That is awesome. 

I get off on ridiculously smooth movement like in this game. That tune is very impressive as well! Is there a place where I can nab it?

As I understand it WebGL is JavaScript hooks for using an HTML5 canvas as an OpenGL rendering context...is that right?

Sounds about right.

But yeah, if it's not part of the HTML5 standard, per se, surely there's no necesity for a browser manufacture to include support for it, and then we end up back in the same position as we are right now with Flash - it's not part of a globally accepted standard, so it -might- work depending on what you're using to view the page?

Most of the HTML5 specification is being developed by W3C, while the WebGL specification is being developed by the Khronos Group. Regardless, I think WebGL is as much of a part of the HTML5 standard as anything.

That is unimportant. What matters above all is implementation. Internet Explorer is the only major web browser that has yet to show plans to implement WebGL or Canvas in general. If IE hopes to compete, it will follow in the footsteps of Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. If not, at least there is Chrome Frame.

Either way, I wouldn't recommend developing with WebGL right now. The specification is still under heavy development and things made with WebGL right now often break.

I don't see why it couldn't or shouldn't be. By the way, have you heard of a thing called Newgrounds, or Kongregate?

I have, and they prove my point. Any game implemented in Flash would be better if it were not. Admittably our computing environment is slightly lacking a proper equivalent of a web game, but that means we should develop one properly, not tack it on a web browser.

It's not that much harder to make a real desktop application that's in every way better than a web game. You can even have it stream all its resources as you run it, just like Flash. You can choose to open executables directly from the browser, etc.

A web browser is a tool not designed for gaming, and it sucks at that. Use the right tool for the job.

The web is very obviously an established gaming platform, as indicated by the hundreds of thousands of web games with billions of plays.

It is true that downloadable desktop games have their advantages, namely, stable full screen support and technical efficiency. However, you cannot deny that web games have one huge advantage, which is what secured their position in the world of gaming: convenience. Many people prefer to click and play a game right there as opposed to having to click, unzip/install, then play. This is may be a sad fact for some desktop game developers, but it is indeed true. The web is definitely a gaming platform--a popular one, at that--and it is bound to stay that way.

You know, what you are saying about the web right now is not all that different from what people used to say about computers in general.

I'm not sure an extension to HTML5 counts as HTML5. I'm guessing a browser can be HTML5 compliant, and have no support for rendering 3D...

A browser can't really be "HTML5 compliant" at the moment since HTML5 is all about new, experimental features that aren't consistent between browsers for now.

However, WebGL is a pretty established HTML5 feature. Development builds of Chrome, Firefox and Safari already include it and Opera plans to include it.

I am not sure what you mean by "extension to HTML5". Are you under the assumption that WebGL is a plugin? Because that is not the case; WebGL is built right into web browsers.

You can try it out yourself.

http://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Getting_a_WebGL_Implementation
http://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Demo_Repository

as I now have large gaps to explain in my work history.

"I gave self-employment a few shots" is not a good reason?

And you definitely do not need to quit your job to make good games.

HTML5 can't seriously be used for games cause of a thing called "view -> show page source" or equivalent

Flash/Game Maker/Python/Java can't seriously be used for games cause of a thing called "Google -> X decompiler" or equivalent

The web is not a damn gaming platform.

Everything is a damn gaming platform.

Oracle "Open Document Format" plugin for Microsoft Office now costs $90 per user...

This is hilarious.

This one looks pretty good, maybe a tad too much flashiness though .

I was going to reply with "It's a music game, it's supposed to be flashy!" but then I watched the video and realized that you're absolutely correct.

I like Crawl a lot more too. I will never know how the Nethack team thought something like "Hey, we should make the player press at least three keys to get through a closed door. That will be fun!"

I thought you were smarter than this, Paul.

Player character customization, large degree of choice and procedural generation.

Basically, I like a unique experience every time I play.

And I haven't enough money to buy such a book.

If only there were some place where one could rent books for free.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html

It is odd how the world's most famous film critic can be this ignorant.

It isn't very Pythonic. Start by reading this: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

Have fun.

This is a pretty late reply, but...

Many people appear to think that this game is great, but it is pretty hard for me to see why. It is obvious that this was whipped up by a team specialized in creating 3D movies, because the only decent part of this game is the graphics. It bombs hard in terms of gameplay, smoothness, sound and UI. It just feels completely uninspired, as though the people who worked on this are not gamers at all (which was probably the case).

Does anyone else feel this way? Wherever I look I only see praise of this game. Then again, I have seen this talked about only on open source blogs, not gaming blogs...

NES-style game with SecuROM

Interesting!

Just FYI, Unix and Linux are different things. Adobe AIR supports only the latter.

Sounds messy.

I assume that you're actually complaining about the lack of Flash on the iPhone and iPad, and are just embellishing the truth to try to drum up some controversy on the topic?

I don't know if that's what he's talking about, but quite recently Apple updated their iPhone SDK terms to force developers to write their programs in C/C++/Objective-C without any intermediate layer. Adobe has a Flash-to-iPhone compiler, and it looks as though Apple just killed it (as well as the Unity-to-iPhone and Mono-to-iPhone compilers).

I, too, think that Flash is not perfect. In fact, it would take quite a bit to convince me to develop with it for the reasons that people have mentioned here. But I think that making alternative compilers illegal out of a personal dislike for them is pretty childish. Let developers decide what works best for them; it's not a hard concept to grasp.

I was considering getting a Mac, but not after this. Apple screws over their developers too much for me to want to buy any of their products.

Google on the other hand...

Why do some people think that everyone with a particular hobby thinks the same way?

I don't get why it is not appropriate among nerds to pronounce URL 'earl' but it is to pronounce MySQL 'my sequel'.