What’s the best way to kick off 2013? By emulating a 28 year old computer in your browser of course! SAE is the Scripted Amiga Emulator, an open source project created by Rupert Hausberger. His aim is ‘simply’ to make classic Amiga emulation possible in modern web browsers. And to that end he’s written an Amiga emulator [...]
Announcing Polycraft, a HTML5 island-survival game from new Guildford based developer Wonderstruck You’ve been stranded on a mysterious island — what bad luck! You’re tasked with building a new life, defending it from the wildlings and discovering the secrets of the weird new land you’re now calling home. Take a stand, hero! Polycraft is a [...]
Day 19 of The Christmas Experiments features a lovely little game called VVVVV (you may get the indie reference). You play as Santa who leaps from his sleigh and collect as many presents as you can on the way down. Created by Aurelien Gantier and Catherine Uhlrich it’s a fun but very short little game [...]
Recently a friend of a friend contacted me about doing a photoshoot with us. She’s a local photographer and was looking for subjects that would fit a “startups in startup environments” kind of vibe. Naturally, we were game!
So Maki of Maki Photography came by one afternoon and shot us doin’ our thing. We’d be coding or whiteboarding and she’d be running around looking for and taking excellent shots. She has created a gallery of 36 of these photos on her website.
I’ve also included a few I liked quite a bit right here; click any image for a high resolution version.
Our games on many devices
A culture of cats
Double-Dragoning
Lostcast
Our games run on cats
Matt at the home studio
Whiteboarding fun stuff
A lost portrait
Maki Photography
Maki has a great eye for a good shot and is really fun and easy to work with. If you’re looking for a photographer local to the bay area, be sure to contact her!
Lynx is now letting fans put their Lynx Effect to the test with the launch of its first HTML5 game in the UK. Managed by TMW, the campaign forms part of Lynx’s continual social content strategy and marks the first digital game to be launched by a Unilever brand in this region. The new HTML [...]
HTML5 gaming marched onwards during 2012. Here Michal Budzynski runs down 10 essential games (and one conference) worth giving some attention to In 2012 HTML5 games made a big step forward. We finally realised that we don’t need tech demos or examples anymore – we all know that HTML5 has matured enough. Also players don’t [...]
“Turmoil” is a space shooter game, in which you control a space ship shooting at everything that appears in your way. The peculiarity of this game is, that your space ship basically remains in the middle of the screen and you have to scroll up and down and switch the viewing direction to shoot the [...]
Visit this page in your Wii U browser and play Onslaught! Defense!
HTML5 games on consoles
Several weeks ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer on the 360. In my article Play our HTML5 games on your Xbox 360 I discussed that browser’s HTML5 gaming capabilities and the impact it could have on HTML5 game studios like ours. Around the same time, Nintendo launched their next-generation console Wii U, which (after a ~3GB system update) also has its own internet browser.
This isn’t the first time web browsers have been available on gaming consoles. Nintendo’s previous console (Wii) featured a version of Opera called Internet Channel. Sega’s Dreamcast had a web browser more than 10 years ago! But now in 2012, HTML5 games are on the rise. Is Nintendo’s new browser capable of running them?
The GOOD
In the Wii U’s browser, I visited the Lost Decade Games arcade and was pleased that at least two of our games are playable out of the box. Here are some of the positive take-aways:
- Nearly complete 2d canvas API support.
- The Wii U controller’s excellent d-pad maps perfectly to the arrow keys (up/down/left/right).
- The A button is mapped to enter/return.
Remarkably, the browser also aced the Acid3 Test. Its rendering engine is slow but draws everything very well. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to say about what’s bad.
The BAD
Using the online HTML5 Test tool (as well as a few of my own scripts), I compiled the capabilities of the Wii U browser. Here are some of those results:
- No Audio support
- No Web Audio API
- No WebGL, WebSockets, or File API
- No AppCache, some security
- No WebWorkers
- Framerate is very low (~10 FPS for tested games)
An Audio object exists but it doesn’t support any standard audio formats (such as mp3, ogg, or even wav). Sadly there’s no WebGL support at all. Though the localStorage object exists and will accept commands to get and set data, the local storage data is wiped when the browser is closed, breaking its functionality completely.
It DOES play games!
Although there’s no audio, you can’t save your game, and the framerate is terrible, two of our games are playable. Lunch Bug is even monetized via Google Wallet, though without a working local storage, there’s really no point in buying anything.
If you only end up playing only one HTML5 game in your Wii U browser, make it Onslaught! Defense. I added keyboard functionality today, and since the Wii U controller’s d-pad maps to the arrow keys, you can even play the game with the d-pad.
Wii U controller’s browser commands
Lastly, here’s what seem to be the default browser commands of the controller’s buttons:
- A: mouse click or enter/return key equivalent (USABLE!)
- B:
history.back() - Y: open bookmarks
- X: toggle TV visibility
- d-pad: arrow keys (USABLE!)
- Left stick: pan
- Right stick: zoom
- -: zoom out
- +: zoom in
- L/R: history.back/forward
- LZ/RZ: previous/next tab
(Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about any of these.)
We’ll discuss the Wii U and its web browser in the next episode of Lostcast, our independent gamedev podcast. You should tune in!
