Posts Tagged ‘web’
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Google is pushing Web Sockets into Chrome based on the Web Socket standards being developed at all major engineering standards groups. Web Socket is an interesting direction but it is great to couple that with O3G or WebGL for some multiplayer 3d game development with just a browser.
Starting in the Google Chrome developer channel release 4.0.249.0, Web Sockets are available and enabled by default. Web Sockets are “TCP for the Web,” a next-generation bidirectional communication technology for web applications being standardized in part of Web Applications 1.0. We’ve implemented this feature as described in our design docs for WebKit and Chromium.
Sample Code
if ("WebSocket" in window) {
var ws = new WebSocket("ws://example.com/service");
ws.onopen = function() {
// Web Socket is connected. You can send data by send() method.
ws.send("message to send"); ....
};
ws.onmessage = function (evt) { var received_msg = evt.data; ... };
ws.onclose = function() { // websocket is closed. };
} else {
// the browser doesn't support WebSocket.
}
Socket Advantage
Flash has long been the answer for sockets for web applications and once sockets were added to Flash it instantly became a better interactive and gaming platform for multi-user applications and multiplayer games. They started with XmlSocket then recently added Socket for raw binary data in as3. Silverlight and Java also have this feature but having this in script is pretty significant because many applications could really use a browser supported bi-directional communication link.
What is Missing
The biggie missing from Flash, Silverlight, etc and Web Sockets is UDP and preferably RUDP or Reliable UDP which allows UDP datagrams to be sent back and forth either verified delivery or broadcast. Unity does support UDP. The best socket layers are reliable UDP based because mixing TCP and UDP can lead to queuing and not all messages are critical so having just UDP isn’t enough, having TCP is too much. Reliable UDP is the way to go but so far no web layers are doing it well except Unity on that one (you still have to make your own RUDP implementation – libraries like Raknet or enet in C/C++ give you this but you can’t use that in Unity client only on the server). (Edit: Flash does have RTMFP which is based on UDP and uses FMS for nat for p2p but it is still not a true low level UDP socket just yet as it supports more features. A low-level UDP socket would also be nice in flash.)
Web Communication Evolving
I am a big Flash fan and have been developing it since 1999 among other platforms, I have recently watched other technologies nearly match the features and some go beyond it. The interesting thing about Web Sockets is that it does go after a core feature of flash; Canvas and WebGL or O3D also do. Flash still has the webcam, mic, sound mixers/tranform, and for now sockets which put it at an advantage in gaming and interactive. Flash used to be the sole greatest video player but Silverlight is doing a pretty good job of that as well so that is still an advantage but others are entering including possibly browser support in html5. I still think it is the best video but they would need to keep innovating.
Another interesting point about this is XMLHttpRequest objects. Originally “AJAX” was created by Microsoft for IE, pushing new features and innovating back when IE was a good browser and ahead in IE4. Mozilla and others adopted this feature (as well as editable text areas for html) because they were great features for web applications to evolve to. now Google is pushing with Chrome and Web Sockets is the next step that should be in web browsers even if it is only TCP based for now. This will add great capabilities and will probably be preferred over AJAX/XMLHttpRequest for really interactive and real-time tools/games should it take hold. Ian Hickson is running the table on the standards with this effort and it is a good one to get behind.
Tags: chrome, gaming, google, html5, INTERACTIVE, real-time, sockets, standard, tcp, web
Posted in AJAX, APPLICATIONS, PROGRAMMING, TECHNOLOGY, network | View Comments
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Haxe Sandy is a version of Sandy that can export to an experimental Javascript 3D engine taking advantage of the <canvas> element. There are some great demos that run smoothly in canvas capable browsers and very smooth in Chrome.
Demos of Haxe Sandy:
Sandy was actually the first open source 3d engine in flash, maybe this will be a trend building in haXe for export to flash and javascript? It certainly looks like a great start and would make a very nice platform for 3d on the web allowing Sandy or other flash libraries to run in Flash and Javascript by writing in an abstraction platform like haXe. Other libraries like Motor2, Physaxe, haxe3D, PureMVC and more have haXe versions. Still very experimental but a possible need when Flash and canvas are both in the market in the future. Right now it is still all Flash.
[ via Matthew Casperson at devmaster.net ]
Tags: 3d, canvas, ENGINE, HAXE, html5, hx, JAVASCRIPT, motor2, port, puremvc, SANDY, web
Posted in 3D ENGINES, 3d, ACTIONSCRIPT, ACTIONSCRIPT3, ARCHITECT, AS3, GAMEDEV, GAMES, HAXE, JAVASCRIPT, OPEN SOURCE, PROGRAMMING, RENDERING, SANDY, STANDARDS, TECHNOLOGY | Comments Off
Monday, May 18th, 2009
pyamf is pretty sweet for Flash remoting with Pythonic server side, but now we have two nicely done and integrated remoting kits for python on the server side.
amfast is a new remoting library that looks to be as sweet as pyamf (where sweet == fast and useful). I am checking out amfast now but the speed boost alone might be worth it. For instance, working with real-time games, when you need static content you need to grab that quickly sometimes via a content service. The faster that link the better. It also has Twisted integration which is great for networking and SQLAlchemy integration which is in my opinion the best ORM for python (pyamf has twisted, django, pylons, sqlalchemy as well)
amfast is well documented and has some great examples. If you have the Python addiction, check it.
Description
- AmFast is a Flash remoting framework for Python.
- AmFast can use AMF to communicate between Python and Flash, Flex, and any other system that supports AMF.
- AMF is a binary object serialization protocol used by Actionscript based applications.
Server Features
- Support for NetConnection and RemoteObject RPC.
- Support for Producer/Consumer ‘push’ messaging with HTTP polling, HTTP long-polling, and real-time HTTP streaming channels.
- Support for authentication with NetConnection and RemoteObject.
- Flexible Target mapping system to map message destinations to invokable Target objects.
- Support for ChannelSets with multiple Channels to expose resources in different ways.
- Built in Channels for CherryPy, Twisted Web, and plain WSGI.
- Support for configurable Endpoints. Use AmFast’s built-in AMF encoder/decoder C-extension, or use an external AMF encoder/decoder, such as PyAmf for a pure-Python implementation.
AMF Encoder/Decoder Features
- AMF0/AMF3 encoder/decoder written in C as a Python extension for speed.
- More than 10x faster than the PyAmf encoder/decoder (even when using PyAmf’s optional C-extension).
- Map custom classes with ClassDef objects for complete control over serialization/de-serialization.
- Full support for IExternalizable objects.
- Data persistence with SqlAlchemy including remotely-loadable lazy-loaded attributes.
- Actionscript code generation from ClassDef objects.
Tags: ACTIONSCRIPT, AMF, AMF0, AMF3, AS3, messaging, PYTHON, remoting, services, web
Posted in ACTIONSCRIPT, ACTIONSCRIPT3, AMF, APPLICATIONS, ARCHITECT, AS3, DEVELOPMENT, FLASH, FLEX, GAMEDEV, GAMES, LIBRARIES, OPEN SOURCE, PYTHON, TECHNOLOGY, tracking | View Comments
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
Tags: 2d, AS3, FLASH, JAVASCRIPT, PHYSICS, prototype, web
Posted in ANIMATION, DEVELOPMENT, ENGINE, GAMEDEV, GAMES, JAVASCRIPT, LIBRARIES, OPEN SOURCE, PHYSICS, TECHNOLOGY | View Comments
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
Unity3D is a great platform for developing 3d games where you need hardware acceleration beyond what Flash 3d can give you for the web.
There are lots of great independent gaming companies and web gaming companies realizing this and here in the #phx Arizona market a few good ones including Flashbang Studios on their Unity3D gaming site Blurst. I have been developing Unity3D for about 6 months and it is great where you want 3d environments over 2000 polys for the web. The power of 3d hardware rendering on the web combined with a great development environment is making it possible to make really fun games with unity3d.
Unity3D Games Released Recently
Flashbang recently released Minotaur China Shop to add to their Blurst.com site of Unity3D games and community. They detailed the launch day at their blog. It is a pretty fun game and once you get further into the game design with different paths, selling products or thrashing your china shop for insurance and strategic upgrades it has legs to keep interest.
Minotaur China Shop Trailer
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/2474951[/vimeo]
There are lots of great Unity 3d games out there here is a list of the best of 2008:
[source]
Tags: best, GAMEDEV, GAMES, gaming, unity, unity3d, web
Posted in 3D ENGINES, 3d, BEST OF, GAMEDEV, GAMES, MARKET, PROGRAMMING, TECHNOLOGY, Uncategorized, unity3d | View Comments
Friday, September 12th, 2008
A few weeks ago the makers of Unity3d released some really valuable information about casual gaming and general hardware of users that play online games. It was an interesting report and very beneficial to developers on the Unity platform and others. We wish other plugin makers would do the same in such a thorough method.
Unity 3d creators listened to the market and have now posted updated numbers and information as well as a page that quarterly stats will be updated. Check the new, quarterly, hardware of the casual gamer stats.
I would have seen this earlier but I have been deep in a Unity 3d project myself 
. I am a big fan of all web based gaming platforms and Unity is almost a dream come true for 3d web gaming. For the company to be this open that is a very good sign.
What can you do with Unity3D? Here is a list of games made with Unity3D on the web. The one great thing about this platform is that is was made for gaming specifically from the start. Simulations and game development with Unity3D is very fun and productive. I still love Flash, Director etc but Unity3D development is now very much in my rotation.
Games made with Unity3D:
Hancock Movie Games
Tennis Stars Cup
Duckateers
Temploe (ninjas attack you)
RC Laser Warrior
Urban Race Star
FlashBang studios
TraceON
EPIC Tower Defense
InvinciCar
Besmashed (multi)
Global Conflicts
Phoenix Final
Doom Siege
Mario Galaxy like run (third one down)
Zombie Drive
Pocket Piglets
ChickenDemo
Castle Conquest
Tags: casual, draw, game, GAMEDEV, gamer, GAMES, hardware, unity, unity3d, web
Posted in 3D ENGINES, 3d, ARCHITECT, BENCHMARK, DEVELOPMENT, GAMEDEV, GAMES, MARKET, PROGRAMMING, RENDERING, TECHNOLOGY | View Comments
