BrowserQuest– a massively multiplayer HTML5 (WebSocket + Canvas) game experiment

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/03/browserquest/

by paulrouget • 14 years ago

95 29 14 years ago

hacks.mozilla.org

dkhenry• 14 years ago

This has been a long time coming. I am happy to see the implementations of HTML5 technologies that are capable of delivering this kind of experience.

html5iscancer6• 14 years ago

The scrolling was jerky for me on my newish desktop PC. There doesn't seem to be any new "technology" here, just some slow wrappers around stuff that was around years ago. If this is being touted as "the future" then programming is really going down the toilet.

html5iscancer6• 14 years ago

Why down vote? Web babies seem to get very upset when the abject technological failure of the browser is pointed out to them. It has failed comprehensively:

1) security 2) computational performance 3) flexibility

WebSockets for example are just a bad rehash of existing APIs. Woopty-doo.

rduchnik• 14 years ago

wow, this is pretty impressive.

html5iscancer6• 14 years ago

Not trying to bully you, but what part of this is impressive? There doesn't seem to be anything here that wasn't done better decades ago. Why does everything become impressive once it appears in the browser?

html5iscancer6• 14 years ago

Please at least reply if you down vote. I would like to know what I'm mistaken about.

mkilling• 14 years ago

I've made some comments like this in similar threads and got downvoted as well. It's just part of the HN groupthink to glorify everything HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL.

A game like this was feasible 20 years ago in a native environment or 10 years ago in Flash. I can only see disadvantages in developing games in JavaScript + HTML.

appalsap2• 14 years ago

Medium matters.

manuscreationis2• 14 years ago

I hope they do a dive into the stack behind this, this is pretty cool.

lxt• 14 years ago

Here you go:

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/03/browserquest/

manuscreationis2• 14 years ago

Awesome, thanks!

glenntzke2• 14 years ago

I look forward to trying this out with a few friends from college who were mildly addicted to simple games like Dwarf Fortress and Zelda. Any excuse for old school multiplayer gaming is a good one.

masklinn• 14 years ago

> simple games like Dwarf Fortress

Simple like DF?

esteth• 14 years ago

I think you may have underestimated the complexity of Dwarf Fortress. It's the most complex single player game I've ever played

astrodust• 14 years ago

The ultra-realistic A10-C simulator with a 780 page manual is only slightly more complicated than Dwarf Fortress.

Kiro• 14 years ago

Dwarf Fortress is probably one of the most complex games ever made. Simple graphics, yes, but that's the only thing.

glenntzke2• 14 years ago

I used simple in two different ways, sorry about that. DF is simple in graphics only, I completely agree. A more appropriate game to mention is Runescape, but I couldn't think of it at the time.

pkmiec• 14 years ago

what's the ??? quest?

simcop2387• 14 years ago

There's a few, One is "for science" find the portals and get the cake.

The other is a maze to a rickroll, and then there's a fox potion that turns you into a firefox that makes you invincible for a short time.

appalsap2• 14 years ago

FYI, to get to the rickroll you can go through either entrance, and then just keep going back through the door you came through.

yesimahuman• 14 years ago

Cool. One of my last big projects was to build an MMO on the web. No flash, and we used Cometd: http://play.parallelkingdom.com/, https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lindbaaodgocnekppl...

senjutsuka• 14 years ago

Its a 20 minute game, dont get too excited. Awesome display of technology but its not what you typically think of when you hear MMO.

The potential is awesome and Im sure some hackers out there will do something amazing with the source code.

danneu• 14 years ago

Given that it's called "BrowserQuest" at "browserquest.mozilla.org", I doubt too many people went in expecting Ultima Online.

html5iscancer6• 14 years ago

Sockets are not a new technology. Wrapping sockets in a bunch of overhead and taking away UDP isn't new technology. No smooth scrolling on a PC with a graphics card an inch thick strikes me as a very poor job. But it will be hailed as a "step forwward" because it's in the browser space (which has no standards).

erikpukinskis• 14 years ago

The Browser is a massive step forward in four key areas:

1) Zero-pain installation (no steps, no wait to download)

2) Zero-friction sharing (paste a url to any resource within the app/game)

3) Zero-friction upgrading (happens automatically. depending on architecture, no need to even reload the app)

4) Largest install base of any platform

It's a classic disruptive technology. Yeah the graphics suck. Yeah it's slow. But those things are improving, and will get to the point where they're "good enough" for a big swath of uses. Whereas the four properties above are much more challenging to fit into an Xbox or iOS architecture.

html5iscancer6• 14 years ago

Zero-install is not difficult. In fact, it was around decades ago. Then people destroyed that with complex operating systems requiring loads of configuration. Even with the stupidity of modern operating systems we could recover zero-install with simple virtual machines (or any number of other mechanisms).

Web links are cool. Just about the only redeeming feature of the web. They have absolutely no connection to JavaScript, HTML5 or any of the other hideous complexity you see in the browser.

Browsers are not "zero friction" upgrading. Behaviour changes from version to version. Using Firefox on Linux I have experienced continued breakages. Again, if you had a simple virtual machine it would be simple to port anywhere, and you wouldn't need constant bug fixes.

Your last point has nothing to do with technology. It is simply the result of vendors successfully selling the technology to people. By doing so they've locked other better approaches out of the market due to network effects.

The remainder of your post is the good old "it'll be good enough" attitude. Except it won't ever be as good as it was because people are reliant on benchmarks that make "freight train" style systems look "fast" for through-put code.

BrowserQuest– a massively multiplayer HTML5 (WebSocket + Canvas) game experiment

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