So most browser games are flash, right? Or am I missing something?
Can you think of successful browser based applet games?
Are you saying that RuneScape is less successful than Minecraft or not indie? Because I think either would be very badly wrong.
In addition to minecraft? (whichever one makes me not wrong :))
For the purpose of this thread, Minecraft doesn’t count. Mostly because it has a separate full client as well.
I’m thinking of the newgrounds.com like model where the game content is delivered only through the browser.
Pogo.com has been pretty successful and is full of mostly java applets. Quote from Wikipedia says:
[quote]Since 2006, Pogo.com has consistently been a top-10 Internet site for U.S. visitors when measured by time spent online.
[/quote]
Also up until recently alot of the top Yahoo Games have been java applets.
Also Milpa has been relatively successful. A while back the author mentioned that its made him a few thousand dollars from ads alone.
There have been a few - most of the jagex funorb stuff is java iirc, but yeah, it’s mostly flash.
I think the main reason is user perception: flash is glossy and it works so people trust it. Java seems nerdish or even amateurish in the browser (yahoo toolbar with your java update anyone? grinds teeth).
Unless your game has the weight (like runescape & minecraft) to pull people over that hurdle then java’s always going to come second.
I use java because what I want to do can’t be done in flash. If flash was better I’d use that.
Out of curiosity, what do you consider java better for over Flash? At least in a purely game perspective?
Flash clearly has many advantages over Java but here’s some that Java has over Flash:
- Java is much faster, in terms of raw horse power as Java’s JIT (Hotspot) compiler is much better.
- You can get access outside the sandbox, i.e. access/save to the local file system, use networking capabilities not possible in Flash, access native code, etc.
- Access hardware acceleration directly using stuff like OpenGL, OpenAL, etc.
Well some of this is borders on cheating when you are talking about applet code. You can only get outside the sandbox by requesting special permissions. And hardware acceleration can only be done with native binaries. Technically, flash could someday write an interface to hardware acceleration as well.
Or am I wrong?
yes it could and it will with the upcoming Flash Molehill stuff but currently its impossible with Flash’s restrictions.
But I do agree with your points.
Cost I think is one of the biggest benefits of Java over flash. Eclipse is free, Adobe Flash CS5 is what $700 bucks. I know there is some open source actionscript compiler but the barrier to entry is higher.
All of it, apart (I presume) from the ports to iOS.
What I find is that java applets don’t integrate with browsers very well, especially on non-windows platform. For example, on the mac, re-loading of an lwjgl applet don’t always work, as the java implementation is not very complete. Also, if you want javascript->java communication, it doesn’t work on safari (the last time I checked).
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Power - I can push 50K+ polys in realtime in a browser I love it
Potential - I can tie the server and client code really tightly. Java is A1 for network stuff.
People - huge community of smart folk who have some morals.
Price - 'nuff said.
Java is seriously cool. I take it back about using flash ;D
I don’t know if this counts towards your original question, but when I go to view chess games from recent tournaments at the NYTimes site (usually a link from their Crosswords/Puzzles page), the chess playing app is written in Java, not Flash. But it is not a “game” per se, as one wouldn’t use it to play chess online. Still, I thought that was pretty cool, it being in Java.
The KGS ( http://www.gokgs.com/ ) go client is a java applet, and works fine and dandy.
Sure it’s not a AAA shooter, but I’ve never heard anybody complain about it. Solid as a rock.
Pretty nice but not sure that really counts as a browser game, since its an external application launched by an applet.