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Google nabs Square Enix and other game developers to do native client Chrome games

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/08/g...er-game-developers-to-do-native-chrome-games/

VentureBeat said:
TYd0G.jpg


Google announced today that its three-year effort to create a muscular browser technology that can run heavy duty apps such as console-like games is now ready for prime time.

Google has provided the platform to allow games to run in the Chrome browser and make use of the computers 3D graphics hardware. That makes it possible to run games with high-end console-like graphics in a web browser.

Square Enix chief executive Yoichi Wada attended the event at the GooglePlex headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and said his company has been waiting for this day for a long time. The company created a version of its Mini Ninjas game for Chrome as a “native client” game.

“Let us begin this new era together,” Wada said. “Google’s native client will be welcomed worldwide as a truly innovative technology for the information technology industry and game industry as well.”

He said that high-end games require high-end hardware, but by making those games available on the web via native client, a wider audience will be able to enjoy them. To date, web browsers have been too weak to run games well.

“Google’s native client solves this problem,” he said. “It is an excellent solution for browser gaming.”

A dozen other game companies were at the event to show their support for the Chrome native client. They said the benefits of running a game natively in the Chrome browser is high performance, security, and the ability to port to the system easily. The games include Bastion, an award-winning title from Super Giant Gamesthat debuted on Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 game console.

Google said it would be easy to port existing PC and console games to the Chrome native client, partly because developers can use a varity of familiar programming tools. The Unity 3D game engine will now include a check box that a developer can click in order to make a Unity-based game run on the Chrome browser. That’s pretty darn simple. It means developers don’t have to waste a lot of time rewriting games and other apps for the web, only to see them crawl in slow motion. Besides games, photo and video apps will also benefit from the native client technology.

For game developers, this is a chance for a much wider audience, as Chrome has been downloaded more than 200 million times. Unity reaches 90 million gamers. Oren Tversky, vice president of business development at Unity, said that the experience is much easier for consumers, who don’t have to wait for a long installation. They are less likely to quit a long download and so they are more likely to become paying customers.

Five Unity-based games will be available in the Chrome web store. Google is working on improving portability for future operating systems and architectures. It will add features such as support for gamepads, memory mapped files, and web sockets as well.

“These examples show the support for the native client,” said Christian Stevanson, Google product manager for native client. “Games are a category that push the boundaries of what is possible on a platform.”

Ian Ellison Taylor of Google said that the project started three years ago with the question, “What if we could run native code inside the browser, but have it be secure and portable?”

Chrome Web Store gaining steam, watch out.

More Info: http://www.gonacl.com
Short Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Q0a_Fz1Kg
 

survivor

Banned
Has Mozilla and Microsoft expressed any interest in adopting the native client? I know MS probably won't even consider it, but Mozilla got nothing to lose.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Has Mozilla and Microsoft expressed any interest in adopting the native client? I know MS probably won't even consider it, but Mozilla got nothing to lose.

MS might as well, they got nothing to lose since they won't support WebGL since it competes with DirectX. Heck NaCl right now is x86-only, which could work in their favor. As far as I know, they haven't ever commented on it though.

Mozilla I think has come out against it, which is weird. They basically compared it to ActiveX, and only want to focus on HTML/JavaScript, which I guess I can't blame them for. It's a purer stack, and NaCl is a plugin at the moment (although it's built into Chrome and enabled by default), and plugins seem to be the current tech whipping boy.

In a way I can see where they're coming from, but in a way I'm also disappointed the technology won't have more reach. For now we can only hope NaCl gets enough critical mass to be adopted as part of the web platform as a standard.
 
sure. this new era of browser gaming might actually be pretty cool.

Port some of squares classic RPG's to chrome... them with cloud saves you could pick up and continue your game on any number of computers.
 

Victrix

*beard*
You know what I don't like about this is really, really shitty webpages spinning up my GPU

Seems minor, but Adobe's shit gpu 'acceleration' causes my laptop to fucking cook itself (yes, I realize Adobe sucks, and this is different, but still)

Otherwise very cool though, I look forward to kickass 3d accelerated social games that are shitty farmville clones
 

Datschge

Member
MS might as well, they got nothing to lose since they won't support WebGL since it competes with DirectX. Heck NaCl right now is x86-only, which could work in their favor. As far as I know, they haven't ever commented on it though.

No, it only works in favor of Intel. Microsoft is trying to loosen the dependency on x86/Intel by making Windows 8 available on ARM as well.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
I dunno. One's lightweight and truly cross platform and the other is potentially heavyweight and confined to x86. NaCl is interesting, but I just don't see the point of this lab experiment.

No, it only works in favor of Intel. Microsoft is trying to loosen the dependency on x86/Intel by making Windows 8 available on ARM as well.

PNaCl, currently in development, runs on both ARM and x86 via LLVM.
 

Mikey Jr.

Member
Back in the day, during the PS1 and PS2 era, when you saw "Squaresoft" on the box, you know you were getting a quality game.

It has nothing to do with this announcement, but I don't know. This company has really fell off my radar.

Nothing they do interests me anymore. And they are just...weird. Chrono Trigger on phones, this browser thing, and just a general hodge-podge of random stuff.
 

Datschge

Member
PNaCl, currently in development, runs on both ARM and x86 via LLVM.

Haha, that's crazy. Basically part of a compiler suit reused right in the browser. Not sure what to think of that yet. :lol

Back in the day, during the PS1 and PS2 era, when you saw "Squaresoft" on the box, you know you were getting a quality game.

It has nothing to do with this announcement, but I don't know. This company has really fell off my radar.

Nothing they do interests me anymore. And they are just...weird. Chrono Trigger on phones, this browser thing, and just a general hodge-podge of random stuff.

Basically Wada is a mouthpiece trying to jump on every latest possible trend (like this one), and the company suffers for it.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Bastion has been released on the Chrome Web Store.

Looks like it's free for the first couple levels, $15 for the full game.

Super Giant Games said:
This latest version of Bastion is built to run right in your web browser, using Google’s new Native Client technology. This really is the full Bastion experience, featuring our highly acclaimed 1080p artwork, musical score, reactive narration, and play experience, all built to run fast and smooth just like our Xbox 360 and PC versions. And, much like those versions, you can play through the prologue for free. The full game can be unlocked for $14.99.

We’re very excited to have Bastion now available on Chrome since it makes getting into the game easier than ever before, and opens up the experience to tons of new players… including players using computers other than Windows-based PCs.

The Chrome version of Bastion requires:
- Processor: 1.7 GHz Dual Core or Greater
- Memory: 2 GB
- Hard Disk Space: 1.0 GB
- Video Card: 512 MB graphics card (shader model 2)

(Note: Gamepad controllers are not supported in this initial release.)

We’d like to thank the team at Google for collaborating with us on this project, and Roger Hanna, Ryan Williams, and Griffin Chronis for their additional engineering work.
 

Datschge

Member
Suuuuuure, that's why. XD

Well, I don't know what and why Microsoft decided. But he's certainly right that WebGL is a whole can of worms regarding unverifyable runable code. Essentially the whole security concept on PC systems is limited to within the CPU, anything runable outside of it is outside of the scope and can be used to break (into) the system. There are already proofs of concepts of malware runable on modern GPUs.
 

Somnid

Member
Suuuuuure, that's why. XD

No, it serious is. When asked about security the Chrome and Mozilla teams basically said the driver maintains security at which point MS face-palmed. It's a good idea but it's not ready for prime-time.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Well, I don't know what and why Microsoft decided. But he's certainly right that WebGL is a whole can of worms regarding unverifyable runable code. Essentially the whole security concept on PC systems is limited to within the CPU, anything runable outside of it is outside of the scope and can be used to break (into) the system. There are already proofs of concepts of malware runable on modern GPUs.

I don't doubt that, what I doubt is that's why Microsoft decided not to support it.

No, it serious is. When asked about security the Chrome and Mozilla teams basically said the driver maintains security at which point MS face-palmed. It's a good idea but it's not ready for prime-time.

It's a stable, open, royalty-free, standardized 1.0 technology just like every other part of the web platform. Hell it's probably more stable than most of the HTML5 things IE9 and IE10 implemented. It's not a credible reason to pass on it as a whole. IE could give an option to disable it, or click-to-play. It's not a technological reason, but a corporate one.
 

Chavelo

Member
No, it serious is. When asked about security the Chrome and Mozilla teams basically said the driver maintains security at which point MS face-palmed. It's a good idea but it's not ready for prime-time.

Interviewer: EA, what do you think about Steam as a PC platform?

EA: Steam is pretty buggy, full of security holes, and it just plain sucks... unlike Origin, which right now has a 1-day sale by the way, it will never be taken seriously. Just sayin'...

EDIT: LOL, just saw your tag! XD
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
The PNaCl seems like the way to go. Why would you even bother compiling to NaCl when PNaCl will run on more devices.

Well NaCl is here now, is 1.0, and will run everywhere Chrome will. PNaCl is only useful for a hypothetical ARM version of Chrome, which as yet doesn't exist as far as I know.
 

Cartman86

Banned
Sound issue seems to be the good old switching sound devices on Windows issue where processes won't switch unless restarted. First time I've had that issue in a long time.
 

Datschge

Member
Well NaCl is here now, is 1.0, and will run everywhere Chrome will. PNaCl is only useful for a hypothetical ARM version of Chrome, which as yet doesn't exist as far as I know.

PNaCl will also need about half of the compile process to complete on the host machine before the first run which may take some time depending on the applications code size. Possibly a lesser issue even on ARM devices though as the applications themselves likely will be pretty demanding as well.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
YouTube overview video of the new games: youtube.com/watch?v=ZHZVVJQwJLU

Lots of Unity games. Jocchan, you better make a version of Dudebro for the Web Store!
LLShC.gif


PNaCl will also need about half of the compile process to complete on the host machine before the first run which may take some time depending on the applications code size. Possibly a lesser issue even on ARM devices though as the applications themselves likely will be pretty demanding as well.

Sure. I was just commenting on why devs were using NaCl now instead of PNaCl. :p
 
I dunno. One's lightweight and truly cross platform and the other is potentially heavyweight and confined to x86. NaCl is interesting, but I just don't see the point of this lab experiment.

JS aint really "lightweight" and performance are abissal if compared to native code.
 
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