
Show HN: Arcade – Play retro games streamed inside a browser - yaboyhud
http://www.arcadeup.io
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mappum
Cool project! The latency is a little high for a lot of games (not sure WC3 is
the best choice with high latency), but it seemed smooth and responsive. After
a while, I got stuck on the desktop instead of in the game (that's kind of a
big security problem).

It would be nice if the site gave a little more info, maybe it should go to a
landing page rather than jumping right into the app.

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kzhaouva
Amazing, so this could be the remote desktop in browser, with lower latency,
totally allow corporations to use this instead the original remote desktop app
that Windows have right now...

I think AWS allows you to interact with remote Windows as well, right?

Regardless, great job! Love the idea and the implementation...maybe League or
Legend or Dota2 in the future? This means ppl can play Dota2 at work in
browser lol

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etherealmachine
I strongly object to Warcraft III being called "retro" \- and an expansion no
less. It makes me feel old.

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Reedx
Ha, yeah. Warcraft III is a long way from being retro. It was released in 2002
(expansion in 2003).

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sdrothrock
Really? That was 12-13 years ago.

For comparison's sake, I feel like in 2002, I was thinking of games like the
Sierra point-and-clicks (Leisure Suit Larry, King's Quest, Space Quest, Police
Quest, Conquests of the Longbow, et al) as retro and most of those would have
been in that age bracket.

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wkw3
Not even close to that age bracket. Those Sierra classics were relased from
24-31 years ago, at least twice as old as WC3.

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards - 1987 King's Quest:
Quest for the Crown - 1984 Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter - 1986 Police
Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel - 1987 Conquests of the Longbow: The
Legend of Robin Hood - 1991

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sdrothrock
> For comparison's sake, I feel like in 2002

Counting from the viewpoint of 2002, not 2015.

Also, you're using the first games when I was thinking of the later ones in
the series (say, King's Quest V era); they definitely came across as retro to
me and my peers in 2002.

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henesy
Is it intended to be able to drop down to the desktop just by quitting WC3?

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DrScump
How does one get to anything besides Warcraft?

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colhom
The idea is "one application per virtual machine", and to leave multi-tasking
to the browser. Right now the only application we have is Warcraft.

The fact that you can interact with Windows outside the context of the
intended application is a side-effect of Windows 8 Assigned Access only
working for "Windows Apps" (ie- not "legacy" applications). Otherwise we would
have gone for this type of "kiosk" experience which attempts to hide the
underlying desktop environment / os.

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frozenport
Okay, I changed the wallpaper and removed the start-up program, and shut the
computer down, does this affect everybody?

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colhom
We give every new session a freshly cloned VM. Changes you make will remain
for your session but be reverted over when the machine is reclaimed for the
next user.

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rubicon33
What's the maximum number of users you can support at any given time?

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colhom
96 as of now.

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alakin
What is the expected latency? Would this work with an FPS? Looks like its
using Broadway.js?

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colhom
I've haven't gotten around to measuring it yet, but back of the envelope
calculation is "between 100ms-200ms" delay from input event sent to h264 frame
rendered. This is assuming virtually no network delay, so you'd be doing well
with ~300ms end-to-end latency from your browser currently.

This would not work for an FPS, especially when you look at the variance in
latency. There are lots of ways to shave milliseconds and stabilize latency
though, so that statement is definitely not future-proof.

Yes, Broadway.js ;) Highly recommend though the documentation can be a bit
"terse"

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rubicon33
This is beyond awesome. How did you do it?

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colhom
h264 frames/opus packets over websockets. Broadway.js is doing the video
decoding, something similar to (EDIT: opus.js) for the audio.

All decode loops are in webworkers, separate websocket connection for each
data stream (video,audio,input). Broadway has a lovely option to use WebGL for
pushing the pixels to a canvas as well, which really helps free up the CPU.

Put it all together, and you'd be surprised how close you can push an (up-to-
date) browser towards realtime sans plugin.

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shash7
Ah, using -ap after a loooong time!

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vitd
I can't press enter in my iPad's browser, so it's entirely useless.

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thejosh
You can just click, but you're gonna have more problems than that on a tablet.

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vitd
I tried that, but it did not work for me.

