Slashdot Mirror


Mozilla Releases HTML5 MMO BrowserQuest

New submitter rasmuswikman sends this quote from an announcement at hacks.mozilla.org: "BrowserQuest is a tribute to classic video-games with a multiplayer twist. You play as a young warrior driven by the thrill of adventure. No princess to save here, just a dangerous world filled with treasures to discover. And it's all done in glorious HTML5 and JavaScript. Even better, it's open-source, so be sure to check out the source code on GitHub!"

81 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Visual slashdotting. by suso · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm waiting to see thousands of new players enter the arena in real time. Should be interesting.

    1. Re:Visual slashdotting. by suso · · Score: 1

      Eh, disappointing turnout.

    2. Re:Visual slashdotting. by GNious · · Score: 1

      Is running VERY slowly with 74 players on the server I ended up at ... and Firefox was complaining about scripts not responding.
      Is pretty cool demo, but need more polishing.

    3. Re:Visual slashdotting. by VanGarrett · · Score: 1

      While I was playing a moment ago, there were 74 players at peak (that I noted), and never fewer than 68-- in the same instance as me. Total online was 1700+.

    4. Re:Visual slashdotting. by EdIII · · Score: 1

      I'm waiting to see thousands of new players enter the arena in real time. Should be interesting.

      I'm just waiting for one player.... me.

    5. Re:Visual slashdotting. by justforgetme · · Score: 1

      It says so on their blog also. not only several servers but multiple world instances per server.
      It makes for a nicer game experience that way (and is technologically easier, not that the alternative would be unachievable)

      --
      -- no sig today
    6. Re:Visual slashdotting. by justforgetme · · Score: 1

      I had no problems at all with aurora. Could it be plugins?

      --
      -- no sig today
    7. Re:Visual slashdotting. by justforgetme · · Score: 2

      This is a "hey, look what we can do!" maneuver. Sort of like: "In your face `chrome experiemnts' and `google IO app'". I don't recall anybody else demonstrating such a big part of HTML5 (graphics,sound,sockets) so successfully.

      Props to Moz. for doing this.

      Also a small point: This is how gaming should look like all along IMO, I don't want to have to install 18TB of data in order to start playing anything. Nor do I want to have to read through manuals and strategy guides before actually doing gameplay. Games should be fun, click on a link wait a few moments for init, start moving_around/hacking/slashing/selecting_optinos/etc and while the game turns you "free time" into "fun time" it can elaborate the game setting, thicken the storyline, expand game mechanics and controll schemes, widen the world etc. My ideal game's first ten minutes are playing it not waiting for a download on an overwhelmed CDN.

      --
      -- no sig today
    8. Re:Visual slashdotting. by buchner.johannes · · Score: 2

      I'm waiting to see someone explain WHY, for the love of Pete why?

      To show that you don't need Flash to build realistic games. And open-source it as an incentive to companies to adopt free technologies -- that's the point of Mozilla -- open the web.

      with ALL the trouble Mozilla has had lately, declining share,

      The share has not been declining, actually growing in absolute numbers. The total number of web users is growing all the time. Mozilla isn't terribly worried if other open web browsers gain more share -- as long as there is a diverse market, it's good for the open web.

      practically zero adoption in the mobile space

      They are working on that -- the recent announcement on adopting H.264 made it clear that they take it seriously.

      , the well documented problems with memory leaks

      Not sure if you refer to the newest version. They have the MemShrink team. Allocating a certain portion of memory for caching is not a leak though.

      , extensions getting killed by version jumps

      Not true any more -- my extensions get automatically extended to the newest version by a bot, unless incompatibilities are found. This point became invalid last year.

      , extensions making the leaks worse

      There is little Mozilla can do about 3rd parties, except to put warnings out -- which they do in their wikis.

      , why are they wasting resources making a fricking browser based MMO?

      Mozilla is not a company run for profit. Different people have different interests and ideas of how to progress web development. If someone takes his time and thinks that's a great project, then good for them.

      The pie is not limited.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    9. Re:Visual slashdotting. by suso · · Score: 1

      True, but I still would have expected at least a 50 character sudden jump given the subject matter (new open source MMO game in browser & 5 second character setup). What happened was it went from 72 to 74 in the 15 minutes I waited after the story hit the front page.

    10. Re:Visual slashdotting. by justforgetme · · Score: 1

      They are operating the levels at a cap of approx 80 playing chars per instance from what I understand so new logins over the threshold would just automatically create new instances. I was on an instance though whose end game arena had some 20 ish /.ers

      --
      -- no sig today
  2. Can anyone connect? by iONiUM · · Score: 2

    I cannot. Just says "Connecting to Server.."

    Is it slashdotted?

    1. Re:Can anyone connect? by suso · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You'll eventually get in. There seem to be different realms because I have two browsers open with different profiles and I see different players in each environment. But they seem to balance the players across the realms pretty well because the player count is close to the same in each one.

    2. Re:Can anyone connect? by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 2

      It needs WebSockets, make sure your browser supports them. I couldn't get it to work from my workplace, I assumed WebSockets don't support proxies or something.

    3. Re:Can anyone connect? by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

      Addendum: Though, probably just slashdotted.

    4. Re:Can anyone connect? by Sez+Zero · · Score: 2

      Their status page is located here: http://browserquest.mozilla.org/status/

      It shows population, distribution of players.

    5. Re:Can anyone connect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This is what I see:

      BrowserQuest Dashboard
      Total players:

      Literally. That's it.

    6. Re:Can anyone connect? by PCM2 · · Score: 2

      I tried it in IE9 and it told me it wouldn't work because my browser didn't support Web Sockets.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    7. Re:Can anyone connect? by ConaxConax · · Score: 1

      Allow Mozilla.org with noscript and it should work, it did for me!

  3. Re:Zelda rip-off by HBI · · Score: 3, Funny

    There's no such thing as a Zelda rip-off. Zelda itself was a rip-off.

    Now get off my lawn.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  4. Nice job on the https link by The_mad_linguist · · Score: 1

    Nice job linking with https to hacks.mozilla.org.

    Firefox immediately starts whining about it.

  5. Re:Glorious Javascript by dccase · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Four of the letters in their names are the same.
    That's about it.

  6. Re:Zelda rip-off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There's no such thing as a Zelda rip-off. Zelda itself was a rip-off.

    Now get off my lawn.

    You clearly have no clue about the history and impact of a game like Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

    Having played it for hours, I can instantly recognize the graphic tiles. At the very least, *those* should have been changed..

    I like it a lot, just it would be nice to see some credit to Myamoto..

    Even so, I strongly advise you to get a life instead of trolling serious discussion on such a nice HTML5 game..

  7. Re:Glorious Javascript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't know how related Javascript is to Java

    No relationship whatsoever beyond an idea to jump on the Java-bandwagon dreamed up by a marketer.

  8. Re:Glorious Javascript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't know how related Javascript is to Java but..

    They are not related at all. The only similarity is that the performance of Javascript is not good either.

  9. Re:Glorious Javascript by OakDragon · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't know how related Javascript is to Java but the last Java game I played was Minecraft and the performance wasn't so glorious.

    Prepare for an assault on two different borders! ;)

  10. Re:Zelda rip-off by khallow · · Score: 1

    There's no such thing as a Zelda rip-off. Zelda itself was a rip-off.

    Now get off my lawn.

    You clearly have no clue about the history and impact of a game like Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

    Eh, I'd say he does. Consider the Ultima series, for example.

    Now get off my lawn.

  11. Re:Glorious Javascript by IAmGarethAdams · · Score: 5, Funny

    They're about as similar as a Car and a Carpet

  12. This was a test by crawly · · Score: 1

    Mozilla's way of massively load-testing their servers. Now damn it let me play!

    --
    GCS/S d-x s+(+): a C++++$ UL+$ P+ L++$ !E--- W++@ N++>$ !o !K-- w++$ !O !M !V PS++>$ PE !Y PGP+ t+ 5++ X++ R tv b
  13. WebSocket by JcMorin · · Score: 1

    In my opinion WebSocket is the real technology we are waiting for building stuff on the internet that make people collaboration or play together. Having the ability of the server to push data to the client without having to get a pooling every x seconds or so is a big plus. This game give us a great example of simple communication using WebSocket, too bad it not yet available on all major browser (IE).

    1. Re:WebSocket by Desler · · Score: 2

      IE 10 PP5 implements the websockets RFC.

    2. Re:WebSocket by lennier · · Score: 1

      In my opinion WebSocket is the real technology we are waiting for building stuff on the internet that make people collaboration or play together. Having the ability of the server to push data to the client without having to get a pooling every x seconds or so is a big plus.

      So basically, we've moved boldly forward from the bad old 1970s client-server days of raw TCP over IP, to the glorious new Web 3.0 days of TCP over HTTP over JavaScript over HTML over HTTP over TCP over IP. That's a.... win?

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  14. Not a bad proof of concept, but... by Millennium · · Score: 1

    Interesting use of Web technologies. But as a practical matter, isn't storing user progress data on the client side a really bad idea from an anti-cheating standpoint? How long until someone releases an editor?

    1. Re:Not a bad proof of concept, but... by DragonWriter · · Score: 1

      Interesting use of Web technologies. But as a practical matter, isn't storing user progress data on the client side a really bad idea from an anti-cheating standpoint?

      Not necessarily.

      Storing it on the client and sending it back from the client to the server and having the server trust the client is a bad idea from that standpoint, but just storing it on the client isn't, as long as it is also stored on the server and the server doesn't get it from the client. The description isn't clear on the exact role of the client-side store in this regard: if its kept on the client just so the client never has to round-trip to the server to get it, only getting push updates as needed, there's no problem, its just a performance optimization.

    2. Re:Not a bad proof of concept, but... by nschubach · · Score: 1

      There are various suits you can get off monsters... one of them I got was a temporary fox suit that made you extra dodgy I think.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    3. Re:Not a bad proof of concept, but... by nschubach · · Score: 1

      A simple hurdle for those wanting to hack... the client could send the server a hash of the local data, and compare it to the server hash to detect "cheating." Of course, you'd have to send the hole binary blob up to the server to do it so the client couldn't just fake the hash. On second thought, it sounds like a PITA. Just let them hack saves for a tech demo.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    4. Re:Not a bad proof of concept, but... by thereitis · · Score: 1
      The nyan was an NPC. You can find this in the world_server.json:

      "nyan","28357"

      Also:

      "rick","33544"

      Not sure what the number means yet, but I'm going to find out!

    5. Re:Not a bad proof of concept, but... by Zuhiat · · Score: 1

      That was probably me. You can edit your armor in the local storage to any sprite you want. It's fun to run around as the boss in the boss chamber.

  15. Cute, but a demo by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

    I beat the final boss and got 17 out 20 achievements in about 15 minutes. I wasn't going to stick around to take 5000 damage or find the two hidden achievements.

    1. Re:Cute, but a demo by timothyb89 · · Score: 1

      They only took about 10 minutes for me to find, and both are (spoiler-ish) fairly blatant meme references like many of the other things in the game. I'd love to see this developed more as it seems to run pretty well and could have some real potential. I've half-assed some JS RPGs myself and its always nice to see it being done "right" and with a playable final product.

    2. Re:Cute, but a demo by thereitis · · Score: 2

      Check out the source code. Sounds like you need to find a "Rick" NPC character to talk to: if(npc.kind === Types.Entities.RICK) {
      this.tryUnlockingAchievement("RICKROLLD");
      }

  16. Re:Mozilla shouldnt waste resources by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about Mozilla focus their resources on projects more to their core and worthwhile.

    Why bother focusing on pointless browsers and mail clients when cancer is still uncured, killing thousands? Seems awfully selfish and inconsiderate to piss away ones time with these pointless endeavors when we still have AIDS, cancer, and other diseases. Who knows? Perhaps we could have had a cure for one or more of these if open-source efforts had been directed toward medical research.

    Of course this would require you to actually think about someone other than yourselves.

  17. Re:Glorious Javascript by kungfugleek · · Score: 1

    Especially if the carpet is cut out to look kind of like a car.

  18. the famous last words... by sick_soul · · Score: 1

    When you start to play, your browser opens up a WebSocket connection to one of several load-balanced game servers.

    I guess they are all VIC-20s then, given how fast they got slashdotted.

    1. Re:the famous last words... by Fallingcow · · Score: 1

      They're running NodeJS.

      NodeJS: letting everyone write their own servers in Javascript like that's a good idea since whenever the hell it came out.

  19. Mystery Achievement by bobaferret · · Score: 1

    Does any one know what the 'Mystery Achievement' is? I've got 19/20...

    1. Re:Mystery Achievement by bobaferret · · Score: 1

      don't answer that....

  20. Re:Glorious Javascript by Qzukk · · Score: 1

    And then sold to you in that shape by a salesman who is certain it's the right shape for your square room.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  21. isn't stuff like this by sdnoob · · Score: 2

    supposed to be posted early in the morning, instead of at the end of the work day?

  22. Re:Mozilla shouldnt waste resources by Culture20 · · Score: 1

    How about Mozilla focus their resources on projects more to their core and worthwhile.

    Mozilla is kind of like Congress. It's nice to know they're spending time specifying a National Hamster Breed or color for the Senate carpet instead of spending time screwing up important stuff. When Firefox and Thunderbird got Good Enough (TM), programmers had to justify their jobs, so tons of terrible features got shoved down our throats with no option to disable some of them. Now Firefox is bloated like Mozilla (Seamonkey) was.

  23. Re:Glorious Javascript by Nadaka · · Score: 3, Funny

    Especially when it is carpet that uses dynamic variants and prototyping instead of strongly typed references and class based inheritance... am I doing this analogy thing right?

  24. Re:Glorious Javascript by IAmGarethAdams · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ok then, they're about as similar as a Hamster and a Ham

  25. Built on bleeding edge technology by loufoque · · Score: 4, Funny

    Threads, networking, sound, graphics...
    What next?

    Maybe someday, web developers will be on par with applications developers from the 70s!

    1. Re:Built on bleeding edge technology by Shadowhawk · · Score: 2

      I know I'm feeding the troll here, but what application developers has access to threads (or sound or graphics even) in the 70s? First reference to threads I can find is SunOS 4.x, which came out in 82. The 80s is also when some sounds and graphics became available on many computers (Commodore Vic-20, Atari 2600, IBM PC, Apple II, etc). There might have been specialty computers that had those features, but nothing available for the average application developer in the 70s.

      --
      My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
    2. Re:Built on bleeding edge technology by loufoque · · Score: 1

      UNIX had multitasking since the 60s or 70s.
      Granted, that's not exactly threads, but the difference is sufficiently small for it to matter.

      My original statement didn't mean to be accurate anyway.

    3. Re:Built on bleeding edge technology by dzfoo · · Score: 1

      You know that application developer does not necessarily mean "PC" or "microcomputer" developer, right?

      --
      Carol vs. Ghost
      ...Can you save Christmas?
    4. Re:Built on bleeding edge technology by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      All threads are essentially are lightweight processes (some times they are even called LWPs). What a thread exactly is depends upon the implementation, sometimes it is shared memory, some times it is not, etc. Basically most operating systems before the 70's implemented processes that very much looked like what we'd call threads today.

    5. Re:Built on bleeding edge technology by Daniel+Klugh · · Score: 1

      Not sure about the VIC-20 but the Atari VCS and HCS (Home Computer System) and Apple ][ came out in the 70s. ProLogic's "Flight Simulator" for the Atari HCS is a good example of a game that utilises multiple threads of execution to simulate flying a airplane via polygonal graphics. This is in contrast to most games that have a main thread and a background thread ran by the vertical blank interrupt.
      (and perhaps a third ran by the horizontal blank interrupt)

      And don't forget Texas Instruments' TI-99/4 (and 99/4A), which also came out in the 70s. And, for that matter, the Intellivision; whose OS would move sprites for you (i.e. the game programme) via a background OS thread.

      All these 70s systems had graphics and sounds effects.

      --
      Daniel Klugh
  26. Re:Glorious Javascript by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 2

    They both taste good when fried and chopped up in an omelet ?

    --
    ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
  27. Re:Zelda rip-off by chispito · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but you are not legally (or, some would say, morally) obligated to cite inspiration.

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  28. Does it have... by jonadab · · Score: 2

    Does it have a cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor? I'm not interested if it doesn't have a cheap plastic imitation Amulet.

    --
    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    1. Re:Does it have... by alexo · · Score: 1

      Does it have a cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor? I'm not interested if it doesn't have a cheap plastic imitation Amulet.

      Greetings to a fellow CoCo-nut, you just killed my productivity for today.

    2. Re:Does it have... by jonadab · · Score: 1

      I have no idea what a CoCo-nut is.

      The cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor is found on the fake bones pile on the "Rogue level" in NetHack, and sometimes also in real bones piles (when the former player died with either a cheap plastic amulet or the real AoY in his possession). The cheap plastic amulet is also what you get if you try to wish for the Amulet of Yendor. When not formally identified, it appears as "The Amulet of Yendor". Unlike the real Amulet, however, the cheap plastic one can be put into containers. It does not do anything useful when worn, carried, or invoked, so most players immediately stow it in their Bag of Holding until they can get it back to a stash. It makes excellent polyfodder if your armor-slot strategy allows you to take advantage of amulets of life saving, but if you are wearing GDSM and relying on your amulet slot for reflection (in order to keep your shield hand free for #twoweapon and/or to avoid getting things welded to both hands by a curse) the cheap plastic amulet is effectively worthless. The latter situation is particularly likely for chaotic characters (who cannot easily wish for slotless magic resistance) and neutrals who like to do early sacrificing for an artifact weapon. Lawfuls, who can #dip for Excalibur and thus do not need to sacrifice until much later in the game, can usually get slotless MR from the castle wand, provided they haven't found a bones pile full of junk artifacts. Although, I think there are some variants where only knights can #dip for Excalibur, which might put more lawful characters into the same position as neutrals.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  29. No, it isn't (digital signatures FTW) by F69631 · · Score: 1

    It's possible to use the client for data storage but sign and/or encrypt all the data so that you know the client hasn't modified it.

    This approach has actually been gaining momentum lately. For example, everyone knows that cookies shouldn't be used for storing important data (such as whether the client has logged in to a web service and what his user id is) so the traditional method is to store session data on the server and just store the session id in the cookie. However, play! (a framework that finally makes java web development tolerable) aims for more stateless architecture and stores all the session data on the client and just uses digital signature to make sure that the data client sends to server hasn't been tampered with.

  30. Re:Zelda rip-off by khallow · · Score: 1

    The previous AC was talking about the third Zelda in the series.

  31. NoScript by DrYak · · Score: 1

    Noscript for Firefox will provide you the necessary protection against any unwanted scripting (be it canvas, webgl, or whatever) from any non-white-listed website.
    Alternatively, AdBlock will block interactive content from blacklisted providers (most ad servers).

    With both, you get a nice clean Web 1.0. And activate the fun Javascript+DOM+CSS+HTML5+WebGL+Audio+LocalStore+... only for the sites you trust

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  32. Re:Zelda rip-off by Requiem18th · · Score: 1

    I know the ZLTTP tiles to heart and I can absolutely say these aren't the original tiles. I absolutely agree with the "inspiration" part, the "look&feel" is similar, but the tiles are original artwork.

    --
    But... the future refused to change.
  33. Won in about 30 minutes by n1ywb · · Score: 1

    Well that was kind of fun for about 30 minutes, by then I'd gotten the Ultimate Sword and the Golden Armor and I demolished the Skeleton King and then there wasn't much point to keep playing.

    --
    -73, de n1ywb
    www.n1ywb.com
    1. Re:Won in about 30 minutes by dewatf · · Score: 1

      I spent an hour exploring it all and completing all the quests. For the get 5000 damage I just stood next to a skeleton and went and had lunch. There were a few players doing that which looked quite funny.

      Once you know where everything is you can sneak past the monsters in your T-shirt and get to an unguarded drop where you can get everything you need kill the Skeleton King in a couple of minutes. It is just a simple demonstration of the technology. As it is open source someone might make a dungeon with good gameplay out of it.

  34. Re:Ironic. by Drinking+Bleach · · Score: 1

    BrowserQuest 2: The Search for More Money

  35. Re:Zelda rip-off by tepples · · Score: 2

    you are not legally (or, some would say, morally) obligated to cite inspiration.

    There are in fact laws requiring citation of sources. On the U.S. copyright registration form, for example, the author has to declare any "Material excluded from this claim (Material previously registered, previously published, or not owned by this claimant)". Trademark law likewise has a concept of "reverse passing off". Foreign trade law has country of origin labeling requirements.

  36. IE 10 requires Windows 7 by tepples · · Score: 2

    But then most IE users who bought their PC before the fourth quarter of 2009 are left out because IE 10 requires Windows 7. So one either has to upgrade to Windows 7 or switch to Firefox or Chrome. The latter is cheaper, but which happens more often?

    1. Re:IE 10 requires Windows 7 by Wattos · · Score: 1

      I thought the only use for IE is to download chrome or firefox?

    2. Re:IE 10 requires Windows 7 by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      ftp.exe

    3. Re:IE 10 requires Windows 7 by tepples · · Score: 1

      Then the only use for IE is to discover the FTP URL of Chrome or Firefox.

  37. Re:Glorious Javascript by dccase · · Score: 1

    A car can have a carpet. They are less related than that.

  38. Re:Played it just before /. entry by Mabhatter · · Score: 1

    Worked well on my iPad. I think there might be some keyboard commands I can't get to? Enough to play the game pretty well.

  39. Re:Zelda rip-off by justforgetme · · Score: 1

    The `original zelda` is an NES game that runs @ 256x224/30 the sprites are 16^2 and some times even smaller. Everything looks like zelda at this resolution. Anyway, this isn't a game as much as proof of concept that a game like this can exist.

    for reference:
    Zelda screenshot
    NES video capabilities

    --
    -- no sig today
  40. Re:Glorious Javascript by hendrikboom · · Score: 1

    Java's relation to Javascript is just the first four letters of the name.

  41. Re:Glorious Javascript by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 1

    OT: The register page in your sig is broken:

    Fatal error: Class 'database' not found in /home/rflowers/landofmyriad.com/lib/class.formelement.php on line 3

  42. Yes it's a big win by JcMorin · · Score: 1

    First WebSocket is not raw socket. It's TCP over IP (packet ordering and delivered garanties). The right now, there is no freaking way the server PUSH data to the client. For instance but a very very simple chat room. Everyone in the page type stuff and everyone see it. Well if you don't use WebSocket you need to make sure every single client refresh the page every x seconds. - There will be a lag - There will be huge waiste of bandwith and server processing for nothing. With WebSocket, when someone send a message, you just push it back to the all clients on the page. You can just send a notification that will trigger the browser make jQuery http request to refresh the page, at least you have a way get notification...