4 ms·

WebGL Sonic the Hedgehog Game Engine

101 points by brianshumate 15y ago

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
This is really impressive. I wasn't expecting WebGL to come on this strong, this quickly (game engines using Canvas have taken much longer to reach this level of maturity). I'm not sure I see the advantage of NaCl now. This runs flawlessly in Chrome.
- icefox 15y ago
  I would have to agree. Pushing the canvas to the edge you can only do so much, but it looks like you could do much more with webgl. Does anyone know of any tech demos of 2d games backed by webgl?
tybris 15y ago
Damn, I guess we can expect to see some pretty serious games in the browser.
emehrkay 15y ago
Simply amazing. It is so smooth in chrome 10 on win7. Too bad that we have to worry about MS and IE not supporting it. Maybe there will be a plugin, but that defeats the purpose.
- TillE 15y ago
  > Maybe there will be a plugin, but that defeats the purpose. Well, what's wrong with a plugin? There's some great stuff written in Unity, which runs on every browser for Windows and Mac, with Linux support coming in the nearish future. And frankly, it looks and performs much much better than anything I've seen in WebGL. http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2011/03/browser_game_pick_begone_nplay.html http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2011/03/browser_game_pick_beg...
- simonw 15y ago
  Google Chrome Frame fits the bill there.
  - emehrkay 15y ago
    What will most likely happen is that MS will release web direct x and we'll begin to see a bunch of libraries (a lot like the js ones) that create a common interface for advanced graphics in a browser.
- dstein 15y ago
  Too bad that we have to worry about MS and IE not supporting it. It is long past the time for the web development community to abandon this mentality. Look at how fast the web has progressed without Microsoft. Once WebGL is available in tablets (and I guarantee you they will), then you'll have a huge audience capable of playing these games.
  - emehrkay 15y ago
    I agree, I personally feel that as web devs with four other major browers that basically follow the same standards, we should spend our time targeting them. But to simply ignore the MS/IE user base is pure ignorance. I had a hand in porting a chrome-only app (embark.delta.com) over to all browsers and we had to remove all of the "cool" advances just to get it to work with ie9. Bottom line is that the combo of MS/IE still, and will for a while, retard the progression that is being made. As long as IE is player, we'll have to say "fuck, but what about IE?" when we see cool new advances. This is why I am happy about the mobile browser landscape
  - JoelSutherland 15y ago
    Additionally it doesn't make sense in the case of games. What is the alternative here? Make it a downloadable exe? If they can download a game, they can download Chrome. The attitude only makes sense in the case of content, when a less stylish webpage is a viable alternative.
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
      Or you can just add a few lines of javascript and have Chrome Frame install in IE. Users will think they're installing the game itself.
TamDenholm 15y ago
Tried it on both FF4 and Chromium 10 on ubuntu and both got this error: Error: Nonexistent or unused uniform in the description of shader shader/sky.jsonshader: u_normalCameraViewError: Nonexistent or unused uniform in the description of shader shader/sky.jsonshader: u_normalCameraView at http://achene.co/WebSonic/js/GraphicsEngine.js:96:11 at Array.forEach (native) at new (http://achene.co/WebSonic/js/GraphicsEngine.js:93:23) at Object.success (http://achene.co/WebSonic/js/ResourceManager.js:80:20) at success (http://achene.co/WebSonic/lib/jquery.js:5267:15) at XMLHttpRequest. (http://achene.co/WebSonic/lib/jquery.js:5207:7)
- viraptor 15y ago
  In FF4 you can try setting webgl.shader_validator = false. Sometimes it helps to get "something" rendered when things would fail completely otherwise.
lewispb 15y ago
Incredible, playable here: http://achene.co/WebSonic/ http://achene.co/WebSonic/
nicetryguy 15y ago
blast this in a background tab http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxImkPH2G40&feature=related&fmt=18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxImkPH2G40&feature=relat...
TheCoreh 15y ago
Hey guys. I'm the original author of the engine. (I go by "MarkTheEchidna" on Sonic Retro) I'm really surprised to see this popular here on Hacker News. :-) I'm having problems opening the forum thread on Retro right now. If that's also happening to you, you can grab/fork the source code here: https://github.com/coreh/WebSonic https://github.com/coreh/WebSonic It's MIT licensed. The art is under Creative Commons. The code is kinda messy, since this was done just for fun/learning WebGL. As lewispb pointed out, you can play it at: http://achene.co/WebSonic/ http://achene.co/WebSonic/
- rasur 15y ago
  "http://achene.co/WebSonic/ http://achene.co/WebSonic/ Aren't you missing the top-level domain there? (i.e. it doesn't resolve for me, and googling only gives me .co, which won't resolve)
asadotzler 15y ago
This works flawlessly (and sooo smooth, even in fullscreen mode at 1920x1200) in my Firefox 4 on Windows XP. And Microsoft said XP couldn't do the modern Web.

101 points by brianshumate 15y ago

This is really impressive. I wasn't expecting WebGL to come on this strong, this quickly (game engines using Canvas have taken much longer to reach this level of maturity). I'm not sure I see the advantage of NaCl now. This runs flawlessly in Chrome.

icefox 15y ago
I would have to agree. Pushing the canvas to the edge you can only do so much, but it looks like you could do much more with webgl. Does anyone know of any tech demos of 2d games backed by webgl?

tybris 15y ago

Damn, I guess we can expect to see some pretty serious games in the browser.

emehrkay 15y ago

Simply amazing. It is so smooth in chrome 10 on win7. Too bad that we have to worry about MS and IE not supporting it. Maybe there will be a plugin, but that defeats the purpose.

TillE 15y ago
> Maybe there will be a plugin, but that defeats the purpose. Well, what's wrong with a plugin? There's some great stuff written in Unity, which runs on every browser for Windows and Mac, with Linux support coming in the nearish future. And frankly, it looks and performs much much better than anything I've seen in WebGL. http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2011/03/browser_game_pick_begone_nplay.html http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2011/03/browser_game_pick_beg...
simonw 15y ago
Google Chrome Frame fits the bill there.
- emehrkay 15y ago
  What will most likely happen is that MS will release web direct x and we'll begin to see a bunch of libraries (a lot like the js ones) that create a common interface for advanced graphics in a browser.
dstein 15y ago
Too bad that we have to worry about MS and IE not supporting it. It is long past the time for the web development community to abandon this mentality. Look at how fast the web has progressed without Microsoft. Once WebGL is available in tablets (and I guarantee you they will), then you'll have a huge audience capable of playing these games.
- emehrkay 15y ago
  I agree, I personally feel that as web devs with four other major browers that basically follow the same standards, we should spend our time targeting them. But to simply ignore the MS/IE user base is pure ignorance. I had a hand in porting a chrome-only app (embark.delta.com) over to all browsers and we had to remove all of the "cool" advances just to get it to work with ie9. Bottom line is that the combo of MS/IE still, and will for a while, retard the progression that is being made. As long as IE is player, we'll have to say "fuck, but what about IE?" when we see cool new advances. This is why I am happy about the mobile browser landscape
- JoelSutherland 15y ago
  Additionally it doesn't make sense in the case of games. What is the alternative here? Make it a downloadable exe? If they can download a game, they can download Chrome. The attitude only makes sense in the case of content, when a less stylish webpage is a viable alternative.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Or you can just add a few lines of javascript and have Chrome Frame install in IE. Users will think they're installing the game itself.

TamDenholm 15y ago

Tried it on both FF4 and Chromium 10 on ubuntu and both got this error: Error: Nonexistent or unused uniform in the description of shader shader/sky.jsonshader: u_normalCameraViewError: Nonexistent or unused uniform in the description of shader shader/sky.jsonshader: u_normalCameraView at http://achene.co/WebSonic/js/GraphicsEngine.js:96:11 at Array.forEach (native) at new (http://achene.co/WebSonic/js/GraphicsEngine.js:93:23) at Object.success (http://achene.co/WebSonic/js/ResourceManager.js:80:20) at success (http://achene.co/WebSonic/lib/jquery.js:5267:15) at XMLHttpRequest. (http://achene.co/WebSonic/lib/jquery.js:5207:7)

viraptor 15y ago
In FF4 you can try setting webgl.shader_validator = false. Sometimes it helps to get "something" rendered when things would fail completely otherwise.

lewispb 15y ago

Incredible, playable here: http://achene.co/WebSonic/ http://achene.co/WebSonic/

nicetryguy 15y ago

blast this in a background tab http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxImkPH2G40&feature=related&fmt=18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxImkPH2G40&feature=relat...

TheCoreh 15y ago

Hey guys. I'm the original author of the engine. (I go by "MarkTheEchidna" on Sonic Retro) I'm really surprised to see this popular here on Hacker News. :-) I'm having problems opening the forum thread on Retro right now. If that's also happening to you, you can grab/fork the source code here: https://github.com/coreh/WebSonic https://github.com/coreh/WebSonic It's MIT licensed. The art is under Creative Commons. The code is kinda messy, since this was done just for fun/learning WebGL. As lewispb pointed out, you can play it at: http://achene.co/WebSonic/ http://achene.co/WebSonic/

rasur 15y ago
"http://achene.co/WebSonic/ http://achene.co/WebSonic/ Aren't you missing the top-level domain there? (i.e. it doesn't resolve for me, and googling only gives me .co, which won't resolve)

asadotzler 15y ago

This works flawlessly (and sooo smooth, even in fullscreen mode at 1920x1200) in my Firefox 4 on Windows XP. And Microsoft said XP couldn't do the modern Web.