Thoughts of a random loser

[hallsofvallhalla]

I HAVE been working on the indie-resource videos, matter of fact that's all I have been doing. Not much time for anything else, but I have also trying to decide my future.

My "game career" has really been spearheading to an ultimate decision. There are so many types of game design and languages and even engines that one is crazy to not find one and stick with it. If you don't learn one you will never accomplish anything. I am a whore of indie developing. Been there done that but I am only looking for the quick payoff then I get the heck out. My indie soul is much like my traveling one. Constantly moving and needing new scenery. It took having a family to finally beat my restless traveling spirit. I know the day has been coming that I need to settle down and find the right language/engine to make my family. I initially was going to re-open Forsaken Sanctum the TMMOKIT version or even go with big world but thanks to Tony R. a new path has opened my eyes.
I have been working with web languages and making web games and doing pretty good. I have a awesome community built around it here. Maybe my calling is in web games. God knows the future is heading there. The only real problem is I want 3d. I do pretty good with that too. At least I think so. Well there are several solutions for that.

O3d(googles 3d api) - It is still in its early stages but looking pretty promising. I do not like the idea of a plug in but may be stuck with that unless I find a good WebGL engine.

T3D - The web deployment makes making a sweet 3d game through the browser very simple. Especially since I already know my way around Torque. Sure I hate Garage Games but I just want to make Games!

Unity - I like unity but I would have to really learn it first and it is missing some important shaders. I do not like the art pipeline either.

HTML 5 and WebGL - Awesome stuff here but waiting for browser to catch up, but some amazing things being done with HTML5.

Leaning towards learning HTML5 and WebGL so I can further my tutorials and knowledge or getting T3D to put out some great 3d browser games. Regardless I think I am going to give up on my 3d mmo dream for a while and stick with what I know best

[Jackolantern]

Just like how OpenGL is used in many great engines, once WebGL is widely available, good engines will spring up to use it. As it is now, I would not bother learning it. Just like how a coder does not learn OpenGL if they want to make games; they learn OpenGL if they want to make rendering engines. I am sure that WebGL is going to be incredibly low-level just like OpenGL is, where displaying a triangle on the screen will take upwards of 100 lines of code.

[hallsofvallhalla]

good point. I still want to learn the basics for when these engines do get more complete I will have a more understanding of them. There are already a few being released. Copperlicht is one of them.

[Jackolantern]

Actually, after doing more looking around, I am not sure how these are going to work specifically, since WebGL is actually a Javascript connection layer between the browser and OpenGL 2.0. Maybe learning OGL 2.0 is the way to go if you did want to work with the low-level WebGL.

[hallsofvallhalla]

yeah I am still reading into it also. Very fascinating stuff!

[Jackolantern]

WebGL will definitely be the wave of the future for 3D browser-based games. There are other available choices right now, but they all require plugins. And by requiring users to download a plugin that they probably don't have (such as Torque or Unity), you are defeating the purpose of browser-based games (no download required). Many potential users are playing browser-based games on computers that they don't have file system access on, such as public and school computers.

[jpoisson]

hey halls, why not get together with a few other indie developers and create a browser game network framework hub.

So basically we create a framework that allows developers to create their games and add plug-ins. they host their games on their net work. Or we can go for a word press approach and host their games but allow all users to have access to all games through the same user name.

It is just a thought that I have been pondering for a while to do. I have been slowly trying to dev it piece by piece but not always the most successful at times.

[Jackolantern]

There are a lot of general purpose web frameworks out there already, but I don't know of any tailored to web game development. That could end up being quite useful If a code framework is what you mean when you say "web framework" that is.

[jpoisson]

I know there is many out there. but the ones devoted for games are quite primitive and not good. Not flexible and not well supported. Now imagine one built by gamers/developers and it would already have the I-R forums for support and testing. anyone feel up to a project like this?

[Sakar]

I'd probably help out if you guys started a project like that. I don't know too much PHP and MySQL, but I could help with designing and testing.