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BananaBread: Porting Cube 2 to the Web

by kripken on 05/04/2012 00:02, 143 messages, last message: 11/10/2016 01:26, 82653 views, last view: 04/18/2024 22:25

Over the last month I've been working to get Sauerbraten running on the web, here is a demo of what I have so far:

http://syntensity.com/static/bb/client.html

Press the "fullscreen" button below the screen, then press "GO!".

That is the Sauerbraten C++ code, compiled to JavaScript and WebGL. It runs at 60fps on my laptop on both Firefox and Chrome, but note that it has not been optimized *at all* yet. I'm posting here because I just got what you see in the demo to work, not because it's finished ;) In particular, the code is not optimized or even minified, and when you press "GO!" it loads an ugly level that I made (I have no artistic talent). So ignore the performance, download time, and artwork. This is just a very very early demo.

Note that you need a very recent browser for the demo to work 100%. Firefox Nightly (15) has fullscreen and pointer lock, for example, but earlier versions don't, the same is true for Chrome. Stable versions of those browsers probably will not work so well, you'll need dev versions (nightly or beta for Firefox, canary or beta for Chrome).

So again this is just a very early demo, but I think this is enough to show the approach can work. Actually we knew this could work already because Mandreel did it,

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6873971/data/cube2/index.html

But Mandreel is a closed-source compiler that costs money while this demo was made with emscripten, a free open source compiler (that I work on). All the tools and all the code here are open, here is the engine code https://github.com/kripken/BananaBread (hardly any is changed, though) and here is the compiler http://emscripten.org/ So this project will end up with something Sauerbraten and other Cube 2-using projects can use, if they want, unlike Mandreel's tech demo.

Another difference is Mandreel apparently just wanted a tech demo of walking through a small map, that's what they have, whereas the goal in this project is to get all the rest of Sauerbraten working: Rendering other characters, bot AI, weapons, editing (actually a lot of editing already works in the demo!) etc. Basically we aim to get everything working, minus multiplayer since web browsers can't support that yet. But even that should be possible later this year when web browsers get WebRTC support, so we should be able to get the entire game :)

Why is this worth doing? In my opinion, two main reasons:

1. To promote 3D games on the web using open technologies. 3D games are starting to appear on the web, but generally they depend on nonstandard and/or closed source technologies like Flash. This project uses only 100% open and standard technologies, JavaScript and WebGL. We need open technologies to win.

2. To give back to the Sauerbraten community. While running on the web has disadvantages, it does have one huge advantage - all you need is a web browser to run the game. You don't need to download and install an application, which stops most people visiting your game's website from actually playing the game. Imagine if anyone visting the Sauerbraten website could just click and jump right into a game, we could get a lot more people in the community that way!

The current status of this project is that I will continue to work on the rest of the missing features, like model rendering, that are not yet running in the demo. We have permission to use geartrooper's models, and we should be getting some maps from gk, so we should have what we need for some nice results :)

In summary, this is just an early demo, but I think it shows that this can work. There is a lot left to do so help is of course welcome. Btw, this can work for any Cube 2-based project, of course, not just Sauerbraten, so if Red Eclipse, Sandbox etc. want to run on the web as an option we can make that happen too (in fact the porting from C++ to JavaScript is 99% automatic, so almost nothing specific would need to be done), if any project is interested in that then let's work together on it!

- kripken

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by Razgriz on 05/04/2012 09:20

Firefox Aurora also works, so i can avoid the Nightly which is notorious for stupid BEX errors.

Funnily, this tech demo of sauer still plays a lot smoother than minecraft on a flat map. Win Win.