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!"

Comments

Visual slashdotting.

[suso]

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

Re:Visual slashdotting.

[justforgetme]

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.

Re:Visual slashdotting.

[buchner.johannes]

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.

Can anyone connect?

[iONiUM]

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

Is it slashdotted?

Re:Can anyone connect?

[suso]

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.

Re:Can anyone connect?

[The MAZZTer]

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.

Re:Can anyone connect?

[Sez Zero]

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

It shows population, distribution of players.

Re:Can anyone connect?

[PCM2]

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

Re:Zelda rip-off

[HBI]

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

Now get off my lawn.

Re:Glorious Javascript

[dccase]

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

Re:Glorious Javascript

[OakDragon]

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! ;)

Re:Glorious Javascript

[IAmGarethAdams]

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

Re:Mozilla shouldnt waste resources

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:WebSocket

[Desler]

IE 10 PP5 implements the websockets RFC.

isn't stuff like this

[sdnoob]

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

Re:Glorious Javascript

[Nadaka]

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?

Re:Glorious Javascript

[IAmGarethAdams]

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

Built on bleeding edge technology

[loufoque]

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

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

Re:Built on bleeding edge technology

[Shadowhawk]

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.

Re:Glorious Javascript

[lister king of smeg]

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

Does it have...

[jonadab]

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.

Re:Zelda rip-off

[tepples]

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.

IE 10 requires Windows 7

[tepples]

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?

Re:Cute, but a demo

[thereitis]

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");
}