The Coming Revolution in Web Gaming

Every so often I run across a series of sites, news items, and other things that lead me to some conclusions about the web. I've had similar feelings about RSS before it was popular, blogging, podcasting, and other things. The feeling I'm getting now is about web games. Not just flash -- that technology is trucking right along. I mean given ultra-fast javascript in modern browsers with canvas and SVG support - we may finally get to see web-based games really take off. Not just boring lists of tabular information, and crappy graphics, but polished games with animation, sound, and interaction that competes with the likes of Flash, Silverlight, and other plugins.

There are several things holding this back a bit, however. Such things as lack of a good sound/music player built into the browser , spotty support for SVG and canvas in IE, and lack of a unified way to display downloadable fonts.

However I do see web gaming approaching someday soon a tipping point where it can compete with Flash type games -- all it needs are some great tools, great libraries, and better browser support.

Mogulus - personal videocasting

Every so often I run across something so amazing I just have to blog about it as soon as I find it. You've probably not heard about Mogulus, but after about 10 minutes of poking around you'll be as amazed as I. You are given the tools to create a full fledged television station. Complete with live video, video on demand, playlists, prerecorded clips, clips from youtube, podcasts, and more! I dont know how or why these folks are doing this, but its truly an amazing site. If you have even a passing interest in having your own video channel, then you have to check out Mogulus.

Blatant plea for a Tilestack invite...

Yes, using your blog to ask for an invite for a new website is cheap and shallow. However, I have big plans for a tool like this - especially to see how far I can push the code for making games. Anyway - there are any Tilestack folks out there reading this, can I get an invite? triptych at gmail dot com :)

Heh, I already have several people who read my earlier post emailing me for invites as well. I guess there's a pent up desire for Hypercard like functionality...

Run! - frustratingly fun flash game

From tigsource and others comes news of a simple, yet frustratingly fun flash game called Run! The point is to get across the screen without dying. A pretty difficult task but strangely fun.

Hypercard for the next generation - Tilestack

If you are old enough to remember Hypercard, then you're heart will flutter when you visit this site. They are serious about trying to take the simplicity of Hypercard and bring it to the Web 2.0/3.0 world. It looks like you can create stacks to live on a web page, blog, apple desktop, and probably other places as well. Check out Tilestack.

First Screenshots of AOSphere - a 3d web-based episodic game

Identifiction is a new company creating a new kind of episodic series which might be a game, might be a 3d web based tv series, or some kind of machinema. Whatever it is it looks really cool. Check out the website for screenshots -- that's Flash folks. AFAIK.

Why You Should Use YUI3 Even If You Don't Use YUI

I've been poking around YUI a bit this weekend and I discovered a basic feature of the new codebase that should make just about anyone who writes JS smile. YUI has dynamic loading of js files built-in, and you can use this to load "any" js file - even your own code or other javascript library code without having to write a bunch of lines to your header.

For example, in the HEAD of your document:

[script src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.0.0pr1/build/yui/yui-min.js" type="text/javascript"][/script]
[script]

YUI({
     modules:{
          yourlib: {
               fullpath: "http://www.yoursite.com/yourlib.js"
          },
          anotherlib:{
               fullpath: "http://www.anothersite.com/anotherlib.js"
          }
     }
}).use("yourlib","anotherlib",function(Y){
     // insert  your specific code here

}
);
[/script]

While this is most useful when coupled with YUI since you wouldn't need to specify all the paths, you can see how you could pull in js from all over and couple it in a nice anonymous function and be able to do cool things.

Anyway - having this functionality available to you even if you dont use YUI for anything else (a waste I must say) is very convenient!

Working on a new website

I'm working on a new personal website - basically for learning to use Wordpress as well as other technologies. It's going to be really really cool. I hope!

Growing on me: Evernote

It takes a lot to get me to use an application more than one time. Sure, I give just about anything a single try -- perhaps to see if it has some interesting feature, or solves a useful problem. However I keep coming back to Evernote. It has the ability to scan images you capture for searchable text, as well has a pretty useful tagging feature for any random information you might want to keep track of. It also syncs online which is very handy as well.

So, if you keep notes of any length and are looking for something better, try Evernote.

If only they had a QuickSilver plugin!

Browser Based MMO's

I ran across this link looking at archives from M3MNOCH. I have a fondness for web based MMO / RPGs and this site seems to have a good amount of them. Check it out.

Unity based MMO from BigBug Studios

This screenshot looks fantastic! Unity3d is going to bring new life into the world of MMO's and casual games. Imagine this running in your browser. Drool!

From BigBugStudio.

YUI 3 -- more chaining, less dots

When I wrote about YUI vs jQuery a while back I talked about foo.bar.baz.bat() as one of the issues I had with YUI. It appears that for their next release they have looked closely at other libraries like jQuery and pulled in that type of sparse coding style. I believe this marks the turning point for YUI and it's adoption rate will probably increase as a result.

If you haven't tried YUI yet, or are a big jQuery or mootools fan, give the 3.x docs a gander.