App.JS

0 favourites
  • I've discovered this thing called App.JS. It embeds Chromium inside a desktop shell via Chromium Embed Framework (CEF) and uses Node.JS . In short it's a 'make desktop apps with html5, css, js' framework. So in theory it could be faster than Awesomium since CEF is more lightweight. It supports webgl so i had to try to run C2 in it. I succeeded. More or less. It does indeed support webgl, and the particles example ran fine. But it caps at 30fps here on my machine. A good thing is that it starts much much faster than awesomium but uses more disk space. And uses less RAM. It could, be a replacement for Awesomium but further investigations are needed. The fact that it runs at half fps than awesomium intrigues me though. I had to remove this lines from c2runtime.js for it to run with webgl:

    /*if (tempgl.getSupportedExtensions().toString() === "OES_texture_float,OES_standard_derivatives,WEBKIT_WEBGL_lose_context")

                             {

                                ??console.log('webgl not supported');

                                ??use_webgl = false;

                             }*/

    So maybe there's no full suport for webgl yet...

    Anyway here's the files if anyone wants to hack it too: Download

  • Ashley : Would this be usable for C2 ?

  • For me thing is the best option for use with C2

  • I checked out App.JS and it failed to run the Rain Demo, just a blank screen. Also, the lines of code you removed from c2runtime.js are to detect the Swiftshader software renderer for WebGL, so it would probably be extremely slow if you allow that.

  • I recently found node-webkit which appears to be better than AppJS. Worth a check. Supports WebGL , Audio (not tested) and everything and starts fast. Been using it myfelf to make desktop apps using web techs. It runs on top of NodeJS so you have full user file system access etc.

    *Mad Idea On*

    In the future C2 could be entirelly rewritten in HTML5/CSS3/JS an made to run on all desktops with node-webkit ^_^

    *Mad Idea Off*

  • I go to check thank you (for me awesomium not work)

    edit:Search by the web "google easy" I found this little information here

    Appear is opensource and by Intel and appear to support everything

  • ....?Hmmm... Impressive. After exporting to HTML5 I was able to run the Ghost Shooter ('Rain demo' version) without any issues! Easy as pie! Fullscreen performance was good and steady at 29FPS. Audio works great also.

    In contrast after exporting I am unable to get Awesomium with the same demo to run[ I understand it is still experimental].

    Since we don't have the scirra.com/labs/sbperf project I'm curious to see the results. :)

  • Ashley

    Hello there Sir,

    I didn't want to be much of a bother but I was wondering by chance had you yet seen the latest posts in this topic regarding github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit

    I'm a github frequenter so I'm quite familiar with open source projects/abandonware. After looking into a bit I saw that node-webkit is just under a year old. That's pretty young and tend to wait till projects mature a bit more before jumping on but there are a few things I like better about this than awesomium:

    First: I've had better success on my systems with this than for awesomium. For a year old project I feel it's considerably stable. This of course is subject to it actually working well on all systems.

    Second: It's open source. If for some reason the project dies there is still a working codebase that can be adapted/update. I understand if this situation arose it would be a lot of additional overhead but I personally always take it as a pro with my projects. Mostly ;) .

    Third: This should have been first as it's the point I find most important. It seems the node-webkit team updates from the Chromium upstream repos MUCH more frequently then the awesomium team. I feel if you continue with awesomium you will be constantly fighting bugs that you had previously solved because they are much slower to update Chromium.

    Lastly: they already have Mac/Linux support. Which is a huge plus for me.

    Ashley, if you guys don't support this I can still use it to package and sell a game since I have personal license, correct? I understand it would be unsupported if any integration issues arose though.

    Thank you and keep up the great work!

    P.S. The node.js integration seems neat too.

  • That Sound's good for me too - I vote for implement this!

    Please also check this out: phpjs.hertzen.com

    KMag

  • Yeah , well from what i can see there's no reason to keep using Awesomium instead of this. I could be wrong but i think node-webkit can replace awesomium entirelly. I can point some advantages:

    • FOSS (Free Open Source)
    • Blazing fast to start
    • Lightweight
    • Much faster updates / synch with latest webkit tech
    • No need to deal with C++ , very easy to setup etc.
    • Big plus: Full power of node.JS so you have full local disk access , so you can make editors with it, open and save file dialogs etc. And on top of that you can access native functions via C++ plugins.

    I can say because i'm already using it.

    And so on. I think it's safe to at least try it and compare it side by side with Awesomium :)

  • I can say because i'm already using it.

    kiyoshi

    Have you succesfully exported construct 2 project to .exe with node-webkit?

    Can you provide more info on the proccess?

  • Haven't tried yet. I meant that i was using it for apps. I don't know exactly what would be needed for making it work with C2.

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads
  • Cool, I'll just add node-webkit to the never ending list of new technologies I'd like to learn and utilize!

    But it really looks promising!

  • I've exported to node-webit. All I did was export to HTML5 then follow the node-webkit documentation from there to get it running. Note this method I not supported and will be missing features unless added by the Scirra team.

    It did run my game white well though. Have fun. :)

  • I wish I knew how to use console stuff so I could try this.

Jump to:
Active Users
There are 1 visitors browsing this topic (0 users and 1 guests)