[tcaudilllg]

Chrome doesn't enable local file access by default, and what they allow you to do with it isn't even worth noting. Google is the root of the problem: they corrupted the standardization process and the browser industry generally. The revolution of the mid-2ks is gone: Mozilla is a zombie and every argument that might shift the balance in favor of indie devs is cut off as "lacking a use case" (which is doubletalk for killing ideas that Google can't immediately monetize). Unless you have at least hundreds in startup capital you can't get off the ground anymore unless you make your product for a Microsoft OS (and who knows how long that'll work when they keep discontinuing the technologies). You see the problem: you make your engine but they pull the rug out from beneath it before you can get anything going. I made this thing in HTML 5 precisely to avoid that but I never perceived that people would align themselves to Google so uncritically (and I never saw the sense in denying local file access to the browser, but I think that was a natural outcome of Google's anti-Microsoftian strategy, which I'm sure you're remember was created by Oracle's Larry Ellison way back in the day).

In short: the game is rigged and it doesn't seem any amount of effort can spite it. We had Flash... they killed that. We had Unity... they killed that. Non-Android Java... killed that. We had Firefox and local file access... it was hobbled first and killed later. Maybe a killer game would beat all that, convince people to take a chance. I think nowadays people are just outright afraid to buck the system though, because nowadays the cheats and bullies realize they can use their clout as weapons.

That said if you want to collaborate on a game or something I'm all for it. I've sharpened up my sprite skills so we could share all the work, divvy it up evenly and make agreements, etc.

[DeveloperX]

A browser having local file access is a scary thought, and a security risk that no one in the their right mind should want to have on their system.

With the cloud providing more than ample storage space, and proper hosting setup, you don't need any kind of local file access to have a great complex web based game.

local storage is a great place to store local data, and mongodb for you server side needs is more than adequate for development of just about anything you can imagine.

Flash had it's time coming, it was a poorly built system that become way too popular and was destroyed not by those that created it, by those who used it for ill purposes, bringing about more security problems than IE (and that horse was dead from day one)

Unity is still a great platform. The web-player was horrible. The WebGL exports are sufficient, but native builds are second to none for all other platforms.

Java is still around, but it's usefulness is dwindling fast. There are better platforms today. The landscape has changed.

Regarding your offer on a collab, I'll PM you my skype. feel free to add me and we can discuss that in more detail. I might be up for a minimal project. I've got a lot on my plate right now, I work full time as a senior software engineer, and my weekends I work on my indie game studio projects, of which I have several things underway.
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Principal Software Architect
Rambling Indie Games, LLC

See my professional portfolio

[tcaudilllg]

Local storage is not a great place to store data because you are limited to 5 megs across the entire domain. Including subdomains. My game maker makes use of it in its sprite editor as crash protection.

I'm trying to install Skype. I had a HDD die recently which has left me in a difficult spot. Probably gonna have to reinstall Windows to another drive because the install I ported from my old system isn't coping well (Skype and IE both seem to hate it). EDIT: got Skype working. Older version still ticking.

[DeveloperX]

If you need more than 5MB of data storage... you need to rethink your data.

Don't store assets in localstorage, and use compressed data formats for data you do store in localstorage.
_________________
Principal Software Architect
Rambling Indie Games, LLC

See my professional portfolio

[tcaudilllg]

It's just a straight jacket. That's what I dislike: we have straight jackets imposed on us for no good reason. The powerful have arguments but what if we disagree? Key is that the powerful know best, implying that they are the best.

I never was really sold on local storage in the first place. It was an excuse for larger cookies and most likely, to make tracking easier. Crash recovery was the only sensible argument I could find for it. Local file access isn't really that dangerous... file access can be constrained to a single directory specified by the user at script level (Gamestar does this). It's not the fault of users but of the browser developer... (e.g. the browser devs' insecure, unaccountable behavior is the root of the problem).