Game Development - Future Platforms

Ninjadoodle

Hi Guys

I just wanted to see what everyones thought are on this. The way things seem to be heading, are really in HTML5 favour.
Of course at the moment it's still a bit slow (no webGL support in places) and a bit unsupported (sound etc.), but with apple announcing the inclusion of WebGL in their upcoming Operating Systems, it seems like even they are caving in.

What I'm wondering, is whether you guys think HTML5 will eventually become the goto platform for indie game dev.

With it's cross-platform capabilities it would be hard to say no, once the speed and support is eventually there.

Do you think languages that export to native apps are always going to have the heads up, or do you think there will eventually be no native apps and only web apps.

A lot of programs seem to be heading in the HTML5 (support) direction as well native exports.

I know that HTML5 and Gideros has been discussed before, but from what I've heard, it doesn't look like it will ever be "fully" supported.

I am currently using another software to produce HTML5 games (so they can be played on the web) and using Gideros for my first mobile version.

I REALLY wish I could use Gideros for all my coding as it's such a brilliant tool. In all my searching, I found it to be the easiest to use and most intuitive game dev software ever that exists.

What are you thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance

ar2rsawseen

Honestly, I'm a huge fan of JavaScript and WebDev, but even I don't see HTML5 being the top technology for gaming so soon. For now I think it is just overrated.

Nevertheless, that would be a great addition to Gideros, and one I really want too, for the reasons mentioned above. And we talked about it internally a lot.

And conclusions are that the best way to support HTML5 export is using emscripten:
https://github.com/kripken/emscripten

Problem is, none of us have worked with emscripten before, so we have no experience on how it can go, thus we started with small experiments, like porting plain OpenGL etc, which seems to work great.

But if anyone is more experienced with emscripten and feel that could help us, that would be really appreciated.

So while lots of Gideros code is platform independent, some parts are not, and should be ported to each platform separately.

Those parts are:
File System support
Sensors (Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Geolocation)
AlertDialog/TextInputDialog
Sounds/SoundChannel
UrlLoader

And of course plugin support.

For now I have no idea how for example, it should be better to manage file system (using real OS file system, or try using local storage, etc) and how better to proceed gluing it all together for sensors, sounds, etc, on javascript level, or by writing glue c++ code and port it as well, etc.

I won't even start on problems with plugin system

But the idea of this post is, that we are really considering HTML5 and exploring ways to make it happen

Ninjadoodle

That's really awesome news! I'm exited to hear that you guys have html5 in mind for the future

About html5 being overrated, I feel like currently you're right, but things are really moving forward and in a couple of years, with better browser support and even faster devices, the potential to play your games ANYWHERE is really exiting!

I mean you can play html5 games on TVs etc. as it is and it's only gonna get better.

I used to LOVE to develop with Flash, but it seems like Adobe don't really have much interest in it anymore. Online games have a lot of monetizing potential, but being an indie game dev is hard and trying to grow a business by building Flash games (dying technology) seem a little like trying to climb an avalanche. That's why html5 seems like the only option that will be truly cross platform and plugin free (in the future).

I honestly believe, that Gideros is such a great tool and with this this support, it will have an extra edge over the competition.

Thanks for the reply!