6 ms·

I just ported Quake III to the web with multiplayer and mobile support: https://thelongestyard.link/ https://thelongestyard.link/. I was hoping I could use this

I just ported Quake III to the web with multiplayer and mobile support: https://thelongestyard.link/ https://thelongestyard.link/. I was hoping I could use this project to do Unreal Tournament as well, but it seems like it's not that playable yet. I wish Epic had GPL'd their old releases the way id Software did. I'd especially like to have UT2k4. I played a lot of ONS-Torlan in college. Instead of UT I may do Serious Sam next. Serious Engine was open sourced and there's already a web port (without multiplayer): https://www.wasm.builders/martinmullins/serious-sam-in-the-browser-33f6 https://www.wasm.builders/martinmullins/serious-sam-in-the-b...

justin66 2y ago
UT2k4 deserves to live, but if we're being honest, there weren't a lot of people playing it during the last decade and a half. I wonder if being able to play it in a browser would actually improve that.
- epolanski 2y ago
  Even the latest UT on UE4 had like few hundreds of players at best. Seems like the genre is just not popular.
  - DidYaWipe 2y ago
    With the genre being FPS, or what? I'm not really a gamer. When I discovered original UT I'd play it at work because my home computers never had good enough graphics. I loved the atmosphere of many user-created maps. Is there no similar experience that's popular today?
    - archagon 2y ago
      Arena FPS of the Quake/UT era have been supplanted by CoD-style tactical shooters, slower team-based FPS like Halo, hero shooters like Overwatch, and battle royale shooters like Apex Legends. I don’t think a popular pure arena shooter exists today. (Though Splitgate and, to a lesser extent, Halo Infinite scratch the same itch for me.) I’m optimistic, though. Adventure games were dead for a while but eventually came back with a vengeance. I doubt the desire for quick, pure shooty fun will ever go away.
      - zdragnar 2y ago
        I had played UT2k4 almost exclusively for months before ever trying halo, since I didn't own a console. I eventually played at a get together at a friend's house and genuinely couldn't understand why Halo was so popular- the speed was so slow. I eventually appreciated it a bit more, but UT will always have a special place in my heart.
      - DidYaWipe 2y ago
        Thanks for the reply. What is a "battle royale shooter?"
        defrost 2y ago
        Generally a mass player "there can only be one" fight to the death last player standing wins game. As opposed to, say, team orientated Capture the Flag scenario's. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)
        DidYaWipe 2y ago
        Hm, OK. From my limited gaming experience, I find that I do enjoy CTF-style scenarios more.
        nullsmack 2y ago
        Unfortunately a fad that's been around since 2016/2017 or so. The largest one is probably Fortnite BR, they tend to have a few million monthly active users.. although whenever there's an event there's a lot more who just log in for the event. Typically a BR is one person (or one duo or one squad, etc) vs everyone else. No one respawns, except for specific exceptions, and the last person/squad/whatever standing wins. There's an official team deathmatch type mode as well but the children tend to scoff at it as if it's just training wheels for "the real mode" instead of realizing that it's more fun to have respawn than to not have it.
kridsdale3 2y ago
Tim Sweeney is not quite as much of a bro of the people as John Carmack is. Sadly, as I like the guy otherwise.
- klaussilveira 2y ago
  His tweet on Linux a few years ago comes to mind: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/964284402741149698 https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/964284402741149698 And Epic's removal of titles from stores: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/12/epic-games-are-killing-off-a-bunch-of-classics-like-unreal-tournament/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/12/epic-games-are-killing...
  - bravetraveler 2y ago
    The Linux bit is so backwards. I realize I'm preaching to the choir. His thinking perpetuates the problem, doing the more laborious thing of supporting Linux will net more freedom
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      I don't think his Linux bit is backwards. I think he is just saying switching to FOSS software because a company is taking a freedom isn't a real solution, and we should fight to make it so companies can't do certain things, regardless of if Linux or anything else is an option.
      - bravetraveler 2y ago
        Admittedly I lack context. It seems on the surface this is a very loaded topic. I didn't get the gist it was 'switching' -- things existed/were being taken away. Absent anything else, I feel supporting the status quo does just that. Must break some eggs to make an omelet; quantities/plate count/portions matter. When I say 'loaded', I truly mean it. One could argue this in a positive self-fulfilling direction or the other: fallacy, 'sunk cost'. I feel as if this is capitulation, personally, but am clearly biased. Very idealistic, would prefer they be the change we want to see
klaussilveira 2y ago
Nice. Did you use inolen/quakejs as a base, or new fork? Are you using WebRTC? Have you heard of HumbleNet? They also had a Q3 forked: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/06/introducing-humblenet-a-cross-platform-networking-library-that-works-in-the-browser/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/06/introducing-humblenet-a-cr... For the curious, FTEQW has an emscripten port as well, and FTEQW allows you to play Q1, Q2 and most Q3 maps: https://github.com/fte-team/fteqw/blob/1f9f3635f0aef3b2eed6b40e35fcf6223c6ad533/engine/web/ftejslib.js#L13 https://github.com/fte-team/fteqw/blob/1f9f3635f0aef3b2eed6b... Also, the LvL LiveView is a great way to check Q3 maps in your browser: https://q3js.lvlworld.com/play/2043/media/633a9623b1b6458735cad3d559a79fe6/8a69481c4e2215db479fe9a087c3d6f5?map%20phantq3dm1_rev https://q3js.lvlworld.com/play/2043/media/633a9623b1b6458735... What a time to be alive. :)
- modeless 2y ago
  I did a new port of base ioquake3, and actually contributed changes back, so upstream ioquake3 now has decent Emscripten support. The multiplayer is using WebRTC DataChannel, based on HumbleNet but I had to make quite a few changes, as it was abandoned a long time ago. Code is here: https://github.com/jdarpinian/ioq3 https://github.com/jdarpinian/ioq3 https://github.com/jdarpinian/HumbleNet https://github.com/jdarpinian/HumbleNet
  - klaussilveira 2y ago
    Ah, so you are the prestigious jdarpinian! Thank you for all that hard work, sir!
    - Pet_Ant 2y ago
      If they have a different username here, it feels wrong to out them. If they wanted, they could have said it themselves. You could have thanked them without tying the username together in a way that is Google-able.
      - Kirth 2y ago
        the parent literally linked their own GitHub page...
jamesu 2y ago
I'm half-way porting another turn of the century game engine to emscripten but I'm a little stuck on the networking so it's pretty cool being able to have practical examples to reference.
- modeless 2y ago
  Cool, which one? I've also done Cave Story https://thelongestyard.link/cave-story/ https://thelongestyard.link/cave-story/ and I'd like to do a bunch of the old shareware classics as well. Multiplayer on the web is tricky. For non-action games you can get away with WebSockets but for arena shooters or other action games I think UDP is important, and you can only get that with WebRTC and all the baggage that comes with it. I'm using a library called HumbleNet to handle WebRTC, but I had to make a lot of changes for it to be usable. https://github.com/jdarpinian/HumbleNet https://github.com/jdarpinian/HumbleNet
  - lytedev 2y ago
    Has there been any progress with using browsers' support for QUIC for latency-sensitive game networking?
    - modeless 2y ago
      There is WebTransport which is based on HTTP/3 (formerly QUIC), however it is not available in Safari (no surprise there) and also it does not support peer-to-peer connections. WebRTC is available today in all browsers and supports peer-to-peer unreliable UDP.
      - thot_experiment 2y ago
        Is there a reasonable networking library for just throwing data packets somewhere using WebRTC in browser, specifically with a client-server rather than P2P? I've probably started work on such a thing like 4 times now but I've never gotten very far because I always found that whole stack incredibly convoluted and onerous to work with if you're not using it for it's intended usecase, but I really would like to have a go-to library to make little multiplayer webgames that use UDP under the hood.
pipes 2y ago
Impressive! :)
thot_experiment 2y ago
Ut2k4 is so fantastic, I still have a scar on my forehead from the first time I played the demo on a CRT sitting on a chair and my friend tackled me into it to "save me from a sniper". I would get up at 4am because I had a bedtime but no wakeup time and play 4 hours of CTF-Face instagib before school. Q3DM17 also holds a special place in my heart, I'm getting a tattoo of the "Impressive" emblem in a few weeks! Not a day goes by that I don't pine for turn of the century FPS gameplay. (and maybe my turn of the century reflexes)
- orthecreedence 2y ago
  Instagib was the only way I'd ever play. And the bots in the game were actually (adjustingly) capable so I could play for hours just by myself.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    UT's bots really helped at smaller LAN parties and get togethers. They weren't as competitive as professional players, yet could actually play the different modes and fill out the teams. Before that point bots seemed only capable of team death match.
- cdaringe 2y ago
  Haha this is incredible! I had a gap in my gaming years—I only enjoyed UT GOTY (a 2000 release?)—and sounds like the series carried the same kill streak sound bites over. Impressive is prob a safer tatt than HEAD SHOT!
- cbull 2y ago
  If you have a copy of the game there's still playable servers using Openspy ( http://beta.openspy.net/en/server-list/ut2004 http://beta.openspy.net/en/server-list/ut2004 ). I play regularly and the couple of servers I play on get full to the point nobody else can join...
- NateEag 2y ago
  I was pining for oldschool UT recently, and found that Xonotic (https://xonotic.org/ https://xonotic.org/) has done a decent job of filling that void. The player base is small, and the skill ceiling is extremely high, but it's a shockingly solid piece of work for a free, open source game.
accrual 2y ago
I managed to play some ONS-Torlan this past weekend with my friend on a pure LAN (no Internet), it was fantastic and just as much fun as I remember. I enjoy turning on lots of fun modifiers like low gravity, big head mode, berserk, etc.
rl3 2y ago
>I'd especially like to have UT2k4. Honorable mention to UT2k3's menu music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IberpcWz9mU#t=0m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IberpcWz9mU#t=0m10s The NFL themes had nothing on it.
- nsbk 2y ago
  Goosebumps
- amatecha 2y ago
  It kinda makes me want to play WarCraft II haha, similar awesome vibes!!

justin66 2y ago

UT2k4 deserves to live, but if we're being honest, there weren't a lot of people playing it during the last decade and a half. I wonder if being able to play it in a browser would actually improve that.

epolanski 2y ago
Even the latest UT on UE4 had like few hundreds of players at best. Seems like the genre is just not popular.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  With the genre being FPS, or what? I'm not really a gamer. When I discovered original UT I'd play it at work because my home computers never had good enough graphics. I loved the atmosphere of many user-created maps. Is there no similar experience that's popular today?
  - archagon 2y ago
    Arena FPS of the Quake/UT era have been supplanted by CoD-style tactical shooters, slower team-based FPS like Halo, hero shooters like Overwatch, and battle royale shooters like Apex Legends. I don’t think a popular pure arena shooter exists today. (Though Splitgate and, to a lesser extent, Halo Infinite scratch the same itch for me.) I’m optimistic, though. Adventure games were dead for a while but eventually came back with a vengeance. I doubt the desire for quick, pure shooty fun will ever go away.
    - zdragnar 2y ago
      I had played UT2k4 almost exclusively for months before ever trying halo, since I didn't own a console. I eventually played at a get together at a friend's house and genuinely couldn't understand why Halo was so popular- the speed was so slow. I eventually appreciated it a bit more, but UT will always have a special place in my heart.
    - DidYaWipe 2y ago
      Thanks for the reply. What is a "battle royale shooter?"
      - defrost 2y ago
        Generally a mass player "there can only be one" fight to the death last player standing wins game. As opposed to, say, team orientated Capture the Flag scenario's. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)
        DidYaWipe 2y ago
        Hm, OK. From my limited gaming experience, I find that I do enjoy CTF-style scenarios more.
      - nullsmack 2y ago
        Unfortunately a fad that's been around since 2016/2017 or so. The largest one is probably Fortnite BR, they tend to have a few million monthly active users.. although whenever there's an event there's a lot more who just log in for the event. Typically a BR is one person (or one duo or one squad, etc) vs everyone else. No one respawns, except for specific exceptions, and the last person/squad/whatever standing wins. There's an official team deathmatch type mode as well but the children tend to scoff at it as if it's just training wheels for "the real mode" instead of realizing that it's more fun to have respawn than to not have it.

kridsdale3 2y ago

Tim Sweeney is not quite as much of a bro of the people as John Carmack is. Sadly, as I like the guy otherwise.

klaussilveira 2y ago
His tweet on Linux a few years ago comes to mind: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/964284402741149698 https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/964284402741149698 And Epic's removal of titles from stores: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/12/epic-games-are-killing-off-a-bunch-of-classics-like-unreal-tournament/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/12/epic-games-are-killing...
- bravetraveler 2y ago
  The Linux bit is so backwards. I realize I'm preaching to the choir. His thinking perpetuates the problem, doing the more laborious thing of supporting Linux will net more freedom
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    I don't think his Linux bit is backwards. I think he is just saying switching to FOSS software because a company is taking a freedom isn't a real solution, and we should fight to make it so companies can't do certain things, regardless of if Linux or anything else is an option.
    - bravetraveler 2y ago
      Admittedly I lack context. It seems on the surface this is a very loaded topic. I didn't get the gist it was 'switching' -- things existed/were being taken away. Absent anything else, I feel supporting the status quo does just that. Must break some eggs to make an omelet; quantities/plate count/portions matter. When I say 'loaded', I truly mean it. One could argue this in a positive self-fulfilling direction or the other: fallacy, 'sunk cost'. I feel as if this is capitulation, personally, but am clearly biased. Very idealistic, would prefer they be the change we want to see

klaussilveira 2y ago

Nice. Did you use inolen/quakejs as a base, or new fork? Are you using WebRTC? Have you heard of HumbleNet? They also had a Q3 forked: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/06/introducing-humblenet-a-cross-platform-networking-library-that-works-in-the-browser/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/06/introducing-humblenet-a-cr... For the curious, FTEQW has an emscripten port as well, and FTEQW allows you to play Q1, Q2 and most Q3 maps: https://github.com/fte-team/fteqw/blob/1f9f3635f0aef3b2eed6b40e35fcf6223c6ad533/engine/web/ftejslib.js#L13 https://github.com/fte-team/fteqw/blob/1f9f3635f0aef3b2eed6b... Also, the LvL LiveView is a great way to check Q3 maps in your browser: https://q3js.lvlworld.com/play/2043/media/633a9623b1b6458735cad3d559a79fe6/8a69481c4e2215db479fe9a087c3d6f5?map%20phantq3dm1_rev https://q3js.lvlworld.com/play/2043/media/633a9623b1b6458735... What a time to be alive. :)

modeless 2y ago
I did a new port of base ioquake3, and actually contributed changes back, so upstream ioquake3 now has decent Emscripten support. The multiplayer is using WebRTC DataChannel, based on HumbleNet but I had to make quite a few changes, as it was abandoned a long time ago. Code is here: https://github.com/jdarpinian/ioq3 https://github.com/jdarpinian/ioq3 https://github.com/jdarpinian/HumbleNet https://github.com/jdarpinian/HumbleNet
- klaussilveira 2y ago
  Ah, so you are the prestigious jdarpinian! Thank you for all that hard work, sir!
  - Pet_Ant 2y ago
    If they have a different username here, it feels wrong to out them. If they wanted, they could have said it themselves. You could have thanked them without tying the username together in a way that is Google-able.
    - Kirth 2y ago
      the parent literally linked their own GitHub page...

jamesu 2y ago

I'm half-way porting another turn of the century game engine to emscripten but I'm a little stuck on the networking so it's pretty cool being able to have practical examples to reference.

modeless 2y ago
Cool, which one? I've also done Cave Story https://thelongestyard.link/cave-story/ https://thelongestyard.link/cave-story/ and I'd like to do a bunch of the old shareware classics as well. Multiplayer on the web is tricky. For non-action games you can get away with WebSockets but for arena shooters or other action games I think UDP is important, and you can only get that with WebRTC and all the baggage that comes with it. I'm using a library called HumbleNet to handle WebRTC, but I had to make a lot of changes for it to be usable. https://github.com/jdarpinian/HumbleNet https://github.com/jdarpinian/HumbleNet
- lytedev 2y ago
  Has there been any progress with using browsers' support for QUIC for latency-sensitive game networking?
  - modeless 2y ago
    There is WebTransport which is based on HTTP/3 (formerly QUIC), however it is not available in Safari (no surprise there) and also it does not support peer-to-peer connections. WebRTC is available today in all browsers and supports peer-to-peer unreliable UDP.
    - thot_experiment 2y ago
      Is there a reasonable networking library for just throwing data packets somewhere using WebRTC in browser, specifically with a client-server rather than P2P? I've probably started work on such a thing like 4 times now but I've never gotten very far because I always found that whole stack incredibly convoluted and onerous to work with if you're not using it for it's intended usecase, but I really would like to have a go-to library to make little multiplayer webgames that use UDP under the hood.

pipes 2y ago

Impressive! :)

thot_experiment 2y ago

Ut2k4 is so fantastic, I still have a scar on my forehead from the first time I played the demo on a CRT sitting on a chair and my friend tackled me into it to "save me from a sniper". I would get up at 4am because I had a bedtime but no wakeup time and play 4 hours of CTF-Face instagib before school. Q3DM17 also holds a special place in my heart, I'm getting a tattoo of the "Impressive" emblem in a few weeks! Not a day goes by that I don't pine for turn of the century FPS gameplay. (and maybe my turn of the century reflexes)

orthecreedence 2y ago
Instagib was the only way I'd ever play. And the bots in the game were actually (adjustingly) capable so I could play for hours just by myself.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  UT's bots really helped at smaller LAN parties and get togethers. They weren't as competitive as professional players, yet could actually play the different modes and fill out the teams. Before that point bots seemed only capable of team death match.
cdaringe 2y ago
Haha this is incredible! I had a gap in my gaming years—I only enjoyed UT GOTY (a 2000 release?)—and sounds like the series carried the same kill streak sound bites over. Impressive is prob a safer tatt than HEAD SHOT!
cbull 2y ago
If you have a copy of the game there's still playable servers using Openspy ( http://beta.openspy.net/en/server-list/ut2004 http://beta.openspy.net/en/server-list/ut2004 ). I play regularly and the couple of servers I play on get full to the point nobody else can join...
NateEag 2y ago
I was pining for oldschool UT recently, and found that Xonotic (https://xonotic.org/ https://xonotic.org/) has done a decent job of filling that void. The player base is small, and the skill ceiling is extremely high, but it's a shockingly solid piece of work for a free, open source game.

accrual 2y ago

I managed to play some ONS-Torlan this past weekend with my friend on a pure LAN (no Internet), it was fantastic and just as much fun as I remember. I enjoy turning on lots of fun modifiers like low gravity, big head mode, berserk, etc.

rl3 2y ago

>I'd especially like to have UT2k4. Honorable mention to UT2k3's menu music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IberpcWz9mU#t=0m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IberpcWz9mU#t=0m10s The NFL themes had nothing on it.

nsbk 2y ago
Goosebumps
amatecha 2y ago
It kinda makes me want to play WarCraft II haha, similar awesome vibes!!