Browser Based Game, Versus Native Game? Can You Imagine Playing A Brow

[skeezix]

hey folks,

I've been building a turn based wargame for awhile (see my post from a couple weeks ago here: here) .. its a pretty fun project to work on so the server and turn processor and all that has come along pretty well. Naturally I really should be working on multiuplayer BattleJewels, Kronos, optimizing Hatari, and working on a couple other games I've been piddling on for a year, but such is life

The client I've been waffling back and forth .. make it a browser client, versus a native client (or both, eventually, when time permits.)

I've actually started both and gotten useful results from both; for the 'greater good', a browser client is probably wisest, since then the game can be pretty easily made playable from the Pandora, as well as your browser at work or home, etc.. a much wider audience and easier cross platform. On the other hand, I can see on smaller devices (Pandora and weaker) that a browser might just 'feel wrong' for a game -- ie: you lose the top inch to browser window BS, and you get less options overall than doing a true native client. (Mind you, if the browser can go fullscreen and run smoothly etc, it might be a moot distinction. Further, one can of course embed the browser in a native client to alleviate much of the concern, but even with QT's WebKit port, its a lot of effort. Anyway.)

My question is ..

How do you _feel_ about a game client thats running in a browser, on your Pandora?

Would you invoke FireFox / Arora / etc and log into a game over the wifi network to do your turns, or would that annoy you? (aside from the concept of 'offline turns'; thats down the road anyway, the first cut of a native client would be live interactive over the network as well. So I'm asking about just the raw feal of firing up the browser to play your game turns for the day, if tou care if its browser based or not.)

Obviously that sort of thing is popular on the PC, but on your _Pandora_ would that work for you, or be a total turn off?

(Making a browser based client does run into issues .. I 've got it working pretty well and using lots of SVGs for maps, etc, but of course SVG is not widely supported since Browsers suck; firefox works fine, but iphones and Safari don't by default, most Konquerer installs don't support SVGs without a plugin, etc. I could use HTML5 canvas instead, but then you require an HTML5 supporting browser. And so on, through the usual tricks. But most people I'd care about would use Firefox or Chrome on the desktop so not really a problem there, but on the handhelds, it could be tricky ..)

I'm torn on the issue; just not sure which direction to go, as they're more or less equal (some Pros and Cons for both, but nothing that makes it an obvious swing one way or the other.)

So it comes to 'feel'; I imagine the game would just be a pnd-file that invokes the browser anyway, so its not like you'd have to run the browser then specify the url, etc; you'd fire the game up, the browser woudl come up and switch to the right URL and yo'd go from there.

jeff

 

[skeezix]

And aside .. I truly suck at making things look attractive; I'm an engine guy and backend guy; if anyone wants to be graphician for UI screens, I could totally use the help

jeff

 

[LeChuck87]

personally i don't like playing games in a browser. it just doesn't feel right...

but: of course browser-based games are pretty much platform-independent, so it would be the best choice.

 

[Mofokubik]

I recently tried out a java genesis emulator, I was very impressed, but I can't see myself wanting to play games in firefox. Browser based games are getting good, really good, but I think most people still prefer to play games natively. at least for the time being..

browser based games will also eat up the battery in a handheld device.

 

[Butterman]

browser based games will also eat up the battery in a handheld device.

:blink:

 

[Mithrildor]

I think browser is better as that makes the game possible to play on other platforms too. The space that is lost because of the bar isnt much as you can go fullscreen

 

[Mofokubik]

browser based games will also eat up the battery in a handheld device.

:blink:

All the browser based games i've played (especially flash) take up considerably more cpu/memory resources than something standalone, not to mention it won't make use of the gpu. The pandora's chip scales it's cpu use, so more bloat = less overall battery life.

 

[fusion_power]

browser based games will also eat up the battery in a handheld device.

:blink:

All the browser based games i've played (especially flash) take up considerably more cpu/memory resources than something standalone, not to mention it won't make use of the gpu. The pandora's chip scales it's cpu use, so more bloat = less overall battery life.

At least I think a browser game can't be as hardeware optimized as an native game could be. Browser games onto mobile Handheld-devices don't make much sense for my taste. I want fast and optimized games and not Pac-Man Graphic Quality that eats 600MHz to run Full Speed.

 

[Dunny]

Not keen, personally - I don't want to be having to boot the pandora into a windowing desktop in order to play a game. I'm intending not to install a desktop at all on it, tbh - I'd rather use it like the old GP2X with a menu on bootup.

D.

 

[skeezix]

minimenu can run a browser; ie: even in a non-X11 setup, the pnd system can bring up X to launch an X-requiring pnd (and then kill X afterwards.) So thats a non-issue per se.

This is a turn based game, so it doesn't need flash or fancy action going on; the game is in the strategy, negotiations, and so on, which is what makes the choice agonizing; were it an action game then I'd just do native, but here its a 'play the sprreadsheet' type game

jeff

 

[LeChuck87]

This is a turn based game, so it doesn't need flash or fancy action going on; the game is in the strategy, negotiations, and so on, which is what makes the choice agonizing; were it an action game then I'd just do native, but here its a 'play the sprreadsheet' type game

jeff

you asked for our opinion

well, just get that baby done and show it. maybe browser-based strategy games aren't that bad

 

[grahamr]

Many browser games suck. BUT for your particular game, i think its is definetly the way to go.
If it was me I'd get a crappy html only game up and running asap, then worry about adding client-side features. That way you can get immediate feedback as you develop.

 

[Yoyobuae]

You mean something like this :
http://www.wolf5k.com/

Note that the original version won't work in newer Firefox versions. Here's a version that I've fixed (works on Firefox 3.0.3 in Debian at least):
http://members.multimania.co.uk/yoyobuae/wolf5k.html

Who needs SVG/HTML5 canvas when you've got XPM? :lol:

Warning: Has some severe memory leaks I couldn't fix. Try not to play it for too long.

EDIT: nvm, got NoScript was blocking. :lol:

 

[Tempel]

I would prefer native. It allows for considerably more control over the interface. It also allows for that sync-and-play-offline feature that I and others seemed to like (at least, I can't think of a way to do that in a browser, but maybe you've already figured it out).

 

[Mofokubik]

minimenu can run a browser; ie: even in a non-X11 setup, the pnd system can bring up X to launch an X-requiring pnd (and then kill X afterwards.) So thats a non-issue per se.

This is a turn based game, so it doesn't need flash or fancy action going on; the game is in the strategy, negotiations, and so on, which is what makes the choice agonizing; were it an action game then I'd just do native, but here its a 'play the sprreadsheet' type game

jeff

There's always the possibility of coding a super basic pandora browser simply for playing games.

 

[sebt3]

I've been building a turn based wargame for awhile (see my post from a couple weeks ago here: here)
[...]
How do you _feel_ about a game client thats running in a browser, on your Pandora?

Hi Jeff ,

I've played a few browser based games (somes by friends, some more mainstream...)
I'm a current "Castle Age" player. Last time I tried playing on a netbook, the game didn't feel like at home : scrolling is a pain.

I'm willing to play this game, i'm just not sure I'll play it on my pandora (you'll have at least to take a great care about screen-fitting...)

As usual this is just my opinion and worth less than a penny...

Cheers,
Seb

 

[Tenuki]

Hi Jeff,

All native games have potential to be better simply because they can use more power of the hardware, regardless of platform. On other hand - browser based games are likely easier to develop, but this is obviously depends on your experience, passion and personal preferences.

Players generally don't care what platform game is made on or what language was used to develop the game. All players care - is game fun to play or not. Some specific genres of games (heavy action, 3D, FPS) are harder to implement without having a lot of hardware power. Yet nowdays it's hard to find a game genre which would not have web based alternative.

For your particular case - turn based strategy - I don't think you need maximum hardware power. Fun in strategy games usually lies in subtle balance between player's choices. Challenges which lie in consequences of game manipulation. And not in visual effect. Game of chess does not need explosion effects on pawn kill events to be entertaining.

If I were you, I would go for web based implementation as that is way easier to test especially in multiplayer scenarios. If you optimize UI to work nicely in smaller resolutions (specifically for Pandora's brower(s)) game will have good enough usability and popularity will rest purely on your cleverness of your gameplay rather than how it is presented to a player.

If your game will become super-popular and players will cry for native client - you can always do that later.

Good luck!

 

[skeezix]

Oh, I'm well aware of the obvious on both sides of the equation; I've been in this game for far too many years. I'm just agonizing over this one, as I worry that 'feel' for browser-games is generally worse (mostly in context of handhelds here; consider if you had a browser on a Nintendo DS or PSP that was any good, would you want to use it at all? All things being equal, you'd always take a native client over a browser client, right?) To wit, embedded webkit in a native app is a decent hybrid (though lots of work), and something like pygame is easily ported to many platforms (python + SDL). So difficulty in implementation and so on aren't really in my concerns as I've done ASM, C++, etc on damned near every platform embedded or otherwise around. But presentation is a weakness of mine (also possibly moot as I can get help for the artwork in either case).

So it comes down to user 'feel'.

Long term its moot; at worst, using a browser based client is possibly writing off some potential players as it may feel crappy to them on handhelds; but of course, you pick up other players on other platforms, and so on.

I'm inclined to go browser client, with the assumption that Arora is the browser, but its also one of those things .. I know I could spew out a /dev/fb or SDL or opengl frontend faster, since that is more my experience.

Anyway, I think I'll keep going with my browser client; it certainly cannot hurt to have one, and its already begun after all, and easier to pull in assistance since a lot more folks have experience in that realm. I'll probably switch to Canvas since it has much more widespread browser suport than SVG and is more or less compatible. (Tempting to write a SVG -> Canvas library, but thats a digression I've not the time for. All I really want in the SVG system is onClick on a per object basis, but that can be faked with Canvas with coordinate tracking.)

Tempel - fear not, an offline version could work in a a number of ways; native or not, offline client is a bit down the road as it takes extra care and as time is tight always, I'm plowing ahead more recklessly than that; either way, numerous options exist, from a local webserver doign caching, to a local DB using html5 DB, to using an embedded browser within a native client and thus managing data directly in a mysql or sqlite3 instance, etc. Piece of cake, but not something I'm going to fret just yet. Just getting the game working is my concern right now

jeff

 

[Mithrildor]

Isnt it possible to be written in java? that way it can be both browser and native

 

[Aninhumer]

There's always the possibility of coding a super basic pandora browser simply for playing games.

http://www.uzbl.org/