Google NaCL - food for thought

[kikito]

I've just finished reading this article - http://www.infoworld.com/d/application- ... ries-515-0

It's about a google technology that allows you to run executables from the browser, but at the same time they are "platform independent" (they work in linux and vista, apparently you need one x86 and one x64 executables if you want to support both architectures).

I'm just leaving these links here in case someone is thinking about making a LÖVE browser plugin (I'm not) and has overlooked them.

[bartbes]

I looked at it once, and thelinx has tried bugging me about it, but it seemed like a hassle, and afaik it's not really near production-ready either.

[amccampos]

...it's not really near production-ready either.

Today, it's already production-ready and it seems quite amazing.
It would be really nice to "publish" a Löve game into a browser with (almost) the same code we produce to desktop.
The engine demo page could run demos directly from the browser.

I saw they already port some Löve libs (SDL, FreeType, libogg,...).
Perhaps, it would not be difficulty to port the missing ones.

[solar_plexus]

Exactly, I just finished Bastion demo for native client and the performance is just stunning. There were no crashes, and no glitches at all. Game didn't brake and Chrome didn't either. I even had an impression that it ran smoother than the standard version. Maybe they did some optimisations?
If I could run Love in chrome with NaCl then I would never touch another 2d framework again.

[bartbes]

Sadly, there would be quite some work for us to port it over, most importantly, a new graphics backend. (Which, to be fair, is one we need for a lot of mobile devices too.)

[slime]

An OpenGL ES 2.0 backend would be nice, but who will do it?

[bartbes]

Let me think..

Slowly raises his hand to point at anjo.

Perhaps someone will do this?

[IQuit]

How about porting to javascript with emscripten?

[slime]

Why?

[IQuit]

I mean porting LÖVE engine to run on a browser. Games remain written in Lua.