Mobile game development board

[Jastiv]

I think that's a bit of exaggeration. My machine is over 3 years old and it works fine. Heck, I browse Discourse sites on Trisquel with Abrower using a T400 and it works. If it is slow, you should look at your internet connection, not your machine.

[freemedia2018]

I browse Discourse sites on Trisquel with Abrower using a T400 and it works.

Are we talking about Discourse or JS now? because that post I just made was about your question what's wrong with JS in general. Certainly there's overlap with Discourse, but that's not what I was talking about just now.

People have several reasons for hating Discourse-- it's a great divider in terms of people who seem to either think it's the second coming or the antichrist. I'm sure some are in the middle, and that itself is a bit of an exaggeration. But not too much.

[fluffrabbit]

I'm actually siding with the RMS wannabe on this one. JavaScript on forums usually implies AJAX, and AJAX requires really reliable Internet. 4G/5G service in the United States is abysmal unless you want to spend $100/month (about 50 British Pounds). Even on DSL I've had simple CSS files fail to load, breaking pages. Fault-tolerant AJAX takes some actual engineering, as standard HTTP requests are configured for only 1-3 retries and a TTL that is not configurable. If your forum fails to load properly even 1 out of 10 times, that's enough to make someone (including myself) hate your site.

That said, mobilegamedev.org runs on SMF, which apparently now loves JavaScript. Hopefully I can get a theme that works well without JS when SMF 2.1 becomes stable.

[fluffrabbit]

MobileGameDev.org needs a banner! Make one and become a global moderator!

[Julius]

Links to the relevant previous discussions:
https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=8282
https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=7780

[fluffrabbit]

Those are polls, so I can see the consensus at a glance: People around here like phpBB and are pretty neutral on JavaScript. SMF is similar, just sayin'.

[drummyfish]

I'm still not sure where in the holy book of emacs Javascript is written as an evil that must be abolished at all costs. Sure, its SAAS, but if users can download the code AGPL3 style, how is that worse than anything else? Its not as if the purpose of a forum is to use software offline all by yourself. Its almost like saying, I should be able to send an email and never connect to the internet or any kind of network, and someone else is supposed to receive that? Um no.

You're confused about JS a bit, it is not SAAS, you can use JS sites offline, and yes, it is extremely evil (not the language as such actually, that is pretty okay, but all the context around it). Why?

• It is dangerous, as in security. Even if JS code is free, it can be malicious and you don't know what it does, the website owner can silently change it to do whatever they want and send it to your computer which will execute it. You're downloading and running random programs on the web by browsing JS sites. @onpon4 has a nice article about it.
• It is inefficient. Web developers optimize browsers for loading HTML, which is pretty predictable. JS is completely unpredictable, and of course besides that it brings an extreme amount of bloat with tracking, flashing, ads, layered libraries etc.
• It is unnecessary and anti Unix philosophy. Absolutely most websites are and should be in its essence only a document, not a program. Adding JS is like adding a scripting language to an image format.
• It makes websites less accessible, require more powerful and complex devices, websites are more difficult to create, it strengthens inter browser incompatibility, it makes browser more difficult to develop.
• It complicated everything, e.g. web indexing, crawlers have hard time with parsing sites that generate content with JS.
• It goes against privacy. JS is turned off in Tor browser and many users turn it off in their browsers so that they won't be tracked. They can't view sites requiring JS.
• It prevents users from browsing the web in the way they want to, e.g. with command line or suckless browsers which usually don't have JS support.

[Julius]

I would interpret the poll results as: people here are opposed to significant change and are really divided on javascript use

[fluffrabbit]

I would interpret the poll results as: people here are opposed to significant change and are really divided on javascript use

I don't even really write JavaScript anymore, but that does fall under the category of mobile app development. It's a garbage-collected C-like language, so basically Java or C#. As such, it is extremely quick to actually write the code. The Web runs it, so what better way to show off your programming skills?

But don't try competing in the JS job market because clean code was never part of the design and you'll just end up wasting time when what businesses really want are full stack developers to write server code as well, which can be JS, but most of these companies are dinosaurs and use Ruby or something. Node.js is a solid server backend...for games. And we like games here. But some companies don't want to grow and change and prefer to sell boring products that nobody gives a shit about.

/rant

Anyways, I think mobile is fresh and worth pursuing for game developers.

[fluffrabbit]

While self-promoting my forum on Quora (yes, I'm shameless) I came across another reason to possibly avoid JavaScript.



Gotta love those NSA-style heatmaps. Makes me feel good about browsing the world's most altruistic source of information.

[Julius]

No one is denying that Javascript in websites can be and is being used for really user hostile stuff. The debate is over if a whitelist of trusted sources using only FOSS js code can be acceptable nor not. I personally do not see a reason why not, given that I also (have to) trust the maintainers of my operating system not to load user hostile stuff on my computer via the update feature (a very good reason NOT to use Windows). But this is getting OT and I linked the thread about it above, so please continue there.

[freemedia2018]

The debate is over if a whitelist of trusted sources using only FOSS js code can be acceptable nor not. I personally do not see a reason why not, given that I also (have to) trust the maintainers of my operating system not to load user hostile stuff on my computer

I agree BTW. Other than the fact that people are subjected to poorly designed JS a lot more often than poorly designed (user hostile) stuff (though things are not improving in that regard on the non-JS side of it) I would say that JS is not technically a problem overall. All the points fluffrabbit made are valid IMO. A whitelist of trusted sources is pretty much the best solution, as is boycotting/avoiding designers who take too many liberties at the expense of the user.

[fluffrabbit]

I know I'm derailing my own thread, but LibreJS is ineffective because:

1. Nobody is vetting it
2. The JS can still lower page performance when it doesn't need to

I don't want to cause any moderation headaches. FGD is strong and my own forum only partially but not completely breaks without JS. It's hard to say where the line should be drawn between what is on-topic for application software (mobile apps and games) VS Web software, because the Web of Things sorta unifies everything into a semi-cohesive system, and the new trend of "hybrid apps" almost makes native software obsolete.

[freemedia2018]

LibreJS is ineffective

I agree. It's neither made for this, nor effective for this. I meant a personal whitelist (along the lines of NoScript) rather than a license filter. LibreJS really isn't even a whitelist of websites, it's a filter based on licenses-- which anybody can circumvent by license-- it doesn't prove anything about trust (a point I had to remind someone still with the FSF once.)

But the short version is we agree that it's ineffective for this.

[fluffrabbit]

Ah, that kind of whitelist. That would be a good solution. Hopefully the list wouldn't grow too long as shitty websites trying to run ads force you to turn on JS to use basic functionality. Unfortunately there are few "user-respecting" services to replace the shitty ones.

[freemedia2018]

Hopefully the list wouldn't grow too long

Indeed, I mean the worse the ecosystem is, the more impossible/pointless it becomes to maintain a whitelist. I would say we are practically there already. Pushback from users is all that will change it now. But I maintain that filtering/whitelisting JS (one way or another, and they're two different, related concepts) is better than getting rid of it.

P.S./O.T. I used to have a KaiOS phone, I had no idea I was running a fork of FirefoxOS, that's fantastic.

[fluffrabbit]

I used to have a KaiOS phone, I had no idea I was running a fork of FirefoxOS, that's fantastic.

Does that please you because you're more confident in your ability to develop for that platform than for Android, or is it political?

[freemedia2018]

because you're more confident in your ability to develop for that platform than for Android, or is it political?

Neither. The only app I ever made was for my Android phone, politically I'm not a fan of Mozilla. (Or Android.)

At the time when it was new, I wanted to try a FirefoxOS phone out of sheer curiosity, and although I was unable to obtain one deliberately I found one regardless. So it's probably the novelty more than anything.

[fluffrabbit]

I am curious about the structure of said Android app.

[freemedia2018]

I am curious about the structure of said Android app.

All JS and HTML/CSS! Very rudimentary of course-- would need proper libraries to be more fully featured. (I have never claimed to be a great developer.) I wanted it to run on both Desktop and Smartphone.

Inspired by FirefoxOS. It was the last project I believed in from Mozilla. They could offer Li-ion replacements based on free energy and get featured in Popular Science, I would still figure at this point that the project screwed over users in one way or another. Not the same organisation since Eich was driven out (I don't even like the guy, but Mozilla was a better organisation until he was gone.) I stand by what I said, at this point my interest in FirefoxOS is sheer novelty. Politically I don't care for them at all. Politically I probably wouldn't care for the people behind KaiOS either-- but I honestly don't know a thing about them, and can't possibly know (other than to assume, which couldn't be conclusive and also fair) what I think of their motives.

[fluffrabbit]

Cool! My first non-Unity app for Android was a web app as well. I did make my own sound library which leveraged both HTML5 and Android Java, since at the time the Android webview did not support HTML5 audio. That doesn't mean I learned Java, more like copied and pasted from stackoverflow.

I hate Mozilla too. They're stupid poo-poo heads. KaiOS is maintained by Jio, which is India's Verizon. So they're easy to hate as well.

[fluffrabbit]

Well, basically for such tasks it is initially easier to use developers from other companies. With all this, the project development will be much cheaper and easier. This is all from my personal experience. I am one of these developers at some advertisement web app development company. This is not advertising, I just say the obvious things. Thanks for attention.

Hell yeah! This is what we need more of! Mobile marketing and mobile software service marketing! Reminds me of a subreddit I saw where everything is an advertisement for something else, like a school of sharks chasing each other's tails. It's good to know that some part of the mobile market is alive and well. Devs saving each other time. So nice.

[fluffrabbit]

Just saw this in the Google Play Developer Console:

Requirements for developers distributing apps in Japan

If you or your business distributes paid apps or offers in-app purchases to consumers in Japan, you need to display certain information to consumers as required by the Tokuteishotorihiki-ho (Specified Commercial Transactions Act).

Apparently now you can't post a classified ad in Japan advertising the sale of an item without giving out your name and home address. I find that disturbing, and I am surprised that Alphabet Inc. isn't lobbying to prevent such legislation. The US is still a free-for-all because we value commerce over here, but in other parts of the world such as the EU and now Japan apparently, nobody's confidentiality matters anymore. How can we solve this problem?

I'm also listening to Alphabet's recent quarterly conference call, and to my dismay, they go on and on about growth in "developing markets". I wouldn't want to spend 5 minutes in a developing market, but Japan would be nice if I could get the canned panties etc. without jeopardizing the dignity of some poor entrepreneur just trying to do business.

[Ntech]

I can't seem to register properly for the mobilegamedev. I try to create an account, but I can't see any of those letters (for verification), all of them are blank.

[fluffrabbit]

Thanks for the heads up! The server apparently lacks some software. Registrations are now fixed.