributes, but don't kid yourself into thinking it's dead. It's dying like chubby fifty-year-old; it's going to happen, but it might be a long time.

  • Yep. (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherIdiot ( 1980292 ) on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:29PM (#40414615)

    The time for HTML5 will come; it's just not quite there yet.

    I've been saying this for awhile now. HTML5 is neat, but it's still not anything more than that right now.

    • Re:Yep. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by geekd ( 14774 ) on Friday June 22, 2012 @02:35PM (#40415529) Homepage

      I have written one HTML5 game http://magigames.org/runestone_defense.html [magigames.org] and I am working on another.

      HTML5 runs fine on a PC, but is too slow on my iPhone 4s and my iPad.

      I chose HTML5 because I wanted to brush up on my Javascript. If I wanted to make $, I'd have chosen Flash.

      Making sure everything works in various browsers / OS is not too bad. I test in IE9, Chrome and Firefox on Windows 7, Chrome, Firefox and Safari on Mac, and Chrome Firefox on Linux. It can be time consuming to try them all, but once I nailed down the differences (mouse events in IE, most notably) it wasn't too bad.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by madth3 ( 805935 )

        That is a nice game sir. Just saved the link to it to, err, analyze it better over the weekend.

        Seriously, I once created a simple logic puzzle in Java and seeing what you did makes me want to port it to HTML5 to make it easier to be shared. And performance is not really an issue in that kind of game.

        Kudos!

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by geekd ( 14774 )

          Thanks.

          I found it easier than I expected to write. The jawsJS game lib does most of the heavy lifting as far as sprites, animation, etc: http://jawsjs.com/ [jawsjs.com] it's LGPL. All my code for that game (Runestone Defense) is BSD licensed.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mcl630 ( 1839996 )

        Very nice game.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nzhavok ( 254960 )
        That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I predict that 2013 will be the year of the Linux desktop and HTML5.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Actually, it is great for my iPad. I converted my videos on my computer over to x264 and in a format that my iPad will play and I have a nice little html5 code to play it. So I can access my collection wherever I can pull down 1mb/s (obviously 3G is too slow, but WiFi works great).

      Games on the other hand, I don't really care for right now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xhrit ( 915936 )
      I made a browser game almost ~10 years ago when web 2.0 was still a fresh buzzword. Often times when I show it to people today they will ask if it is written in HTML5. Nope. It is old school AJAX dom manipulation.

      I have not seen anything in HTML 5 that couldn't be done using old school AJAX dom manipulation. All html5 is, is a standard to move forward on. Give it another 5 years, and it might be there.

  • Facebook? (Score:3)

    by slyrat ( 1143997 ) on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:42PM (#40414803)
    So there is the Facebook icon but it isn't mentioned in the summary at all. Is it a game that was targeting Facebook?

  • Please, no sound (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:44PM (#40414821) Journal

    Sound in web pages has been an abomination since the moment it was introduced. I never want to have to go searching through dozens of tabs looking for the one website that thinks its so important that it needs to blare audio at me. Anything that plays audio without the explicit consent of the user is incredibly impolite.

    • Anything that plays audio without the explicit consent of the user is incredibly impolite.

      So are you claiming that video description pages on sites such as YouTube must not autoplay their videos?

      • Re:No autoplay on YouTube? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Metabolife ( 961249 ) on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:58PM (#40415039)

        When you go to youtube, you're asking for video. When you search the web for information on bananas, you're not asking for "I'm a banana" repeating in the background as you read up on the cultivation and export of the fruit.

        • you're not asking for "I'm a banana" repeating in the background

          But an important question is, if I was searching for such, how would I do so?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )

        Good god yes! Just because I click through to a video doesn't mean I want to watch it immediately. I often middle click through half a dozen links to open them in new tabs, and then watch them one after another.

        This is why I keep youtube blocked in noscript, to enforce click to play.

      • I would prefer that. My second favourite use of flashblock is to keep videos from playing until I'm ready for them.

    • Re:Please, no sound (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Friday June 22, 2012 @01:57PM (#40415021) Journal

      It's a game, not a webpage. It's perfectly reasonable and expected for it to play sound at you at random times.

      What is really needed is a clean separation into apps and pages. Google is pushing for that in Chrome, but other browsers haven't really picked it up yet.

      • It's a game, not a webpage. It's perfectly reasonable and expected for it to play sound at you at random times.

        What is really needed is a clean separation into apps and pages. Google is pushing for that in Chrome, but other browsers haven't really picked it up yet.

        (emphasis mine)

        That is an excellent point. What a lot of people seem to forget when jumping to the defense of HTML5 is, there's now more to the web than structured documents.

        As a consumer, I am annoyed by the many poor design decisions in Flash, and appreciate a push to open (and enforceably less annoying) web standards. As someone who has to answer to my enterprise customers, HTML 5 is sorely lacking. It was simply not designed for this purpose.

        I really love the idea of the Pepper API, and I hope it tak

    • Obviously it can (and has been) mis-used, but I've seen various good uses for sound on webpages.
      For example, on a monitoring system, it might be good to have it play an audible alert along with a visible one when a system has failed or is experiencing issues.

      On a site with sound or music files, playing samples without needing an external plugin/player is useful. A lot of sites use embedded flash plugins for this which don't necessarily would on portable devices.

      For sites which are more interactive (e.g. an

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )

        On a site with sound or music files, playing samples without needing an external plugin/player is useful.

        Why doesn't the OS provide an audio player? What's wrong with using it?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by phorm ( 591458 )

          Fine if you want to listen to a whole item, there's no reason you can't download+play it. For clips or segments, etc, that would be a huge PITA.

    • The problem here is really more about "autoplay" than "sound" (and I agree completely - autoplay is an abomination unto the Browser. Now if we could get Google to quit forcing the HTML5 "beta" videos to autoplay we might be getting somewhere...)

    • Aahhhhh. The bgsound meta tag, with something like Hawaii.mid set to loop -1.. zombocom!

      Nothing beats the friendly 90's rotating skull smiling at you

  • I'm hyping my own projects here, but over the past weeks I've been porting free software games over to Android. Specifically, games that use the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) library. Most of the games are written in C++, and the OpenGL (OpenGL ES in the case of Android) functionality is handled via the SDL library. I have had a good response so far for some of the games.

    I have the games as different branches from my tree on Github. My tree is a fork of Sergii "Pelya" Pylypenko's port of SDL 1.2 to And

  • Making it open source is a pretty awesome move. They could have just sat on it for a while, or let the work go to waste.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebuck ( 585470 )

      Making it open source is a pretty awesome move. They could have just sat on it for a while, or let the work go to waste.

      One of the dirty secrets of open source giveaways is that often there are really good reasons why it was given away, like the quick fixes and workarounds for core problems have finally piled up so high that most changes for the remaining bugs brings the rest of the code down faster than a house of cards.

      It doesn't always have to be this way, but Mozilla was this way (prior to the from scratch rendering engine rewrite that took years), as have a few games (Jagged Alilance comes to mind). Eventually a few pr

  • This is one the key features I think game developers were looking for when HTML5 came out. It promised the holy grail of "write once, run everywhere". It would allow you to write a game for a browser and have it work on iPhone, Android and WP7. The issue is still that every browser and hardware device act different. A touch on one device is a tap on another. Multitouch works here but not there. Some browsers don't support audio, some don't support WebGL acceleration. This also changes all the time.

    Deploying

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      eventually you will be able to push your code to nearly every OS

      Nope. For-profit corporations competing for everything will insure that that day never comes. If you are not convinced, consider that corporations will even deliberately break their own backward compatibility for strategic reasons. Development efforts that understand and roll with that have an easier time than those that chase the ideal that will never be.

  • I tried git ' clone git@github.com:wooga/Pocket-Island.git ' and it said permission denied

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