Games, Why?
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Hi Vivaldi Team,
I don't know what to say but I was shocked with the latest update. I am a hardcore gamer and I like games but why on earth does a browser need build in games? Why do yo bloat your own browser with stuff that does not contribute to the actual use? (Also looking at that "Pause"-Button.)
I would rather have a resource friendly, customizable and fast browser than a browser that "entertains me". If I want to be entertained or play games I surf to the appropriate pages or start an actual game.
I hope you don't plan on including a game launcher in the future ... Discord did that and failed.
Please keep you browser clean -
@zzumba
I saw that too. I wish there was a way to get rid of it, or disable it.
(Settings > Speed Dial). -
@zzumba Many browsers (Edge, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) have built-in games. If you don't want to have anything to do with this one, then you can simply disable the speed dial shortcut in Settings, and you will never see it or be bothered with it. Several users are loving it, and they will continue to have access to it. I'm not a gamer, have no interest in it, and so I disabled the shortcut.
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@Ayespy
Thanks!! Good to know! I appreciate the tip. -
Settings---startpage---untick vivaldia checkbox.
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In the Vivaldi Forum we cultivate a sensible style of interaction.
Functions in Vivaldi that you do not like or need can be disabled or hidden.
In a project as large as the Vivaldi Browser, there is always someone who does not need all of the many functions.
But you also don't have to get upset if you don't like something.
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The Russian community really doesn't like the idea of the built-in game: "We are still waiting for M3, but you added a game... Great!", but:
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The game was a third party development, the Vivaldi team wasted no time or money on it. If someone makes something for you for free, just take it.
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This is a really simple game, just a homage to T-rex game from Chromium. So, the game doesn't affect browser performance. I'm pretty sure this is just a few megabytes.
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It's very easy to add a game to the browser. When I made extensions for Maxthon I began by "porting" similar games. Most likely, for Vivaldi it was a question of minutes or hours. In theory, I can port the game to MX (as extension) in half an hour.
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Now the game works wrong and if you read all last Vivaldi's note, you know this: they add this game to show you if your connection is down, and they will in a few updates.
The game is not perfect. For example, I don't like control: I want to see 3 buttons for shooting and use space button for jumping. But I still like the game and I think this was a right step. Just look how many websites write that "Vivaldi are adding a build-in game!". It's free advertising!
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@Semenov-Sherin Here Jon writes how far M3 is developed: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/51624/vivaldi-update?_=1602771592253
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@Semenov-Sherin
Thanks for shedding some light into this.I am ok with some easter eggs like the Chrome Dinosaur. Vivaldia just looks like as there went much work and effort into it, which could have been put elsewhere. I am a bit relieved it didn't, at least not form Vivaldi Team.
Still, please keep it resource friendly. -
@zzumba , I don't think an old scool pxel side scroller uses a lot of resources or has a lot of work to create it, I guess the team has used some similar game and has limited it in modifying it. I've seen similar games that were created by students on an idle day.
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@Catweazle Vivaldi team did not build or modify the game at all. It's from Porcelain Fortress, http://www.porcelainfortress.com who built it for Vivaldi.
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@Ayespy , even easier. I still don't think it's taken a great team of experts and months of work to create this game. Games of this type in his day came 5 or 6 on a floppy disk.
What counts is fun and detail. -
@zzumba said in Games, Why?:
@Semenov-Sherin
Thanks for shedding some light into this.I am ok with some easter eggs like the Chrome Dinosaur. Vivaldia just looks like as there went much work and effort into it, which could have been put elsewhere. I am a bit relieved it didn't, at least not form Vivaldi Team.
Still, please keep it resource friendly.Fortunately, we don't have to choose as it's not an either/or proposition. As I noted in the blog thread about it, and Jon confirmed, and others noted here, the development resources for the browser are not the same as for the game. When not in use, the game consumes no resources (except for a negligible amount of storage space), and the button to access it can be removed from the UI.
There may be people who utilize every piece of functionality that Vivaldi offers, but I imagine they're few & far between. Almost everybody is going to have features which are "bloat" to them in a browser designed to adapt to the user, rather than the other way around. Even if Vivaldi had spent their own development resources on the game, I still think it's if not foolish, then ungrateful to complain about the existence of features one doesn't use. Others do, and our wants & needs are no more important than theirs.
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I don't use all the functions that Vivaldi has either, but I find it right that I have them available on a case-by-case basis and others if they may need them. All of them are necessary if you want to offer Vivaldi as a browser for everyone, regardless of the use that is given to it, whether for studies, professionally or for ludic purposes.
The OS itself surely has a lot of services and functions that are never used, the same happens with much other software, even if it is just a simple Office Suite. -
@BoneTone said in Games, Why?:
Others do, and our wants & needs are no more important than theirs.
It is not about any one personโs wants and needs. It is about what is wanted and needed by many as opposed to only a few, e.g.
- Sessions Panels = 211 votes
- MIME Types = 133 votes
- Duplicated Bookmark Detection and Cleanup = 80 votes
- More games = 8 votes
- Integrated Parental Control = 0 votes
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@Catweazle said in Games, Why?:
ludic
There's a perfectly good English word that I suppose almost no native English speaker in the world uses (or has even heard of) Its root is the same as the word "ludicrous," which everyone knows and uses. A whole range of meanings (fun, lucky, random, by chance, un-serious) are implied.
But as with most software, I would venture to propose that no one, ever, anywhere, uses all of Vivaldi's options and features. And that's pretty much as it should be. Vivaldi's usership is largely drawn together out of a huge collection of minority users, each of which has particular needs and preferences, unique unto themselves, that are not shared by the majority of browser users.
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@Pesala ฮope the above are not binding, they are indicative, and not guaranteed to be developed because of costs/manpower/time. Vivaldi is still a privately owned company and knows better than anyone how to be sustainable, because that is what matters. When Jon v. T and Tatsuki Tomita open-source the browser however and we can donate the project, there are 2 possibilities, every developer evolves a part of it according to his needs or skills randomly in his spare time, so that list remains indicative again, or we build a committee that makes sure that the donated money will be spent according to the feature list's popularity, so if a feature is time consuming and hard to code people will just wait until it is finished, according to our strict "FIFO" principles .
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@Pesala Right, that's what I was saying too... each person's voice varies one vote per feature request, and while I don't use certain features, many others do. To optimize my browser it's as simple as not using what I don't need, and hiding what I don't want to see. No other browser (or very few) can offer this level of flexibility. It would be a waste of development resources to have multiple versions of Vivaldi with different features disabled when users can simply hide the parts they don't want to see, and aside from a negligible amount of storage space no excess resources are used. There's no reason to add that overhead when it offers no appreciable gains.
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@npro said in Games, Why?:
When Jon v. T and Tatsuki Tomita open-source the browser
There's nothing binding about this either, I would even say it's less likely to occur than half the feature requests in the top ten vote count. I say half because things like the Sessions Panel can already be had via a mod. If I were prioritizing the feature requests for development planning, functionality for which a mod exists would be deemphasized compared to requests with similar (yet less) votes for which there was no way to get that functionality currently. This increases the total functionality available. I love the Sessions Panel, but would still suggest Vivaldi implement the next feature request in terms of popularity for which no mod exists, even if I wouldn't use it. From a utilitarian perspective, that makes the most sense.
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I have been heavily involved in this game project. I have been wanting to integrate a game into Vivaldi for quite some time. Why you may ask? Because I think it fits. Other browsers also have simple games built in, but I wanted something more in our own style. Something that is worthwhile to play for a few minutes here and there. The goal is to have a game that is easy to start playing. A game that is interesting and fun, but does not try to get you locked in.
We wanted to make a game that is small. The game is smaller in size than most web pages. It is coded from scratch and we have created a gaming engine on the way, that is potentially able to be used for similar games in the future, should we want to. The game is built using web technology.
I have watched as the game started with an idea. Then there were some first levels and graphics. Then there was a lot of iteration as the team perfected the game play. Making a game may not be hard, but making a game that is playable and fun with a lot of variation and little details, that is hard. I am proud of what the team has achieved.
The team building the game is called Porcelain Fortress. They are a team in Iceland and we quickly bonded over technology and retro gaming. I have a few old games at home, both pinball machines and arcade games. I wanted to share some of that with you by building a fun game. My feeling is that we have achieved that, but clearly not all of you agree.
The team at Vivaldi continues to work on... Vivaldi. We have a lot of tasks to work on and you see many of the things we work on being displayed in the latest build. We added editing of many contextual menus. We added automatic tab reload. We continued to improve other functions all across the browser. These tasks are part of a bigger task which is to build the most feature rich and flexible browser out there. As we move forward, you will be able to tailor Vivaldi to your needs even more than you can today. That means you will be able to select what functionality to have visible at any one time, so you can have a bare bones browser or a feature rich browser or anything in between. We are unique in this way and we are proud to offer you this flexibility.
When it comes to another baby of mine, M3, it is coming. As many of you know, we have been working on it for a long time. It is a lot of fun, but things have taken longer than we have wanted. We are still working on some loose ends, but we aim to have a Technical Preview build for you inside the next few weeks. There are bugs to fix that we do not want to have in a Technical Preview. That being said, many of us have been using M3 for a long time and we love using it. My hope is that you will as well.
Have a nice day!
Jon.