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Comment by mekkkkkk | Hacker News Reader

Could someone explain the USP of utilizing the browser platform for game dev? As far as I know, the usual suspects in the game engine world can compile to web as well as the other major platforms. Wouldn't relying on web runtimes and all the bloat associated be a detriment?

Is it the JS ecosystem and [insert framework] UI that's tempting? Or just the shared dev environment?

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Traditional game engines work in ways that aren't suited for browser based gaming. There is quite a bit of work that needs to be done in optimizing asset streaming without the need for long wait times.

You don't see the USP of websites, apps, and games that run at a browser url instead of requiring app download? I encourage you to throw out your prejudices and try to answer that one yourself.

Runescape is a good example. It ran on the school and library computers when nothing else could (much less anything that needed installation). Runescape is finally beta-testing native mobile apps, and it's hard to imagine it rising to so much fame for such a long time without its decision to run in the browser.

> You don't see the USP of websites, apps, and games that run at a browser url instead of requiring app download?

Unity, Unreal, Godot ... they all support the web as publishing targets. Without downloading a plugin. supporting the web is not unique. but if you design for the web, the engine will run better than compiling to it.

> Runescape is finally beta-testing native mobile apps, and it's hard to imagine it rising to so much fame for such a long time without its decision to run in the browser.

They've had a mobile version of "Old School Runescape" for over a year now I think, and it certainly did get me to play again for a bit. Mostly out of a curiosity of how they managed to fit all that UI on a mobile screen (turns out, pretty well).

Unreal no longer supports the web as a publishing target. They've marked that feature as deprecated. Unity still does, however, from what I've heard it's not a great platform to use for the web. Godot's wasm compile target is very new, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes from it.

The choice of hosting the game on a website seems like an orthagonal decision to whether or not to build it using web tech nowaday, as I mentioned.

Many native engines "can" compile. But really it is only experimental and commercially non-viable option. Unreal engine decided not to continue support webgl target. Unity lifted off "experimental" from webgl target, but really nothing changed - it is still huge build, crashes mobile, and development process for web in unity, simply awful. So it can compile, but commercially it can't compete with webgl-first engines on similar projects.

What about Godot to wasm?

Thanks for the explanation, I simply get the idea now, so for a serious web based game, playcanvas would be the No.1 choice as of now?

Compiling from most major non-web game engines to the web leads to incredibly bloated products. See: https://blog.playcanvas.com/playcanvas-versus-unity-webgl/

The blog is 4 years old but I think it's still relevant.

thank you so much for this reference, yeah really worth a reading, still very relevant today!

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