Standalone game versus an in-browser game

[Gabe]

What's everyone's thoughts on a game you have to download onto your computer versus an in-browser game?

On one hand, an in-browser game is more accessible to people. However, a fully fleshed out game you download (think Hearthstone/LoL/Dota 2) gives developers more computer resources to use and more flexibility.

I'm currently at a pre-alpha stage for a stand-alone game that you'd have to download onto your computer.

Here's a short video of what I got so far: (Started coding 4 days ago)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enk9pPK7GUg

[Mar]

I think people were thinking more along the lines of an app/mobile game in HTML 5. It's portable and easier to play on the go, as most people will. What do you think?

[Gabe]

I think people were thinking more along the lines of an app/mobile game in HTML 5. It's portable and easier to play on the go, as most people will. What do you think?

So I did a bit more research last night before Game of Thrones. Unity does let you port the game client to HTML5/WebGL, however Javascript is inherently single-threaded and dynamic code generation does not exist.

One of the limitations would then be Client/Server communication. That means we'll have to use web-sockets or some other kind of connectivity to actually get the game online. Think about how Units were distributed via randomly being propped up by the server in 1 batch as in "If you are currently in a match and win, you will receive 1 mud golem." We may be forced to go down that same path if we use an in-browser game versus say individual games having a chance to proc a unit.

Right now, I have a development server in NYC running 24/7 and I use a clustered multi-thread pool to maintain connections. I'm going to keep on building out the game server and also work some on the client this next week. Hopefully, in 2 to 3 weeks we'll have a playable alpha for some of you all to try out :)

Ideally, it would be awesome to have both versions... a lite-version built into a browser as well as a more full-featured game that is downloadable :D

[DivineLeft]

There are good deal of unity games that have been turned into iOs, Android and HTML5 apps. I don't see anything wrong we having something like this in place. Its bascially what we have been talking about. A game with more functionally online/pc and still accessible via phone apps and facebook. Unity allows for all that.

[Gabe]

Yup! Agreed!

It would be awesome to get a Mobile App, PC-version, and Html5 version of the same game going :D

[Aristocatt]

Gabe and I talked for a bit. It looks as though we can work together and increase the number of platforms the game runs on. It's a little sad that some of my server code won't be used, but all in all, bringing a game like this to steam/PC-Version would be a pretty big deal.