Well I know that this can be a little stupid. Although most osu! functions can be implemented in HTML5 and JS, some cannot (like auto-extracting of .osz files? Kidding). But do you think it's important to do build this up?

I think yes...here are some advantages of this. They are my own opinions...so feel free to point some wrong parts of this post.

osu! currently supports Windows and Mac. Hence...Linux users and Chromebook owners are left out of the party.
But HTML5 is a big platform - it supports every desktop platform there, and everyone can enjoy it. No cross-platform problems...no more custom builds, no more Wine, no more emulation...etc. It means - hassle free playing on every platform.

Next, you don't depend much on stuffs. currently osu! depends on C# a.k.a. Mono or .NET. So osu! can't live without it. JS is a different language. You write it once. Package it to a Chrome package? Your choice. Zip it up and share it for non-Chrome users? No problem. It provides a possible solution for portable osu!.

It's also easy enough to write. And all the needed APIs are provided out-of-the-box. For drawing the notes we can use Canvas. osu!Bancho? HTML POST requests can be good enough. Chrome even provides more APIs needed for communicating with osu! servers.

But some drawbacks too...

Some essential functions aren't ready for HTML5. You can't extract .osz files. It's the same for skin packs. You can't scan directories for new maps or skins. You can't save screenshots quickly nor saving replays directly. It's all because of the limitations of HTML5 as a 'too publicly available' language. (Some of them can be implemented with Chrome's special APIs, yes, some only.

The performance will also struggle. Check out some Canvas and WebGL demos on the web and you will know. You must be using a pretty powerful computer if you have more than 100 fps for Canvas.

Lastly you can't have perfect hardware support. Touchscreen is still okay (as we can use touch events), but tell me if you can use a tablet on a HTML5 game. (Give me the link - I'm interested to know too )

So that's all. I'm setting up this post for asking opinions from all of you

P/s: Anyone here using Chromebooks?

tl;dr. osu! needs more platforms to play on.

Are you planning to make a HTML5 version of osu! yourself, or are you just asking for a port? If this is the latter, see this, point #7.

XPJ38 wrote:

Are you planning to make a HTML5 version of osu! yourself, or are you just asking for a port? If this is the latter, see this, point #7.

As I said that this topic in only for giving opinions and share what you think, I'm not requesting for a port.

Building? Maybe. I'm still learning the language at the moment (and trying to figure out the way of drawing sliders and detecting spin actions on a Canvas...)

I don't want to sound rude or anything but a thread to gather opinions can only be useful if the developer has actually planned something. In this regard, the dev should be the one creating this thread, not the community. Plus, saying things like "osu!bancho should be pretty easy to implement since it's just POST requests" is pretty pointless if you are not the developer and don't know how it really works.

I agree that HTML 5 is a good thing, the future, etc etc.

But for websites, not games.

For me, a web browser is not here to play games. As the name says, it's a "browser", made to "browse" websites, that gives you information, not for playing games.

I don't understand from where comes this tendency to port everything to HTML 5. It's basically about making a copy of something, but with a lot less features, consuming a lot more resources, and a lot less playable.

If you want to make an osu! port, to make it playable on Linux, then go learn a powerful programming language such as C++, to make a real game. Not an almost-playable bad copy of a good game, that nobody would play.

Oh, and please don't talk about Chromebook. They're made to browse internet, not to play games. Stop trying to make everything do something they're not made to do. It's like you're trying to build a house with only paper. It's possible, true. But it's really hard to do (You can try if you want, you'll be surprised), and it's absolutely pointless, because paper is totally not made to build houses.

There are a few attempts at making an js version of osu! in this forum. You can go find some pretty complete implementations. Personally I'm in the "not needed" party still; js is way too limiting.

Soinou wrote:

I agree that HTML 5 is a good thing, the future, etc etc.

But for websites, not games.

For me, a web browser is not here to play games. As the name says, it's a "browser", made to "browse" websites, that gives you information, not for playing games.

I don't understand from where comes this tendency to port everything to HTML 5. It's basically about making a copy of something, but with a lot less features, consuming a lot more resources, and a lot less playable.

If you want to make an osu! port, to make it playable on Linux, then go learn a powerful programming language such as C++, to make a real game. Not an almost-playable bad copy of a good game, that nobody would play.

Oh, and please don't talk about Chromebook. They're made to browse internet, not to play games. Stop trying to make everything do something they're not made to do. It's like you're trying to build a house with only paper. It's possible, true. But it's really hard to do (You can try if you want, you'll be surprised), and it's absolutely pointless, because paper is totally not made to build houses.

Quite true, but there are always something that we will left out. HTML5 Canvas is for games. It's built for it. If you are saying that Chromebooks are for browsing the web then I might disagree with it - there are 3D games right on it, coded in pure HTML5. And the performance is acceptable.

Hence for me it's possible. But you're right, as a programming language can do more, it gives better performance and stability, meaning that you can expect 60fps on very old computers too.

But that will be a great rewrite of osu!. You can try to translate C# to C++... and you will know the feeling

XPJ38 wrote:

I don't want to sound rude or anything but a thread to gather opinions can only be useful if the developer has actually planned something. In this regard, the dev should be the one creating this thread, not the community. Plus, saying things like "osu!bancho should be pretty easy to implement since it's just POST requests" is pretty pointless if you are not the developer and don't know how it really works.

About that, yes, I had this feeling that 'the dev should be the one creating this thread' but I knew that no one will ever do this. (Sorry if you think I misbehaved in this reply)

If you have seen the osu! API by peppy, you can say that it's something like HTTP Requests, which I think it's nearly the same as form submits.