Hey,
There are some games on the market which are run directly from a website. You have to log in there and press play. Then the process is created on your computer and you can normally play it as if it was run from .exe. It actually is run from .exe but the game opens only if I load it through website. Running the .exe alone won't open the game. How is it all done? Is the .exe somehow packed and the site unpacks it somehow? I would be very grateful for some brief explanation or articles!
Generally it is not an executable that you download and run. That generates all kinds of security warnings.
Most often this is done through browser plugs such as Flash, Java applets, or Silverlight.
It is also increasingly being done through some amazingly complex JavaScript.
Hey,
There are some games on the market which are run directly from a website. You have to log in there and press play. Then the process is created on your computer and you can normally play it as if it was run from .exe. It actually is run from .exe but the game opens only if I load it through website. Running the .exe alone won't open the game. How is it all done? Is the .exe somehow packed and the site unpacks it somehow? I would be very grateful for some brief explanation or articles!
Could you give an example of any such game ? , i can't think of any webbased game that runs from an .exe or a webbrowser that allows execution of native binaries (.exe is the format MS Windows uses for its binaries, it is highly unsuitable for the web)
Most webbased games use browser plugins (Unity, Flash, Java Applets), normal web technologies (HTML/Javascript) or Java Webstart (Which does launch a new process with its own window, but its not a .exe, its a .jar which runs in a virtual machine)
If it really is a standalone EXE and not a Flash/Unity game, then the most likely explanation is that the EXE only runs when the web site passes it a session token when it's launched.
Battlefield 3 has a web-based launcher which installs a browser plugin to do this.
Thanks for answers!
Could you give an example of any such game ? , i can't think of any webbased game that runs from an .exe or a webbrowser that allows execution of native binaries (.exe is the format MS Windows uses for its binaries, it is highly unsuitable for the web)
The game I meant is not browser based. There are some examples I can tell you: Warrock, Gunz and probably some more which I don't know.
Hey,
There are some games on the market which are run directly from a website. You have to log in there and press play. Then the process is created on your computer and you can normally play it as if it was run from .exe. It actually is run from .exe but the game opens only if I load it through website. Running the .exe alone won't open the game. How is it all done? Is the .exe somehow packed and the site unpacks it somehow? I would be very grateful for some brief explanation or articles!
Hi, savail!
Check this one out: http://3d.wolfenstein.com/game_NA.php
(All DOM and javascript, - i think they did a really good job.)
Drawing divs is actually fast. It's where most browsers focus because that's what they do.
Javascript is a bit slow on iOS, but in general it performs really well.
Then there's the HTML5 Canvas element, which is also being used more and more places (albeit not as many places as regular html elements)
EDIT: And while i wrote the above you noted that the games you mentioned aren't browser-based. In that case, you'll need to "Run" an executable, a thin client or something similar, which is then actually downloaded and then executed. (And in that case, you were right in that's an exe)
If the game runs within the browser, it's not an executable, but an interpreted program. (Either flash a java applet or silverlight, as frob mentioned)
Thanks for answers!
Could you give an example of any such game ? , i can't think of any webbased game that runs from an .exe or a webbrowser that allows execution of native binaries (.exe is the format MS Windows uses for its binaries, it is highly unsuitable for the web)The game I meant is not browser based. There are some examples I can tell you: Warrock, Gunz and probably some more which I don't know.
You said that they ran directly from a website, War Rock is a downloadable game, it doesn't run directly from a website.
I remember an older multiplayer game launcher that registered a protocol. When the browser encountered that protocol the registered program (the .exe) would be called with the parameters passed as address.
However that was years ago, and it's probably not such a good idea now.
If I understand what you mean, you say something like running an installed application through a browser link, is it right?
Those that you need to visit the website and click a PLAY! button, so the application will run. If you try to run the game without going through the website it wont run.
Is that it?
If so, there are surely several ways to do so. One I can think of is the classic special link, like magnet links, steam links to name some.
For an example:
WeirdProtocol://THIS_LINK_HAS_A_SPECIAL_PROTOCOL
notice that this link is not http nor https, it is WeirdProtocol
If you try to open this link, your browser will tell you it can't open the link since there's no application configured to open such links, under the special WeirdProtocol protocol. This way, you can now deploy an application and configure it to open such protocol. This would allow you to run an application via a website on any computer where it is installed. Also, you can parse that link, passing any kind of information from the website to your application.
So, this would, in fact, run an application or game through a button on your website, given the game is installed on the machine.
