I think this is awesome! As John Carmack said [1], you can hop in and enjoy in seconds.
What is even cooler, IMO, is that you don't necessarily have to write JavaScript and target WebGL only to get your game to work in the browser. You can write using Go and use packages with 2 backends, WebGL/OpenGL and GLFW/Canvas, to abstract out the platform differences behind a common API.
Then your game can be a single codebase that can either run as a native binary on desktop, or inside the browser.
I don't understand when you say "you don't necessarily have to write JavaScript and target WebGL only to get your game to work in the browser"
What is deployed then ? Is an executable deployed ? Is it something like nacl, or asm.js ? Or does the user have to install an executable on his system ?
Other than for very specific OpenGL ES features or platform-specific acceleration I have a harder time recommending indie developers starting out to use anything other than the web as their platform these days. And with time I'm sure WebGL will catch up (and surpass?). I've played my part in making it happen and will continue for that push. It beats telling people to install this, link that, and all the tooling involved in packaging a game. It even beats an engine: it's free, distribution is built it, the network effects are there.
The developer tools need to catch up but it's only a matter of time.
Update: "platform specific acceleration" being a broad term for targeting platform-specific features; consoles for example or optimizing for specific features of a particular touch interface.
If anything it's probably easier. There are a glut of payment processors willing to help you out that would take a fraction of your profits compared to a curated download-only marketplace like Steam. There are, admittedly immature, marketplaces for web-based games such as itch.io
However it's still possible to deliver a platform-specific download with the many web-wrapping runtimes out there (cordova, apollo, etc).
It's not perfect right now but it's where the action will be in the next few years.
I really wish retro-style FPSes like this were more common. There is no shortage of retro platformers, but it seems like not many people are making shooters that harken back to Doom or Quake.
Cover systems, realistic weapons, online ranks, etc is all fine; I just wish there were more games like this. I could play this game all day.
I have no idea how this doesn't have way more upvotes. I just played through the first level, this game is amazing, I am thoroughly impressed. Maybe I'm easy to impress, but I think it's amazing
Kinda cool that Chrome added pointer lock, but the responsiveness of moving the cursor around the screen is pretty shit. Maybe it's mac mouse acceleration's fault?
It doesn't do that for me, I played the game pretty spasticly...
I don't know in what way you mean Firefox is going to shit, but here's the great part about it: you can file bug reports, and submit code so it ISN'T shit.
At least you could justify Chrome's bad design decisions with "that's what's good for Google". And that's what makes it even worse for Firefox. US$311 -->MILLION<-- a year ("not-for-profit"), lot of developers working for free on it and they can't come up with a decent web browser, shame on them, and shame on the guys that believe their bs.
Average fps was 47, but this game seems to be composed of very few polygons. I mean less than Quake 1 here. It should scream at 300+ fps at least on a video card like that.
That, and it seems its either the browser or the game fps capped at 60. Which makes the experience on a 144hz monitor less appealing.
yeah but that's conflating simple with optimized, which i doubt this is. A lot can probably be done to make this run much faster. This is not a AAA title.
Same here, and my keys are mapped at the registry level in Windows (at work, don't judge :P). So I got to shoot and look around a bit. Looks awesome though, I just recently started making an engine that targets asm.js/Linux/Windows, makes me want to work on it more once I find a new job.
Pretty cool. How do you get other weapons? Maybe I've just missed it, but I've played two levels and have been picking up ammo for other guns but am unable to switch to them with the numeric keys.
Movement system is good and the music & sound effects have grown on me, but the shooting speed is pretty slow. (Again, I still only have the basic pistol though.)
Edit: Never mind, just found a shotgun on the third map. I maintain that the pistol is a bit slow considering the pace of the game otherwise.
The «immediate» experience is pretty awesome. You just open the web page and you're playing.
It takes longer to download, probably the size of the engine and the assets, but I've been very much impressed with the Unity3D WebGL export of this FPS:
Some suspension of disbelief required for that "full-fledged" claim (whatever that means). The mediocre performance, low complexity graphics and Doom-like movement and shooting mechanics are not comparable to any of the "full-fledged" FPSs I've been playing since 2000.
Doom controls a lot better. I played some Brutal Doom just an hour ago. In Doom, there is some inertia. You accelerate and there is some friction. In this game, movement is a binary on/off thing. The bobbing is also very jarring.
I'm with you on this one. After seeing this running at 15-20 fps, my reaction was that web technologies have finally been shoehorned in a place where they can almost provide the same experience as 15 year old native games, while running on a modern machine. Oh well, the 'hardware is fast, overhead doesn't matter' crowd doesn't care.
You need hardware and drivers which support WebGL. With Chrome, open "chrome://gpu/" to get some rudimentary status report. Also, try updating your drivers. The one you're currently using might be blacklisted.
nice. loved the pac-man monsters :) the pointer-lock doesn't seem to work in chrome, but works in firefox (with a bit of a hassle from the context-menu that also pops up)
Are you saying to toggle the menu item “View” > “Enter Presentation Mode”? There is no such menu item in Firefox 35, and there hasn’t been for many versions. There is only “View” > “Enter Full Screen”, which enters full-screen, but with the top bar always showing.
It seems to be caching game assets. After loading the game once (which took a while), the subsequent loading times were dramatically reduced. Though this is purely based off of quickly opening and closing the website, so I can't completely verify anything.
The browser already caches most things, and caching binary assets (like graphics) in localStorage would require base64 conversion, adding 30% of bloat to data size, not to mention computational overhead.
What is even cooler, IMO, is that you don't necessarily have to write JavaScript and target WebGL only to get your game to work in the browser. You can write using Go and use packages with 2 backends, WebGL/OpenGL and GLFW/Canvas, to abstract out the platform differences behind a common API.
Then your game can be a single codebase that can either run as a native binary on desktop, or inside the browser.
See a working demo of what I'm describing here:
https://github.com/shurcooL/play/commit/e53557dd9c070ce0ec52...
[1] - https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/553720089674260480