Firefox 84 Beta Begins Enabling WebRender By Default On Linux

[rastersoft]

Have you used google maps (or any modern map page) in the last years?

Does threejs use webgl?

[treba]

Does threejs use webgl?

He, yes, quite obviously

https://threejs.org/docs/index.html#manual/en/introduction/Browser-support

There is, however, a predecessor in the making, called WebGPU. IIUC it's more Vulkan-like.

[ALRBP]

You do have a point in that Flash had a community, and websites that hosted Flash games. We don't see that anymore these days. Perhaps Flash was easy, and that things like HTML5, JavaScript, WebGL, etc are too hard. It would be nice there was a way to author games on the web that was easy to do.

Actually, I think the main reason for web-based games to disappear is their replacement by smartphone games, not a technological change on the web side. While some may prefer to play games on PC and smartphone games' pay2win system can be very annoying, most people seem to like the convenience of playing on a mobile device (anytime, anywhere) and companies make more money with pay2win than with ads on websites.

[uid313]

Actually, I think the main reason for web-based games to disappear is their replacement by smartphone games, not a technological change on the web side. While some may prefer to play games on PC and smartphone games' pay2win system can be very annoying, most people seem to like the convenience of playing on a mobile device (anytime, anywhere) and companies make more money with pay2win than with ads on websites.

But then devs needs a publisher account on Google Play and it costs money. Then once its uploaded only 1% of apps gets any downloads, rest are very unpopular. Only the big companies and top devs have any success on Google Play. Also learning how to make a mobile game and also publishing it is a big investment that takes a lot of time, effort and diligence. Perhaps Flash was just easier.

[Laughing1]

Now if they only enable Wayland:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1543600

[bug77]

But then devs needs a publisher account on Google Play and it costs money. Then once its uploaded only 1% of apps gets any downloads, rest are very unpopular. Only the big companies and top devs have any success on Google Play. Also learning how to make a mobile game and also publishing it is a big investment that takes a lot of time, effort and diligence. Perhaps Flash was just easier.

A license to publish on Google Play is like $100/year. I don't imagine hosting Flash games was free.
And the visibility problems were already there on websites.

Most mobile games are developed with Xamarin or smth, so they can be deployed on Google Play and AppStore simultaneously.

I'm also the opinion that monetization and user's habits shifted gaming to p2w models.

[uid313]

A license to publish on Google Play is like $100/year. I don't imagine hosting Flash games was free.
And the visibility problems were already there on websites.

Most mobile games are developed with Xamarin or smth, so they can be deployed on Google Play and AppStore simultaneously.

I'm also the opinion that monetization and user's habits shifted gaming to p2w models.

But I think before people made games for fun and it was no monetization model at all, then went to some website and emailed the admin or clicked on a upload link and uploaded a .swf file. Then the cost and monetization was on the websites who hosted the games.

[bug77]

But I think before people made games for fun and it was no monetization model at all, then went to some website and emailed the admin or clicked on a upload link and uploaded a .swf file. Then the cost and monetization was on the websites who hosted the games.

No contradiction there. People still write games for fun ($100/year is nothing to many). But now that games are easily monetized, they have attracted a whole new crowd. And hobbyists are now even harder to spot in the crowd.

I'm aso not sure hosting Flash games was as simple as uploading a swf. Many of those required an online account so you could play on various devices, so there was at least a database somewhere. That's why I'm inclined to think (I don't actually know), the developer was already charged for hosting.

[polarathene]

But I think before people made games for fun and it was no monetization model at all, then went to some website and emailed the admin or clicked on a upload link and uploaded a .swf file. Then the cost and monetization was on the websites who hosted the games.

The usual route was sponsors, normally you'd get $500-$1,000 for average game, if you established yourself as a dev and had some decent/interesting games you'd get much more, some got over $50k IIRC. There was sometimes ad-revenue sharing, or you'd sell an exclusive license and after a period of time you could license to other game portals, varied a bit. There was some monetization near the end like mochi I think it was called, which was a bit like the kind you'd find in mobile games today.

I remember working on a game with someone like 15 years ago roughly, silly game idea of horse races and you bet on the winning horse, unlock horses (skins) and stuff like that. It got over 2 million plays on Newgrounds, but we only got $500 for it :P

Flash was rather easy to get into, you'd be able to add graphics via GUI, just draw them without thinking of pixels or vectors IIRC, had layers and easy to do animation, add code snippets to different graphics directly via GUI instead of on-disk separate files (which you'd later learn was the more smart thing to do as a project got bigger and more complicated).

Plenty of tutorials to learn from, no need to think about HTML/CSS or Canvas etc, (which I don't think matters much anymore with modern game frameworks for web like Phaser), audio worked well without issues (I believe stuff like this wasn't supported as well via HTML5, and browsers later disabled audio playback by default which annoyed web game devs).

It was just more broadly accessible, many never did dev but you'd ease into it better and just have to worry about deploying a swf file, not web server with html/js/assets etc and no GUI tools. This did mean poor quality code was common, performance or other optimizations wouldn't be given much thought, nor security, many were inexperienced devs that just wanted to create content, especially when there was demand that'd get you paid.

That resulted in "flash is bad", you can probably draw some similarities with wordpress, in regards to accessibility / demand and general experience being subpar along with security issues, but at the same time it can be quite good when you know what you're actually doing and care about such things that it gets a bad rep for.

[polarathene]

I'm aso not sure hosting Flash games was as simple as uploading a swf. Many of those required an online account so you could play on various devices, so there was at least a database somewhere. That's why I'm inclined to think (I don't actually know), the developer was already charged for hosting.

Hosting was often covered by a game portal, usually a sponsor for an exclusive license. They'd allow other game portals to steal the swf and host it, but it'd feature the sponsors logo that links back to the sponsors game portal to drive traffic there. Some games had agreements to license to others for additional profits to the dev later on modifying the logo or other requirements from the licensees.

You as a dev rarely had to worry about hosting costs unless you wanted to get all the profit for yourself, but the difficult part there was getting the audience/traffic. Many knew popular platforms to find games and trusted those, some had accounts with APIs for scores, saves, monetization, w/e the game portal offered.