HTML 5 Asteroids | Hacker News Reader

HTML 5 Asteroids

dougmcinnes.com

59 pointsgr36625 comments

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Oh heck, there goes my next hour.

Wow that's fantastic. Now someone make Missile Command.

Pegs my CPU though (Firefox and Chrome)

Open source too: http://github.com/dmcinnes/HTML5-Asteroids

update: I tried a few flash versions on the web to compare

sorry to say they use a fraction of the CPU, at least under Flash 10.1rc4

Pegs my CPU though (Firefox and Chrome)

I assume this is to intentionally maximize the framerate. ("renice" is your friend if you have something more important to do in the background.)

Chrome / Mac didn't see any high CPU usage.

It shows very good why it's not ready to ditch Flash completely.

I mean.. that's asteroids, i have a Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, 1024MB graphicscard und the asteroids are not smooth, they are flickering a little...

I have a two and a half year old AthlonX2 with only 256 MB RAM and have no problems with it. Plus I am on dial-up, and this loads much faster than Flash.

I mean the animations are not smooth, it's probably the algorithm that rotates the asteroids, but well.. if noone can see that, i may be more sensitive about it, but it was the first thing i noticed.

Surely SVG makes more sense for vector games?

They should also try to recreate the arcade experience with the painted backgrounds, like from here:

http://mameworld.info/mrdo/mame_artwork/astdelux.png

Honest question here...

Why would SVG make more sense than canvas? Doesn't Canvas use a similar vector drawing model that you find in Postscript, Java2D and SVG? It seems to me that the main difference between the two is that one is an API and another is markup. So what makes SVG more suited for vector games?

I would think needing to have objects for each element in the SVG's XML would be unnecessary overhead, and wouldn't really buy you anything in return.

On a Mac Core 2 Duo MacBook with Safari, it stays below 45% CPU and is smooth as silk. This is actually better performance than Flash.

I would like to know what Flash game are you comparing this simple game with.

Doesn't matter. ALL flash pegs my MacBook Pro CPU >50%, most of the time > 90%

yeah, even ads!

Cool. But the game is very sluggish and almost non playable on iPad. I wish these html5 games were built with some consideration for iPad.

Anyway, i really appreciate the effort. One step closer to a flash-less web.

> I wish these html5 games were built some consideration for iPad.

If the author doesn't have an iPad then it's going to be a bit difficult for him to know how this will perform. Possibly he's just made sure it works OK for the 99.99% of people not using iPads.

Maybe the iPad should be built with some consideration for the web? The web shouldn't be built with consideration for a single device. The game is HTML5. Fine. The iPad obviously has performance issues with that. That's the iPad's problem. Apple didn't want Flash, they wanted HTML5 and standards. Now they have to pony up.

But no, the iPad should conform to standards, and support those standards. If the iPad is not capable of supporting those standards in a usable manner, it's the iPads problem.

I agree with both you and the parent. One of the problems with many sites is the expectation that there is a (dedicated) keyboard on the device that is browsing.

I think when one designs something like this, take cognizance that more and more devices have virtual keyboards.

I recall one of Jobs' major points against Flash was not providing support for touch-based interfaces. Here we have a clearcut example that the tool you use (HTML5) does guarantee you anything in the final product.

On a contrarian note, a cross-platform game framework here could perhaps provide for remappable controls and performance tuning. This same cross-platform framework is labeled by Jobs as a threat to Apple's marketshare.

Perhaps Apple should not be so quick to bludgeon developers with claims of The One Best Way to the exclusion of all others.

The Render Engine also has a nice demo up--I prefer its nifty particle explosions and rocket exhaust. I believe this uses the HTML5 Canvas. http://renderengine.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demos/spaceroid...

I made a canvas variant of asteroids about a year ago. It's not up any more, but does anyone here remember it? The game over screen told you you'd died of dysentery

Edit: Hey! I found it :) http://users.tpg.com.au/_dp/dave_asteroids.html

That's great, but it existed as a DHTML demo for Internet Explorer 4.0 10 years ago. So much for the hype.

1996 actually, so 14 years, wow (when did I get old?!)

http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/dhtmltech...

Only works in IE though.

Works very well with Opera too.

Yep. Over here, Opera 10.53 on Linux, on an Athlon X2. Uses about 75% of one of the CPUs. I'm impressed that I can hold any combination of the game-playing keys, and it doesn't falter (thrust + turn + fire). The framerate holds, and everything looks and behaves smoothly, with great responsiveness.

Needs audio! But very cool indeed.

nice nice. can you texture map the objects?

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