domasx2/banditracer-client — comment on commit 9f042f3d863e6d249c8f99e69fedab42346a0ac7
File:  line 0
By domasx2:

The first thing about this engine is that (at least for now) I'm not
planning for any mass appeal. I just want to make Bandit Racer better
organized, and have a framework for spitting out a bunch of quick
prototypes for any next games I make

will your game engine be focused on box2d?

I wouldn't say it's 'focused' on box2d, but that it uses box2d for physics
and/or collision detection. I thought about making it optional, but don't
want to spend time on something that does not serve an immediate goal

>
> top-down only (i don't think so, but maybe)? any kind of games you
> definitely want to support / not
> support?

I imagine side scrollers, platformers and such could also take full
advantage of everything I have planned. Currently I'm not putting effort
into explicitly supporting anything other than Bandit Racer :)

did you look at craftyjs and the likes?
>
Yeah, and impactjs and some others. Though my main motivation is not doing
it better, but doing it myself

>
> an abstraction, maybe just a common pattern, to do multiplayer games
> (serialization, syncing) would be very interesting. frankly it's the part
> that interests me most about banditracer: the multiplayer :) there's
> probably just a handful of games around that do that in JS yet.
>

It's just a lot of work that I can't seem to get around to doing :)
ironically, I have the serialization and sync part worked out reasonably
well. the biggest stumbling block for me is the user interface for lobbies
and such, just a lot of work. I always end up wanting to spend my limited
free time on polishing single player more.

> i don't like implementing stuff which doesn't work reasonably
> cross-browser. i haven't checked lately, but webaudio is chrome only?
>
>
well, it's a proposal:
https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/audio/raw-file/tip/webaudio/specification.html
It will happen, but API will evolve. Then again, nothing is finalized yet
in html5, i think..
Firefox has a largely similar thing: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API

> maybe you've seen that i added fullscreen support in a branch. this, i
> think, is very interesting for banditracer since it would do away with the
> multiple-resolution links you have. you could just define a maximum
> resolution and if the user checks the `fullscreen` checkbox, switch to that
> maximum or the screen resolution (whatever is smaller).
>
I mean to update to latest gamejs soon

>
> another thing are "Workers" (another branch), which could potentially be
> pretty awesome for bandtiracer but would require a lot of refactoring.
> workers are available on the server too, with the same semantics, and it
> would make it possible to utilize multiple cores. something i needed for
> that pirateking game i showed in freegamer.
>
Thats why I want to see the source :P
Generally though, no shared resources is a deal breaker for me. Serializing
physics engine state sounds like too much work and might even make things
slower. Might be useful for networking, I'm not sure.

>
> looking forward to re-enabled multiplayer :)

You are free to contribute towards it :P

> oh, and i have one friend who regulrarly plays banditracer hehe how
> popular is it, btw? i like the
> new website design, much cleaner & professional looking.
>
Thanks! Should have done a proper website ages ago :)
Bandit Racer is pretty much on every html5 game portal there is. Currently
I have about 500 hits a day, vast majority of them from chrome marketplace.
I exchanged a few emails with Kongregate, but they are still skeptical
towards html5 :( Will try again once I have proper sound. The car physics
example also enjoys some popularity, had a huge traffic burst from
stumbleupon recently.
Recently had an Australian company inquire about making a commercial
multiplayer offspin for with hobowars.com, but it didn't work out - we
figured out that with a single server in a different continent is just too
laggy, and multiple servers in different locations is too much trouble.
Also, there is some arab guy that writes every now and then offering to buy
the source, and can't seem to get his head around the idea that he doesn't
have to :)

All in all, I just wish I had more time to work on the game :)

How's things going for you? Gonna work more on Pirate King? Any other cool
projects?

--
Domas