Canvas is going to be the killer app (even IE9 supports it), once fast enough it should be brilliant for 2d games.
It also doesn’t cure cancer.
The point was… if some developer wanted to use JavaScript on those platforms, they could.
I wasn’t talking about code from users or anything like that.
I was only taking about supported platforms and the things you can do thanks to V8’s license (BSD).
You see, JavaScript kinda turned into that kind of thing we wanted Java to be: small footprint, embeddable, free, everywhere… At the same time Java went into the opposite direction. These trends surely won’t change for the next 5 years.
So true
Comparing Java to JavaScript is like comparing Java to Lua. They are very different kinds of animals. Lua and JavaScript are from the same family (prototype based). And I’ll repeat myself. Virtually all the commentary posted between my last one and this are OT for embedding some JavaScript runtime. MS, Oracle, browser X,Y, library Y,Z…you don’t care…they are not part of the picture.
You never know, with OpenJDK, Shark + LLVM, and Project Jigsaw (eventually! : ), we might get our wish. … ooh … pig just flew past the window …
The big thing for me that seems to be missing from Javascript at the moment (though it looks like it may be coming, ish) is support for concurrency.
Microsoft won’t implement WebGL if it prefers pushing its own solutions relying on DirectX.
It is not really funny. JavaScript simply cannot replace Java even though JavaScript can cover lots of needs.
But if some developers wanted to use JavaScript on those platforms, they would not have any hardware acceleration.
[quote=“oNyx,post:63,topic:36029”]
It’s wrong. Even Flash is becoming really heavy, its installer is light but it gets megs of data once launched whereas Java has the Java Kernel. Java has become more cross-platform as time goes by and it is really almost everywhere. As far as I know, JogAmp and LWJGL are still the most cross-platform solutions to have a cross-platform access to hardware acceleration except on Apple devices (IPhone, IPad, IPod, …).
That’s the beauty of an embedded solution. It doesn’t matter. Simply create a set system calls that accepts properties and performs the required atomic operations. My main concern with using embedded JavaScript would be the quality of the debugger. I haven’t played with V8 in awhile and don’t know what the current state of debugging support is. Needing to go to an external tool (instead of your app) to debug would be a big time drain.
(edit: clarity)
[quote=“oNyx,post:63,topic:36029”]
I also second this. With Java there is almost no emphasis on the client side, and where there is it’s by small teams and indie developers. They just don’t have the same financial and business grunt to attract customers, users and others to get involved. They also can’t push development to the same extent as several big companies.
That’s why JavaScript is turning into such a good alternative because it’s all about the client-side.
I’ve been toying with ideas for what I mentally call “massively cross platform” for a while (windows, mac, linux, 360, iOS, Android) now. My last attempt at using Java as a base language failed when I found out that although XMLVM claims to have a C# backend, it’s a token effort that doesn’t even compile hello world.
I like the idea of building a mini-console environment using javascript (a bit like love but with JS instead of lua). Done right you could get all those platforms except 360 (unless you wrote a JS interpreter in C# that is).
It’s also about target audience guys.
People who still use IE 6 or whatever, aren’t interested in hip java games anyway.
You never target everyone with a website; or rarely.
Eh… WTF are you talking about? Programming languages are generally NOT hardware accelerated (except for those strange exceptions like CUDA and OpenCL).
JavaScript on its own can’t do anything. You’ll always need some native code if you want to interact with the operating system or hardware.
If the platform supports some kind of hardware acceleration you can of course leverage this in your Canvas implementation (Impact for iOS did that for example).
Talking about “apples” & “oranges”, but only refering to them as “fruit” is a single thread is kinda goofy IMHO.
Fruit is only nice when it’s crunchy.
What are you talking about crunchy?!??! Fruit isn’t crunchy!!!
Does anyone here really care about attempting to write large amounts of JavaScript that runs in browsers for anything beyond a casual style game? And thus be dependent on the LCD of JavaScript runtimes & libraries in the set of browser that you want support?
Right. You guys go off and write all your stuff in JavaScript code. Enjoy. I’ll still be here when static typing becomes the next big thing, again.
So yeah, how about that Apache.
I don’t have that big budget you’d need for a big budget game. I don’t even have that kind of budget you’d need for a small budget game. I can’t even throw $5000 (nano budget) at a game.
Almost any language is good enough for that kind of stuff I want to do. I won’t need much code. Especially if you consider that I would have to put 3-4 times as much work into the game’s assets.
Well, it actually is possible to write pretty big applications with JavaScript. (But I’m not really interested in that.)
By “here” I mean the people posting in this thread (vs. “here” on the forums). The only post I’ve seen that was “hey, JavaScript is looking good to use” was Cas in his original hijack of the thread which explicitly stated “embedded”.
Yup, you can use it to write AAA games with Unity3D.
I think there’s more than you’d expect - I certainly would. The language is actually pretty nice (nicer in many ways than java), it’s mostly the supporting environment that lets it down (standard library, toolchain and browser quirks). Targeting a custom embedded VM like V8 goes quite a way to fixing the bigger gripes.
This is exactly what I mean. We’re talking about two different things and responses to post don’t make a whole lot of sense. JavaScript embedded vs. JavaScript in browser have pretty much nothing in common. My post was say “as far I as I can tell, no one in this thread is advocating using JavaScript in a brower” so why don’t we stop the browser related noise…it’s simply creating confusion. I like prototype based languages. V8 is probably one of the best VMs currently available for creating an embedded VM solution ATM (of course, this depends on the game’s specific needs). It’s not unique, there are LLVM (for instance) based possiablities, but to my limited knowledge none are mature enough for usage.
If you didn’t like my apples & oranges comparision, then try this one: a single thread talking about “Java” where for half the people Java=HotSpot and the other half Java = custom class libraries and some interpreted runtime they downloaded SourceForge. Two different animals, even though the “language” is the same.
(edit: typo)
My language is over 5,000 lines. Still small for a project, but far bigger then most JS.