I don't think it's a cultural issue. The difference is you only have to download a game once from the store compared to downloading 10GB+ every time you load the webpage.
Re:Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM
by waboremo on Wednesday October 26, 2022 @08:59PM
(#33351678)
Quite a lot of cache storage can be used and can be expanded on as well if there was a serious demand for it. Browser games don't technically have to redownload the entire game every load. The reason I claimed it as "cultural" is because of how we view browsers and interactive media within them. We are totally fine with opening a games store app, clicking download, and waiting and playing. The same is technically possible within the browser, but people are far less likely to wait for it.
It's like sound. People are OK with video games with clicky sounds going through menus with background music playing, but find it very obnoxious if a website does the same. Not a technical problem, but one of culture and how we view the mediums.
No it can't, for security reasons.
Browser games have no idea how long their data is around and how big the cache actually is.
Re:Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM
by flohofwoe on Thursday October 27, 2022 @07:55AM
(#33356229)
You need to design a web game around the download bandwidth, and only stream data right when it's needed instead of preloading everything upfront. Porting existing games with a different streaming model usually doesn't make much sense. And once you build a web game from the ground up anyway, there's little reason to use one of the humongous game engines like Unity or Unreal which have been designed for a very different data streaming approach.
Well, you don't need to download the whole world data-file to play the game. All you need is to stream whatever you can possibly interact in the next couple seconds.
Re:Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM
by londons_explore on Thursday October 27, 2022 @06:27AM
(#33355573)
You can also load low-res textures and models for users who just showed up, and then, as they have been playing for hours/days, upgrade to better higher quality models.
Then there's examples like Townscraper (https://oskarstalberg.com/Townscaper/) which are graphically nice and already playable on the browser. There are also many games on itch.io of varying quality, but IMO Townscraper is the nicest.
The problem of storage is also quite important, it's hard to push a high quality game on the browser when a lot of people won't stick around for the 10GB+ download needed, not like they would if they're downloading from the Xbox store or something like that. So it's a bit of a cultural issue as well on that front.