The Reality Of Developing Web Games w/Flash, HTML5 and Unity

[Anonymous]

http://www.photonstorm.com/archives/2568/the-reality-of-developing-web-games-with-flash-html5-and-unity

[Anonymous]

Thanks for posting this article. Currently developing a prototype in flash but still unsure after prototype testing whether to go flash or html. This article was very detailed in pros & cons.

[Anonymous]

worth bearing in mind that article is pretty old and the technology / options are constantly evolving

e.g. wooga have recently announced they are pulling back from html5

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/172804/Wooga_drops_HTML5_development_but_believes_it_still_has_a_future.php

i think the real issue is that there is no distribution platform for html5 games that would justify the additional effort? (not fb mobile, not g+, win8 maybe?)

imho if you’re building a new game, you really need to have identified what your target distribution channel is going to be -and that will in turn influence your technology choice (not the other way around)

regards,
peter

[Anonymous]

…

i think the real issue is that there is no distribution platform for html5 games that would justify the additional effort? (not fb mobile, not g+, win8 maybe?)

imho if you’re building a new game, you really need to have identified what your target distribution channel is going to be -and that will in turn influence your technology choice (not the other way around)

regards,
peter[/quote:3a6bb67083]

Yeah, it’s a very difficult one for HTML5 / JS games. I read recently (and unfortunately right now I can’t remember where) in an interview that Microsoft are regularly onto the likes of Kongregate to push HTML5 games more (and they do actually host them now) but MS are apparently reluctant to actually fork over cash to the likes of Kongregate to help promote HTML5 games.

I’m interested to see how Mozilla handle it with their upcoming Marketplace and also how the Windows 8 Metro apps work out. A really key issue is how to protect or secure the source code and assets for games written in open web technologies – it’s damn near impossible really. But piracy isn’t an issue for just HTML5 games.

For mobile HTML5 games, these guys are quite popular: http://www.spilgames.com/

Dominic Szablewski (the creator of ImpactJS) in the last few days found out that someone has been selling copies of his engine in China. Mark Wilcox (of spacemonsters.co.uk) has on a few occasions found that someone has downloaded everything from one of his games, packaged it up with something like PhoneGap / AppMobi and stuck the game up on the App Store or sold the game to a portal.

(How Wilcox actually copped to what had happened was that he noticed unusual activity in the database he used to store the highscores. The people who ripped him off didn’t even try to modify the code).

I’ve been working on a HTML5 game since the Dublin Gamecraft Jam and lately I’ve been thinking that I might wrap it up in PhoneGap put it on the App Store while having a free "lite" version playable online in a browser.

I think it’s going to need some games that actually make clever use of the new APIs that are part of the HTML5 W3C specs to give HTML5 gaming a big boost. At the moment there are just ports of existing games simply using the Canvas object to render.

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