Anyone tried Airconsole - possible extra exporter?

AyreGuitar · July 1, 2016 at 7:58 PM

Just found out about Please login to see this link.

Uses web browser as your console and smartphones as your controllers to play multi-player games. Just type in the code to link your smart phone to the same web browser. Pretty responsive all things considered.
Seems ideal for Fusion games. Wonder if ClickTeam can do an exporter (or perhaps the existing HTML5 exporter will work?) - there's an API here: Please login to see this link.

wpd · July 1, 2016 at 8:44 PM

this is Awesome, clickteam make this possible. interesting exporter for this would be great!
I have cool games for 2+ players for this

But what's greater is for Clickteam to create and host something like this , this is a great concept and business opportunity. ClickAir or something, that's cool.
you must do it fast, it will take some budget, manpower and couple of games but it's worth it Web-based console game with Smartphones as controllers, amazing.
It will make Fusion popular, it's worth investing and expanding the company cause you can invite advertisers with this. Excellent income stream, I'm in!

Decal · July 2, 2016 at 5:16 AM

Well, I guess it only needs an Airconsole extension for the HTML5 exporter and not a new exporter.

wpd · July 2, 2016 at 6:58 AM

HTML5 exporter is maybe 90% of this. It probably has exclusive API's .
But yeah sub exporter and a single object would most likely do the job.

I hope Clickteam would notice this. It's not YET popular. Again I hope they would invest in something like this, be the leading innovator as they used to be, I see potential.
ClickAir.io sounds pretty good. To Host fusion web games, some ClickAir extension for exclusivity , and more plusssss side

MuddyMole · July 2, 2016 at 12:45 PM

I hate to say it, but that's an awful idea.
The one huge drawback of mobile gaming has always been that without any kind of physical buttons/joysticks, smartphones make terrible game controllers - that's why so many things like this exist:
Please login to see this picture.
This doesn't even take advantage of the smartphone's great strength - that you can stay connected on the move - because it only supports local multiplayer. You may as well just buy a couple of £2 usb game controllers.

I'm all for multiplayer HTML5 games, and I'm sure a websockets extension (basically some kind of wrapper for a library like socket.io) would be very popular - but the whole concept of Airconsole is just dumb.

wpd · July 2, 2016 at 1:23 PM

We'll for starters, If you're an old gamer, you'll want something intense and stuff.
Sure the concept will be lame in your eyes...

But I just played this with my sister, showed it to other kids... And they love it. That's an authentic response from kids and couple teenagers.
I own every gadget from old Nintendos to every PS/Wiis/XBs to Highest End Gaming and VFX editing PC to VRs ... and I still love the concept.

Man, local Multiplayer - Simple games, Play from your Web Enabled TV or something....
1-8+ people playing local Multiplayer on the TV or a big monitor. That's good old days, I can never ever call that a dumb party!

You'll have to consider the target audience, you'll not play NBA2k16 on this with many dualshock controllers, you'll get a flagship console for that.
It's for Simple Fun Family and casual multiplayer game, why the heck why would you call that concept awful????
The fact that there's a little percentage of console/heavy gamer compared to casual families who got a pc and smartphones.
How many People or Families doesn't have consoles even ouyas... Are they not worth targeting? I guess mobile or casual smartphone games should fail because they don't have fancy controllers and peripherals that "MOST" people want. But hey those casual games got Movies...
The fact that you prefer intense games doesn't make everyone wants to play games with ultimate specifications. Casual gamers still have a higher number than hardcore ones, and MOST hardcore gamers won't even like your game anyways... they'll play AAA games.

I can't imagine Why would a regular family with some youngsters with little computer knowledge buy even a $1 controller just to try some small games in the web.
I can't even get my neighbors to setup a computer properly. But look at Airconsole have few steps as possible and looks like a SmartTV remote, not fancy but great as it is.

I studied basic analytics of downloaders of my Games in mobile store. Mostly casual users, users that play simple games, not massive mobile MMOS, not Intense3D gamers
only less than 0.1% complains about sh*t that it's not a Console AAA standard. majority of Intense Mobile gamers do Not even complain that they need to use controller for my action games. -------- by any other means If you do compete with AAA games, all these concept is trash to you. good luck to your High End game project.

Hardcore developers sure would not be all eyes for this, I'm sure Clickteam targets hardcore intelligent developers,
But there's a lot of simple developers and hobbyist out there, new customers that I guess Clickteam would like to get.
What if Contruct2 creates another successful copy of Airconsole, Easy to create and implement, let's assume it's done right.
If it gets popular, That's freaking lots and lots of new customers for them. That's on sales perspective some FACTs.

AyreGuitar · July 3, 2016 at 1:30 PM

MuddyMole - I agree that touch screens are no good for most games that use use a d-pad and 2 or more fire buttons, AirConsole themselves admit that in their blog here:
Please login to see this link.

I usually avoid downloading d-pad games on my touchscreen devices even if they're free. Although Slayin seems to manage it better than most:
Please login to see this link.
probably because it's just Left, Right and Fire

Touchscreens can work well for games that only need a couple of buttons, are turn based or use other input (eg swiping/gestures, accelerometer based tilting, swinging, shaking, etc).

If you want to see how this could work on something that looks more hardcore-gamerish, take a look at Eon Altar (not on AirConsole!) that uses a PC for the main screen and smartphones for each player:
Please login to see this link.
(I haven't played it, but looks good! I'm a sucker for co-op dungeon board games)

Having a device each becomes almost essential for local multiplayer games where each player has hidden information, since this can be shown on their own screen, eg card games (Poker, Exploding Kittens, Cluedo, etc)

Just my twopenn'orth! I know it won't appeal to everyone...

wpd - Glad that you're excited about this too! I don't think ClickTeam need to make their own version of AirConsole, especially if it's easy to support with a simple extension or a few Javascript functions that can be included in the html files. By supporting this they may get more awareness that Unity and Construct2 aren't the only middleware that can be used to build games for this platform, especially since AirConsole are actively seeking students for making games:
Please login to see this link.
I understand that Clickteam has already made some inroads into using their products in schools?

I'm still interested in hearing from anybody else that's looked into AirConsole (as I seem to be a bit late to the party!) or has used HTML5 exporter to access other APIs (as it may be possible already, without the need of a new extension). I've fiddled around with it a bit with HTML5 (Limited) version, but no success yet (AirConsole doesn't seem to like my MacBook Pro and/or Safari, even when I try the AirConsole plugin with Unity3D)

wpd · July 3, 2016 at 4:00 PM

Yeah good point. It's just I only notice there's few games for Airconsole as of now. Plus their brand is probably new, I've seen it in assetstore some time ago but I didn't bother it. No big marketing budget and content thus far. If it stays like that, Somebody with bigger budget and community can copy their idea , make it exclusive and make money somehow. You know ads or something

AyreGuitar · July 4, 2016 at 9:17 PM

Managed to cobble together a very crude and simple example (awaiting moderation in the examples, widgets and tutorials seciton of this forum)
EDIT: Approved - find it here: Please login to see this link.

Try this URL and let me know if it works or not:
Please login to see this link.

If all is well it should look like this:

Please login to see this picture.

You might need to refresh before all the windows load properly (sometimes they don't start properly or button is missing - not sure why, but possibly my poor javascript skills!)

Just click theSend Message button in the onscreen Controllers to generate a random number and send it to the Game screen

Using my MacBook Pro and Safari 9.1.1 the URL goes to a page showing:
Load game URL
<edit box>
load normal and load debug buttons
type Please login to see this link. into the edit box and press a button

Or if you don't want on screen controllers (or are experiencing problems!) and have a smartphone, use this on you PC/SmartTV web browser:
Please login to see this link.
and this on your smartphone (or use the Android app - iOS app didn't work for me, button wouldn't press!)
Please login to see this link.

Unfortunately this method didn't work on my MacBook Pro and Safari so your mileage may vary

wpd · July 4, 2016 at 10:25 PM

Cool man - thanks!
tested the demo on firefox, works well

AyreGuitar · July 6, 2016 at 5:58 PM

Here's a simple Pong game done for AirConsole using Fusion and HTML (limited version)
Please login to see this link.
Just move mouse when over one of the virtual devices to move your bat. First player to 3 points wins.

Or try this version if you want to connect your SmartPhones:
Please login to see this link.
Drag up and down on touchscreen to control

Seems to work fine for Android, whether using Browser (Chrome) or AirConsole app.
But my iPod touch and iPad Air both freeze as soon as I touch the screen when using the AirConsole app (fine in Safari Browser though)
That's why I added an Active that bounces around, just to see if the controller is still running - not sure if it's my javascript stuff or Fusion itself that's causing problems (or iOS being picky!)
If anybody else has success using iOS AirConsole app with this example, I'd love to know what device and iOS version you're running

Jeff · July 6, 2016 at 7:19 PM

Very interesting -- Working on my Android.

Would love to check this out more when I have some time.
Maybe someone could write a Fused article

AyreGuitar · July 8, 2016 at 12:14 AM

Works much better with Android, according to this article: Please login to see this link.

"(AirConsole claims the experience is better using Android phones than iPhones — noting that devices that support WebRTC having latencies of between 1 and 10 milliseconds, while those without WebRTC support lag between 40 to 120 milliseconds)"

Which would explain what I'm seeing: iPod touch 5G (iOS 9.2.1) controlling my Pong paddle is too slow and jerky, Motorola Moto E running Android 5.1 is pretty good.
Shame, as I have more iOS devices than Android...

AyreGuitar · July 8, 2016 at 12:15 PM

Update: I found this link to check latency of devices using AirConsole: Please login to see this link.
I get an average of about 500ms with my iPod touch (so half a second!) and whilst Moto E starts out better (around 200ms) it keeps increasing until it gets to about 500ms. This tallies with using these devices to control my little pong demo, iPod touch very jerky, Moto E starts out Ok, but becomes jerky after a while.
This was with airconsole running on my HP Pavilion g6 Windows 7 PC in Firefox.

I did another test on my MacBook Pro running Safari and got much better results:
Around 80ms for iPod touch and 45 ms for Moto E, even after a while. Possibly due to connecting to a different server and my MacBook Pro being much more powerful than my PC

Further tests using my PC resulted in similar or worse latency of around 500ms no matter which device (Moto E was 800ms and iPod touch 500ms at one point!)

Maybe I'm expecting too much for it to run well on my low powered PC, but suspect a lot of users will try it with low end hardware and be disappointed.

AyreGuitar · October 15, 2016 at 5:28 PM

Fixed it hanging on iOS Airconsole app:
Just tick the "Run even if not focus" box in the HTML5 tab of the Properties for the controller app in Fusion

I've uploaded a new version of my simple demo here for others to try:
Please login to see this link.

And here's the updated Pong demo:
Please login to see this link.

Now that I own the HTML5 exporter I can try a proper game.
Some kind of Airconsole extension would still be very useful for getting javascript callbacks rather than checking for them each frame.

wpd · October 16, 2016 at 4:36 AM

Amazing as Always, Thank you

gazraet · December 27, 2016 at 2:05 AM

Hello.
I think everytime I have a problem I get across some post of you AyreGuita. I´m currently making some experiments with this AirConsole platform and I get the message function working, so I can send messages from smartphone to screen. But I didnt get the onMessage to work, so the info I try to send from screen to smartphone is not showing.
Do any of your examples do this? (I think the number in the bottom of your pong example work like this but not sure, so I´m asking)
If you know how to do thiswould you mind helping me? Can you explain it or if it is not a problem can I take a look to your source code?

AyreGuitar · December 27, 2016 at 11:14 AM

gazraet - Thanks for showing an interest. Unfortunately Fusion doesn't handle javascript callbacks like onMessage, so you'll have to find a workaround. It's been a while since I looked into this, but I wrote some simple javascript to add to the index.html file that Fusion generates. This handles AirConsoles onMessage callback and stores the value for retrieval later. Then there's my own javascript function to read this stored value which I call from Fusion on an Always event. You should be able to view the javascript from these links in your browser using View Source:

Please login to see this link.
Please login to see this link.

If there's enough interest I could write some widgets to handle all this as a sort of AirConsole plugin (but it wouldn't be free I'm afraid!)
Hope that helps!

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