• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Deleted member 36578

Dec 21, 2017
26,561
I can't wtf hard enough. Why would the devs think this was a good idea?
 

Deleted member 36578

Dec 21, 2017
26,561
Many of the most popular games have had web-based main menu.

Dota2 is an obvious one.

But also PUBG for example.
I had no idea, I don't personally play either of those. It must be easier to program them this way or more cost effective for development.
 

Slaythe

The Wise Ones
Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,826
Reminder they also disabled existing visual features from the classic version to force you to run the reforged version.

And saves from classic and reforged are exclusives so you can't toggle it on and off to continue your playthrough.
 
Last edited:
OP
OP
azeke

azeke

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,220
Astana, Kazakhstan
I had no idea, I don't personally play either of those. It must be easier to program them this way or more cost effective for development.
Building (and maintaining) web-based user interface is several magnitudes easier, simpler and FASTER than doing it "natively".

There is a reason most of desktop programs, most of the mobile apps and ALL of TV apps are web-based, and have been for a full decade now if not longer and you haven't noticed.

Steam, Discord, Skype, Netflix -- name anything you work with daily. Even heavy duty programs like Adobe's photo and video editors are web-based apps.
 

GrrImAFridge

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,659
Western Australia
Many of the most popular games have had web-based main menu.

Dota2 is an obvious one.

But also PUBG for example.

Panorama, Valve's replacement for VGUI that Dota 2 now uses, has webesque syntax, but it's not built atop Chromium. I'm sure using a browser engine for certain elements of a UI can make sense, but Blizzard has apparently used Chromium to build the entire thing.
 
Last edited:

-COOLIO-

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,125
it's fine that it's an electron app, but it seems like it's a poorly made electron app.
 

Theswweet

RPG Site
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
6,397
California
The only web-based menu I fuck with, was when Battlefield had it on PC. It was neat using my secondary monitor as a giant map in the browser window.
 
OP
OP
azeke

azeke

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,220
Astana, Kazakhstan
...Blizzard has apparently used Chromium to build the entire thing.
"Using Chromium to build the entire thing" is called Electron and it's an industry leading technology of building UI:

You might see some familiar names in the list of programs built on it

The other leader is called React Native and it also "uses Chromium to build the entire thing". Granted it's more of a mobile app solution competing with Ionic (yet another web based platform).

Edit:

Here's even longer list of programs "using Chromium to build the entire thing":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework#Applications_using_CEF
 
Last edited:

GrrImAFridge

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,659
Western Australia
"Using Chromium to build the entire thing" is called Electron and it's an industry leading technology of building UI:

You might see some familiar names in the list of programs built on it

The other leader is called React Native and it also "uses Chromium to build the entire thing". Granted it's more of a mobile app solution competing with Ionic (yet another web based platform).

Edit:

Here's even longer list of programs "using Chromium to build the entire thing":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework#Applications_using_CEF

I'm not sure why you're being patronising when I in no way invited such a tone and the particular context here is video game UIs (or more specifically, UIs within video games that are native programs). I understand why you'd assume I'm not aware that CEF is popular in application development and can appreciate the FYI, but you can educate without selectively quoting someone and poking fun at their phrasing.
 
Last edited:

Zips

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,912
Oof.

Maybe even a big OOF.

Imagine still looking forward to one of their upcoming games, say maybe Diablo 4, after all of this (assuming you even were after the whole Hong Kong BS from them).
 

Henrar

Member
Nov 27, 2017
1,900
Building (and maintaining) web-based user interface is several magnitudes easier, simpler and FASTER than doing it "natively".

There is a reason most of desktop programs, most of the mobile apps and ALL of TV apps are web-based, and have been for a full decade now if not longer and you haven't noticed.

Steam, Discord, Skype, Netflix -- name anything you work with daily. Even heavy duty programs like Adobe's photo and video editors are web-based apps.
It's also a reason why most of them suck and take way more resources than native apps.
 

Windu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,614
Web based is fine. Seems to be badly optimized though....

I assume this remake is still built on warcraft 3 code right? Maybe that limits on what they can do.
 

PAFenix

Unshakable Resolve
Member
Nov 21, 2019
14,559
I'm hearing more and more bad things about this remaster, omg.

Never intended to buy Reforged, but I can say that I'm glad I still have my original discs in my closet, if I ever feel like revisiting this. Apparently I won't be missing much.

I feel for all those who were really looking forward to this.
 
Oct 28, 2017
1,951
Should be fine using chromium embed, but why is there a 100% CPU usage?

Also a side note, what is the frequency of the CPU core on which the browser is running at the time of the screen capture?
 

Cort

Member
Nov 4, 2017
4,349
I don't think that's the menu, I think that's Blizzard's support system. Opening support will indeed open up a browser (in WoW at least).
 

collige

Member
Oct 31, 2017
12,772
Mostly a myth. You get slightly higher ram and disk usage and performance is fine for 99 percent of typical desktop app use cases. Vs code is an electron app.
I actually just switched to VSCode and it runs like shit. Getting a browser crash when trying to search large files is a first for me and it blows.

That said, I think the Electron performance situation is kind of comparable to where Unity was a couple years ago for games. It's perfectly possible to get acceptable performance out of it, but it doesn't happen a lot of the time and part of that can come down to how the framework is implemented.
 
Last edited:

Cugel

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Nov 7, 2017
4,412
Blizzard is such utter trash these days.... doubt they're can deliver D4
 

3bada

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
473
If there's one thing I learnt from Blizzard and Riot, it's that to never use web based engines in fucking game clients.
 
Oct 25, 2017
4,839
This is a bigger issue among all desktop software. Anyone who used Spotify back in 2010 and is still using it today knows what a huge regression has happened there. It went from a very lightweight music streaming client to a browser-based one that performs terribly. Steam also did the same with the new web-based library view, many have said that the performance got a lot worse. Steam's "small mode" is still the old code though.
 

Ada

Member
Nov 28, 2017
3,730
You get heavy cpu/memory usage like that in electron apps when you have poor DOM management. I have written my own apps and experienced huge page lag when I don't consider the impact of what I display to the user. If you try and render too many objects on a page(such as an unbounded list) the whole thing slows to a crawl. By limiting what is shown vs what is in the data you can optimise performance.

Still, I wouldn't go back to native menus. Write once run everywhere is too convenient.
 

ss_lemonade

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,641
This is a bigger issue among all desktop software. Anyone who used Spotify back in 2010 and is still using it today knows what a huge regression has happened there. It went from a very lightweight music streaming client to a browser-based one that performs terribly. Steam also did the same with the new web-based library view, many have said that the performance got a lot worse. Steam's "small mode" is still the old code though.
Does the Xbox One do the same? Because I swear, navigating the Store feels like I'm using a browser navigating an extremely heavy website at times.
 

-COOLIO-

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,125
Yes, and it takes almost 1 Gb in memory for what's essentially a text editor without any plug-in and similar feature set.

Compare RAM and CPU usage between something like Sublime Text. The difference is HUGE, colossal.
personally, i don't think i've ever seen vs code climb over 300mb, it might be a faulty extension.
 
Oct 27, 2017
2,165
Anyone willing to give money to Blizzard in the face of their Chinese bootlicking actions after silencing blitzchung got what they deserved if I'm to speak honestly on this drama. They showed their ass, you put your face in it. It's almost like the company that gave no apologies for being anti consumer was actually anti consumer. Will everyone learn their lesson? I doubt it. It's hard to have sympathy for anyone who bought this. Obviously anyone who had their game basically stolen from them when this update was applied, I feel for.
 

NitX

Lead Developer
Verified
Aug 20, 2018
158
Games have used "web technologies" for building UI forever so that is not an issue here. The concern here is ofcourse the performance hit which is odd.