The dawn of a new era: Bastion now available on Chrome for free | Hacker News Reader

The dawn of a new era: Bastion now available on Chrome for free

gaming.icrontic.com

30 pointsprimesuspect29 comments

It's a paid game (with a free demo)

https://twitter.com/#!/SupergiantGames/status/14500807756389...

Looks like the app is just a bookmark for a site that does user-agent sniffing and locks everyone who isn't using Chrome out. Is everyone okay with this now?

I'm a little concerned for the Web if this is the way things are heading.

It uses Native Client. It can't run in any other browser.

NaCl was originally built on the standard NPAPI. Remember, it worked in Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.

Google moved it to the proprietary Pepper API, making it Chrome-only.

Wasn't NPAPI basically a Netscape API that was cloned by other browsers and thus made into a de facto "standard"? Why isn't Google allowed to do the same thing?

That was 1996. There was no de facto plugin API. You can't really consider 1996, when there was one browser, the same as today, where there are five.

Besides, I didn't say Netscape was right.

Doesn't seem to work on my Fedora laptop, despite having an OpenGL gaming video card in it. Sad. :(

I'm not entirely sure how free the game is as I've only played it for a few minutes. I did however notice that if you bring up the menu there's an option to unlock the full game. That takes you to granting the app permission to have your email address and then redirects (if you accept) to google wallet and wanting to charge you $15. I didn't at any point in time see what the difference between what I already have access to and "the full game" are.

Well, it's a demo, you'll be only allowed to advance to a few levels. That's the difference.

Yeah, going back to the chrome web store I see that on the details page it mentions that you can play now for free and then upgrade for $15. The linked page doesn't mention that at all and it's not on the main description for the app either.

Oh you mean something only ONE browser supports (and "ever" will), is non-standard, and attempts (and will probably succeed) to split the web by providing free games (don't worry, there's still in game payments)?

Great days ahead!

(yeah that's a variation of the comment of the same other post)

What? This is just another cross-compiled target, and the porting times I've seen have been really impressive. It's not taking away from anything; it's giving a new platform to existing native applications with barely any code changes.

This strikes a nice compromise between demanding native applications, and safe sandboxed but technologically limited Flash applications.

The impact of NaCL isn't limited to browsers, either. Imagine if you could finally shed that gross feeling that you get when you run binaries on your PC.

What "gross feeling" are you talking about? But yes, browsers will benefit from this - providing that the technology will be implemented by all of them, not only Chrome.

The feeling that you might be running a bit of malware that is newer than your virus definitions.

One of the most original and best games of 2011. That being said I feel like the colors are much more vibrant on the 360 (have tried both using same monitor).

Soundtrack is worth a listen too - although song names might be spoilerish.

Enlighten me, what the point of "Install App" while you can directly access http://chrome.supergiantgames.com/ ? Does "install" allows some local storage access or stuff?

I think that's more or less superfluous, probably a way to keep the Web relevant in an age when people are increasingly expecting functionality under "app" tiles.

Also good for CrOS I imagine.

Native Client isn't enabled by default yet; installing the app grants permission to use it.

I'm finding the motion really jerky, and the mouse cursor lags behind my movement by a good half a second, which is incredibly irritating. If we're going to have good games in the browser, they will need whatever low-level API access it takes to get this stuff right.

Does anybody understand the technology stack this thing is using? If it's native code calling OpenGL, is it actually using the browser for anything?

Is this working on OS X for anyone?

None of the hardware acceleration stuff seems to work on Chrome with a 5870. No idea how to enable it. :(

try chrome://gpu-internals/ to get a report

Yes, it works fore me on OS X. I have the Windows version as well and the NaCl version looks and feels identical.

It appears to not quite be ready for prime time. It has crashed several times on both my PC and Mac laptop.

Not really. OnLive is the future for gaming not games in a browser....

Edit: Hmm a question, does the game use your hardware? Or is it rendered elsewhere?

Rendered on your hardware.

A thought: with NaCl, OnLive could run in the browser. Just saying.

Works flawlessly on Ubuntu 11.10 w/NVIDIA.

Google NaCL to the rescue :) Now I can boot any Chrome supported OS (linux!) to play this great game!

Clarification; it's free to try. They don't indicate it until you start playing it.

wonder if it is made with javascript...

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