Score Rush MP, an HTML5 Multiplayer Shmup
November 17, 2012 3:48 PM Subscribe
If you have to download an executable, it ain't HTML5.
posted by Yowser at 3:53 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by Yowser at 3:53 PM on November 17, 2012
Counterpoint: it loads (but doesn't actually play, unsurprisingly) on an Android tablet.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:10 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:10 PM on November 17, 2012
It looks really cool and it's pretty fun but after a while the whole screen becomes an incomprehensible, fuzzy looking bowl of chaos.
posted by hellojed at 4:20 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by hellojed at 4:20 PM on November 17, 2012
Fun and frenetic. Reminded me a lot of Gridwars 2.
posted by avoision at 4:34 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by avoision at 4:34 PM on November 17, 2012
Ran inside my OS X Chrome. I didn't download anything.
posted by pashdown at 4:35 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by pashdown at 4:35 PM on November 17, 2012
That was fun (get Firefox, people).
posted by oddman at 4:43 PM on November 17, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by oddman at 4:43 PM on November 17, 2012 [1 favorite]
It ran fine in OS X Safari with WebGL enabled. When I switched it off it asked me to download their engine.
posted by dumbland at 4:47 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by dumbland at 4:47 PM on November 17, 2012
I was using Firefox. I just tried Chrome and have been greeted with a black screen for the last minute instead of a request to download an executable.
Not cool.
posted by Yowser at 5:39 PM on November 17, 2012
Not cool.
posted by Yowser at 5:39 PM on November 17, 2012
Ran fine in Chrome, although I was dead in like 2.3 seconds.
posted by justkevin at 5:40 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by justkevin at 5:40 PM on November 17, 2012
Playing on Mac, Chrome, no extra download required. I think I might have turned on WebGL explicitly in the past, though.
posted by WaylandSmith at 5:41 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by WaylandSmith at 5:41 PM on November 17, 2012
Safari also asked me to download an executable. I'm done, call me when the revolution comes.
posted by Yowser at 5:41 PM on November 17, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by Yowser at 5:41 PM on November 17, 2012 [2 favorites]
When I go to the turbulenz site, Firefox just shows a calming blue/white gradient.
Here's the developer's site, fwiw.
posted by box at 5:47 PM on November 17, 2012
Here's the developer's site, fwiw.
posted by box at 5:47 PM on November 17, 2012
It is exceedingly annoying when you accidently click outside the window and click on something unrelated to the game, causing it to freeze up for several seconds.
It is wrath-producing when one of those things is one of the many obnoxious links to other websites surrounding the game, ending your run more surely than any horde of enemy bullets.
posted by JHarris at 6:00 PM on November 17, 2012
It is wrath-producing when one of those things is one of the many obnoxious links to other websites surrounding the game, ending your run more surely than any horde of enemy bullets.
posted by JHarris at 6:00 PM on November 17, 2012
If it works for you, it's pretty impressive. Played just fine in Chrome/Stable. Short Javascript loader bar, then a smooth fast multiplayer game with synchronized controls, sound. It's cool that this is possible now.
The game is fun. It's annoying in multiplayer that one player can die and then have to wait for the others. Also groups of bullets seem to disappear after being on screen for awhile; odd choice for a bullet hell game.
posted by Nelson at 6:07 PM on November 17, 2012
The game is fun. It's annoying in multiplayer that one player can die and then have to wait for the others. Also groups of bullets seem to disappear after being on screen for awhile; odd choice for a bullet hell game.
posted by Nelson at 6:07 PM on November 17, 2012
MetaFilter: an incomprehensible, fuzzy looking bowl of chaos.
posted by jimmythefish at 7:00 PM on November 17, 2012
posted by jimmythefish at 7:00 PM on November 17, 2012
35 million on my first game.
Who knew all it took for me to not be horrible at shmups was WASD controls?
posted by andreaazure at 7:24 PM on November 17, 2012
Who knew all it took for me to not be horrible at shmups was WASD controls?
posted by andreaazure at 7:24 PM on November 17, 2012
OK, tried Firefox 16 and IE10 on Windows 8. Requires the download and execution of a binary executable. Doesn't work on my Windows Rt machine (no binaries can be installed).
So it's "HTML5" in the sense that a Windows Store app might be coded in HTML5 and JavaScript before it's compiled? Which still seems pretty cool to me, given how much of an arse HTML5 seems to be compared to anyone's native code, but not "This is an HTML5 version!" in the understood sense of "This will work in any modern browser!"?
Maybe it works in Chrome and Safari without third-party binaries, or on the Mac, or iOS... ah, HTML5...
posted by alasdair at 6:25 AM on November 18, 2012
So it's "HTML5" in the sense that a Windows Store app might be coded in HTML5 and JavaScript before it's compiled? Which still seems pretty cool to me, given how much of an arse HTML5 seems to be compared to anyone's native code, but not "This is an HTML5 version!" in the understood sense of "This will work in any modern browser!"?
Maybe it works in Chrome and Safari without third-party binaries, or on the Mac, or iOS... ah, HTML5...
posted by alasdair at 6:25 AM on November 18, 2012
It's HTML5 in the sense that it's Javascript and WebGL and no native binaries. If your browser is up to it, that is. The Turbulenz platform white paper explains the download: they rely heavily on WebGL. For browsers that don't support WebGL with the features they need, they have a binary addon that "injects all the missing APIs into the browsers native JavaScript engine". That's got all the suckiness and security mess of any native plugin, but at least they're using it to implement a standard API and not some proprietary platform. Microsoft has chosen not to support WebGL so IE users require the plugin. Not sure what's going on with Firefox; three versions including 16.0.2 didn't require a plugin on my Mac.
posted by Nelson at 7:05 AM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 7:05 AM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]
my score last round was NaN...
posted by azarbayejani at 8:30 AM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by azarbayejani at 8:30 AM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]
I've got to say; I still don't get the obsession with putting everything on the web. Perhappes Metafilter can explain it to me:
I get that if you do it right you can code it once for Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android. But you still have to make it work on IE/Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Andriod's Webkit varient/iOS's webkit variant/etc. Is that a lot less work then recompiling? (Assuming you use libraries that are available on all of the above platforms and a cross-platform compiler of some sort.)
If the server goes down, or the company goes out of business the application is gone forever. By comparison my family used a copy of Visio 1.0 to plan room layouts that we had copied from computer to computer from our Windows 3.1 386 until very recently. I think I can still get it working in a virtual machine too.
If you lose internet, you lose the application. I understand for a lot of urbanites this isn't a problem, but when you are say, on a bus in northern Canada there is no wifi, and cell service is rather unreliable. Or when I'm in a classroom in the basement of a concrete monstrosity built in the 70s that has no wifi and limited cell signal, which is pretty common at my university. Of even when you are in a lecture hall with wifi, but the 500 students are overloading the access point making everything slow as mud.
Finally; how much of a fight for performance is this? You are going through a bunch of layers between you and the PC. Wouldn't it be easier to get the same performance via using a native language (C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, GO?) I mean, sure, higher level languages are easier to code in, but don't you lose back a lot of that time trying to fight to get it to work quickly enough?
Finally: What is the advantage over a cross-platform language? Isn't that why Java was developed? Also python, ruby, lua, etc?
posted by Canageek at 9:42 AM on November 18, 2012
I get that if you do it right you can code it once for Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android. But you still have to make it work on IE/Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Andriod's Webkit varient/iOS's webkit variant/etc. Is that a lot less work then recompiling? (Assuming you use libraries that are available on all of the above platforms and a cross-platform compiler of some sort.)
If the server goes down, or the company goes out of business the application is gone forever. By comparison my family used a copy of Visio 1.0 to plan room layouts that we had copied from computer to computer from our Windows 3.1 386 until very recently. I think I can still get it working in a virtual machine too.
If you lose internet, you lose the application. I understand for a lot of urbanites this isn't a problem, but when you are say, on a bus in northern Canada there is no wifi, and cell service is rather unreliable. Or when I'm in a classroom in the basement of a concrete monstrosity built in the 70s that has no wifi and limited cell signal, which is pretty common at my university. Of even when you are in a lecture hall with wifi, but the 500 students are overloading the access point making everything slow as mud.
Finally; how much of a fight for performance is this? You are going through a bunch of layers between you and the PC. Wouldn't it be easier to get the same performance via using a native language (C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, GO?) I mean, sure, higher level languages are easier to code in, but don't you lose back a lot of that time trying to fight to get it to work quickly enough?
Finally: What is the advantage over a cross-platform language? Isn't that why Java was developed? Also python, ruby, lua, etc?
posted by Canageek at 9:42 AM on November 18, 2012
Yeah, Google Chrome works without an additional binary. Apple Safari doesn't work: also requires the binary. Opera doesn't work: also requires the binary. So for my Windows 8 machine, only Google Chrome renders this "HTML5" application in the browser. I have problems announcing something as HTML5 if it won't run on Firefox, Safari, Opera, or Internet Explorer on Windows. (Not meaning to get at you, archagon!)
(Also, Google Chrome and Opera, don't pin yourself to the taskbar unless I say so, thank you very much.)
posted by alasdair at 10:08 AM on November 18, 2012
(Also, Google Chrome and Opera, don't pin yourself to the taskbar unless I say so, thank you very much.)
posted by alasdair at 10:08 AM on November 18, 2012
my score last round was NaN...
That's probably because NaN (Not a Number) is viral in nature. Any mathematical operation you apply to NaN will result in NaN. If there's a mis-assigned score value in the game resulting in a NaN, then when it's added to your score, your score will become NaN too.
(Something I learned working on an HTML5 project.)
posted by JHarris at 12:48 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]
That's probably because NaN (Not a Number) is viral in nature. Any mathematical operation you apply to NaN will result in NaN. If there's a mis-assigned score value in the game resulting in a NaN, then when it's added to your score, your score will become NaN too.
(Something I learned working on an HTML5 project.)
posted by JHarris at 12:48 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]
I get that if you do it right you can code it once for Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android. But you still have to make it work on IE/Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Andriod's Webkit varient/iOS's webkit variant/etc. Is that a lot less work then recompiling?
It still leads to faster development cycles.
Finally; how much of a fight for performance is this? You are going through a bunch of layers between you and the PC. Wouldn't it be easier to get the same performance via using a native language (C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, GO?)
All the focus on Javascript has meant that great strides have been made towards increasing its performance characteristics. It's not at C level, but it's probably the closest very-high-level language to it.
Finally: What is the advantage over a cross-platform language? Isn't that why Java was developed? Also python, ruby, lua, etc?
Java has been edging away from being a web language for longer than Flash (a good thing considering its use as a malware attack vector), and technically it is still owned by Oracle, which Google had some trouble with when they made Java a prominent part of Android. The other languages are faster than they're usually thought of as being (especially Python), but they don't hold a candle, to my knowledge, to Javascript. (Also, to my continued consternation, Python remains stubbornly bound by its Global Interpreter Lock.)
posted by JHarris at 4:45 PM on November 18, 2012
It still leads to faster development cycles.
Finally; how much of a fight for performance is this? You are going through a bunch of layers between you and the PC. Wouldn't it be easier to get the same performance via using a native language (C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, GO?)
All the focus on Javascript has meant that great strides have been made towards increasing its performance characteristics. It's not at C level, but it's probably the closest very-high-level language to it.
Finally: What is the advantage over a cross-platform language? Isn't that why Java was developed? Also python, ruby, lua, etc?
Java has been edging away from being a web language for longer than Flash (a good thing considering its use as a malware attack vector), and technically it is still owned by Oracle, which Google had some trouble with when they made Java a prominent part of Android. The other languages are faster than they're usually thought of as being (especially Python), but they don't hold a candle, to my knowledge, to Javascript. (Also, to my continued consternation, Python remains stubbornly bound by its Global Interpreter Lock.)
posted by JHarris at 4:45 PM on November 18, 2012
JHarris: Thanks for that. I still don't get all this obsession over it. Also, are HTML5 apps solely Javascript? I thought they were a mix of Javascript, PHP, CSS, HTML, etc.
Also, that doesn't address my main concern of what do I do when your sever goes dark. Not a problem for games, but documents, workflow programs, etc?
posted by Canageek at 3:49 PM on November 19, 2012
Also, that doesn't address my main concern of what do I do when your sever goes dark. Not a problem for games, but documents, workflow programs, etc?
posted by Canageek at 3:49 PM on November 19, 2012
Canageek, I think the main reason is that you can get a lot more eyes on your game. Opening a browser and playing is a whole lot less work than finding, downloading, and installing a piece of software. If your server goes dark — well, you're no longer making any money off your game anyways, so who cares? It's not good for the user, but it has several advantages from the developer's perspective.
posted by archagon at 6:11 PM on November 19, 2012
posted by archagon at 6:11 PM on November 19, 2012
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posted by archagon at 3:52 PM on November 17, 2012