

BrowserQuest– a massively multiplayer HTML5 (WebSocket + Canvas) game experiment - paulrouget
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/03/browserquest/

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dkhenry
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.

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html5iscancer
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.

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html5iscancer
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.

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veb
crazy talk.

this is a great DEMONSTRATION. leave it at that. if you are really that
annoyed by the points you mentioned, why, it's open source!

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glenntzke
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.

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

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glenntzke
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.

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yesimahuman
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...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lindbaaodgocnekppljikhgdgedliclg)

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senjutsuka
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.

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

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

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lxt
Here you go:

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

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manuscreationis
Awesome, thanks!

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rduchnik
wow, this is pretty impressive.

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html5iscancer
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?

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html5iscancer
Please at least reply if you down vote. I would like to know what I'm mistaken
about.

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wmil
You're being a troll. Right now you're just randomly sniping at people who
comment.

Write up something explaining your views, the post it as a comment/Ask HN/blog
post and submit.

Also you seem to be saying this sucks in comparison to some amazing product
that doesn't actually exist... the big feature of html5 is that it's already
widely deployed.

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pkmiec
what's the ??? quest?

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simcop2387
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.

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

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html5iscancer
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).

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erikpukinskis
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.

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html5iscancer
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.

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tomkr
I guess the zero friction upgrading refers to the app, not the browser. You
can be pretty sure people are running the latest version just by pushing the
code to your server. No need to download/install, or update in an app store.

