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by reificator 2402 days ago
> You can include native code in Electron apps. I am not sure it is actually needed in any of the messaging Electron apps (Slack, Discord), but the capability is there.

Discord has options for streaming your game to others, identifying running processes to display games as your status, downloading and launching games, and displaying a chat overlay on top of external game processes.

Some of those can be accomplished in a roundabout way without native code, but I think it's safe to say Discord benefits from that ability.

1 comments

That is all available in WebRTC.
> That is all available in WebRTC.

Seriously? I thought it was just a networking protocol. Can you please provide some examples so I can dig in further?

* streaming your game to others - I know that there are window capture APIs in browsers now, or at least in WebExtensions[0]. Then you stream the result over WebRTC, makes perfect sense to me.

* identifying running processes to display games as your status - Does WebRTC really have access to inspect running processes? That's horrifying.

* downloading and launching games - By downloading here I meant managing your installed games like an app store. They had everything from 2D games like Hollow Knight to open world 3D games that require a decent amount of horsepower like Saints Row. It looks like they've actually killed this feature, but either way I'm not really sure how WebRTC helps manage installed applications.

* displaying a chat overlay on top of external game processes - I can imagine how you'd accomplish this via WebRTC for games that expose an API to enable it, but rendering on top of an arbitrary game doesn't seem like something WebRTC allows.

[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desk...