Nostalgic revamp shows power of games built for Web standards.
by Kyle Orland
Microsoft is using a bit of Windows-95-era nostalgia to try to once again convince Web users and developers that gaming inside of a browser can be performance-competitive with native applications. The company today released a browser-based update to Hover, the hovercraft capture-the-flag game that was hidden in the "Fun Stuff" folder included on the original Windows 95 CDs (along with videos for Weezer's "Buddy Holly" and the trailer for the movie Rob Roy).
The new game plays almost exactly like the classic freebie that has maintained something of a cult following among players to this day, with stages that match the original right down to wall and item placement. New features include a selection of four different hovercraft, each with different movement and strength statistics, and an online multiplayer mode that allows up to eight people to compete by passing around a standard URL.
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But more than an effort to revive a largely defunct gaming brand, the new Hover is part of Microsoft's efforts to create "real-world sites that are trying to showcase what the Web can be," according to Roger Capriotti, head of product marketing for Internet Explorer.
"Tablet browsing today has taken a back seat to apps," Capriotti said. "Think of the last time someone came up to you with an iPad or an Android device saying, 'Hey guys, you have to look at this site.' Most likely they're showing you an app instead." This is despite the fact that most of the time spent on PCs and tablets these days is spent in a browser window," Capriotti said. "Hover is a great way to show to the consumer that you can have this great performance in a website that you'd usually think of as an app."
Microsoft isn't alone in this effort. Both Mozilla and Chrome have developed numerous experimentsshowing that their browsers can run capable games without plug-ins like Flash or the Unity Web player. And Microsoft itself has worked with other developers on Web ports of games like Contre Jourand Atari Arcade to show off Internet Explorer's Web gaming chops.
Capriotti sees IE's efforts in this space as more serious and long-lasting than the competition. "I don't think of this as an experiment," he said. "Not to take a shot at the folks at Chrome, but it's more than a proof of concept," he said. "It's a playable game. It's more than a science project, it's much more of a real-world site. One of the ways to get consumers excited about what a browser can be and what a website can be is to show them a site they'll come back to again and again, as opposed to a one-and-done [site]."
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Of course, using open Web standards like HTML5 means that Hover works in any modern browser, not just the Internet Explorer that Microsoft is trying to show off. Still, Capriotti says the experience shines brightest on IE, especially in a tablet environment.
"There's nothing we do specifically [to make it work better in IE], but particularly if you play this on a tablet or a touch device, you'll see how fluid it is when you're using it with touch, and that's kind of the easiest way to distinguish us," he said. "'Touch' is becoming the new 'fast,' so to speak, because people haven't had the fast, fluid, stick-to-your-finger performance on an Android device, even running chrome."
While browser games bring easy cross-platform compatibility and ease-of-access without a download, they have historically come at a performance cost that's apparent on the higher end of the gaming spectrum. That's getting less and less true these days, Capriotti said, with modern browsers that can make full use of hardware acceleration and WebGL standards, a fact that Hover is meant to demonstrate to other developers.
Hover does indeed run quite smoothly on both my gaming desktop rig and on an Windows 8 tablet, but even with a new coat of paint since Windows 95, the polygons and textures being pushed aren't exactly taxing for a decent modern device (unlike, say Epic's browser port of Unreal Engine 3 that runs in pure HTML5 and Javascript). I also found it worrisome that the game only runs in a small section of the browser window, with no full-screen option, though Capriotti says this was a Web design decision and had nothing to do with improving graphics performance by limiting the display area.
"Hover is easily something that could be developed as a Windows application in the Windows store one day," Capriotti said. "The more interesting thing for us today is to showcase what you can do through the browser with modern Web standards. Folks today think that kind of performance, that kind of experience is solely available to apps... at the end of the day, there's an opportunity to have both."
Courtesy: arstechnica
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