AirMech goes NaCl | Hacker News Reader

AirMech goes NaCl

carbongames.com

54 pointsgodDLL18 comments

I bought Bastion for Chrome and it was pretty damned good. there were cursor issues, and the game crashed if you were low on memory, but other than that it was an excellent experience. I think NaCl has the capability to really be a boon for indie devs. With Chrome's ever-rising market share, it can truly be looked at as a viable cross-platform platform, saving devs the hassle of compiling for XBLA, PC, Mac, etc. Now, granted, most will still choose to use steam if that's the route they're going, but this is a pretty cool emergence.

If you, like me, have heard "NaCl" mentioned but don't really know what it is, the article has a decent description.

If you're not going to click through, it's "Native Client" -

"Native Client, often called simply NaCl, is a plugin technology that runs inside Chrome browser, and hopefully in the future, all browsers. It enables applications written in C/C++ to run natively inside a secure sandbox. This sandbox is there to protect users from malicious or buggy applications. In a sense it’s similar to ActiveX, but other than native execution, other similarities don’t exist. Actually with the amount security concerns put into the whole Native Client, it’s not even fair to compare it to ActiveX technology."

More here:

  http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient
  https://developers.google.com/native-client/overview

I tried both Google login buttons multiple times and the site errored every time. I tried to email support@carbongames.com and I got a Google Groups permanent rejection email.

A Google Group subscription is "required" to get the link to the app, but I can't post in the group.

I tried the forums, but that requires an account.

I tried whois on the domain, but it is under DomainsByProxy.com.

I have details and screenshots if someone is interested.

Hi there, I'm not sure did you have problem with Google Groups signup or with our signup here? https://carbongames.com/signup.html

To get access to Chrome version you have login with your GoogleID and become member of this Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/airmech-alpha

After that once you login into Chrome Web Store you'll be able to see this link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hdahlabpinmfcemhcb...

If you still have issues, please send email to support@carbongames.com and I'll make sure you get access to the game.

Me too. I downloaded, but wasn't able to create account because of errors in the account-creation process. Shame, but it is an alpha, so I'll be patient.

I tried whois on the domain, but it is under DomainsByProxy.com.

Note that various "domains-by-proxy" forward emails to domain administrators from whatever the address is in WHOIS.

I used to work across the hall from these guys and they're fantastic. I had heard that they were working on porting their engine over and I'm excited to be able to play the game without having to boot into a Windows machine now!

Glad to hear these guys are going to make a NaCl option available.

The interesting thing about NaCl long term is that in order to compete with mobile and desktop for developer attention any browser that supports it will likely require an app store / ecosystem the way Google has done with Chrome (to collect payments). This could make the future browser landscape look a lot different, as it would introduce a lot more "lock-in" than we're used to. If I have games and apps installed in one browser, I'll be far less likely to switch at a later date.

isn't it the same problem as monetizing any web site? NaCl is just embedded in the page, after all.

If you've got a Mac or a Linux machine and some neat game is only available (for you) via the Chrome Web Store, it seems like a fine option. People already spend lots of money on browser-based games.

Is NaCI Chrome only? What's the difference than writing games on top of WebGL?

For now, it is only adopted by Chrome. The code for NaCl is all open sourced and the ABI is stable, so other parties could adopt it if they were so inclined.

The difference is that it allows for extremely fast native code execution within a sandboxed environment, compiled from languages that normally target native environments (C/C++/etc.) With NaCl you can run very resource intensive games without risk of exposing your system to malicious software. A boon for the indie devs that want to cross-compile for other platforms, or those that just can't stand Javascript. :)

NaCl allows native execution; WebGL is an abstraction that allows access to hardware resources. NaCl is C/C++ based, and so allows for faster execution than WebGL, which is JS-based.

WebGL's cool, but NaCl allows truly native performance, platform-agnostic and living in the browser. They're different beasts entirely.

NaCl is not platform agnostic.

You mean it's not in Chrome for Linux and Chrome for Mac?

It's platform agnostic in sense that it runs on all platforms where desktop version of Chrome browser runs. But if you mean Chrome is platform, then yes it runs only in Chrome for now.

It's not standard for all browsers, but I think that's going to change with more games like AirMech that wouldn't be possible to make in .js/WebGL/HTML5.

It's also fully open sourced with permissive license (BSD), which should not present any barrier for others to adopt it. Adoption will likely be decided by politics (f.e. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/24/jay_sullivan_on_fire...), rather than technical issues.

One interesting thing about CWS apps is that they can be ran in window mode, and shortcut can be placed on desktop. At that point NaCl app doesn't look any different than native desktop app. It's pretty cool!

For context -- the game looks very promising, and is far into development (alphas).

Most of their employees also worked on Fat Princess for the PS3.

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