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Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

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Re: Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

#91

Post by xboxnolifes »

andsoitis wrote: post #55
vivaldidev wrote: post #48

So when are we going to see modern Unity and Unreal games running on the web? Games seems like one of the last areas that is a holdout on desktop. We've seen terminals/IDE, productivity software, and even design software like Figma run in the browser, but not 3D games which is a multi-hundred billion dollar industry in it's own right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a massive opportunity for both game engi…

> So when are we going to see modern Unity and Unreal games running on the web? What, in your mind, would be the killer advantage? Anything besides easy distribution?

From the consumer point of view, web-based distribution isn't really any easier than the status quo anyway.

Re: Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

#92

Post by eecc »

waboremo wrote: post #52
vivaldidev wrote: post #48

So when are we going to see modern Unity and Unreal games running on the web? Games seems like one of the last areas that is a holdout on desktop. We've seen terminals/IDE, productivity software, and even design software like Figma run in the browser, but not 3D games which is a multi-hundred billion dollar industry in it's own right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a massive opportunity for both game engi…

You already can, Unity has their own section of Unity on the web games you can play. They aren't graphically impressive usually but comes down to lack of development resources. Then there's examples like Townscraper ( https://oskarstalberg.com/Townscaper/ ) which are graphically nice and already playable on the browser. There are also many games on itch.io of varying quality, but IMO Townscraper is the nicest. The pr…

Well, you don't need to download the whole world data-file to play the game. All you need is to stream whatever you can possibly interact in the next couple seconds.

Re: Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

#93

Post by lgl »

thot_experiment wrote: post #37
kibwen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are loads of modern FPSes that match the pace of old, but only in the indie space, not AAA. I recommend Ultrakill (whose second act just released last month), which is very much worth taking a look if you reminisce for Serious Sam and the like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw63IVgYLDc

singleplayer fps, there's no arena fps with a particularly vibrant community, and if i'm wrong about that please please tell me which game i should be playing

QuakeWorld (the "Internet" version of quake 1) is still very active. The source code was open-sourced by Carmack many years ago and the community has been evolving the clients ever since. Today the most popular one - ezquake [0] - features many improvements in performance, networking and teamplay features.

Anybody can download a version of this client along with a mostly playable version of quake [1] (that includes only the first chapter of the original maps like the shareware version but many or most popular multiplayer maps. And if you have the original you just need to place the pak1.pak inside the id1 directory and have access to everything)

There are many ongoing tournaments and QHLAN is about to be held in Sweden on November 17-20. You can find all about these in the quakeworld wiki [2]

To find the servers and games you can use one of two websites [3][4] or the in-game browser. The quakeworld EU and US communities are found on Discord. [5][6]

There is also an automated Twitch channel built by a community member that streams quakeworld 24/7 [7]

[0] https://github.com/QW-Group/ezquake-source

[1] https://www.nquake.com/

[2] https://www.quakeworld.nu/wiki/Overview

[3] https://badplace.eu/

[4] https://hub.quakeworld.nu/

[5] http://discord.quake.world (invite link for QuakeWorld EU Discord)

[6] http://discord.usquake.world (invite link for QuakeWorld US Discord)

[7] https://www.twitch.tv/QuakeWorld

Re: Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

#95

Post by smcl »

snarfy wrote: post #94

I'm still sad Epic abandoned UT4 for Fortnite. UT is such a better game.

I had no idea about this until my friend - who's still active at the top level in UT99 in a couple of game modes - gave me the lowdown a year or so ago. For anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about - a sequel to Unreal Tournament was announced in the mid-2010s. But it was to be developed relatively openly and in collaboration with the existing UT community. There are builds available that are very playable (including source code[0]) and as far as I know it was shaping up to be a great arena shooter. Then Fortnite exploded in popularity - and UT4 (or just "UT"?) was quietly de-prioritized, and has set in limbo ever since.

It's a shame. I still have some hope that it'll get dusted off, polished and given the attention it deserves at some point. A few people in the community feel quite hostile towards Epic, though, so they may have to work extra hard to regain that following.

Edit: ALSO I figured I'd add something interesting. The UT99 unrealscript source was semi-officially released and Epic did permit the community to release patches ... on the condition that they didn't break compatibility with the released version. That is, if I went back to my parents' house, dug out my old CD copy from 23 years ago, installed it and tried to play on one of the community servers, it would still work. Which is a shame since there are a handful of updates and quality-of-life improvements (for example, net code is supposed to be a bit janky) they would like to do but simply can't. Another missed opportunity :-/

Re: Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

#96

Post by londons_explore »

eecc wrote: post #92
waboremo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already can, Unity has their own section of Unity on the web games you can play. They aren't graphically impressive usually but comes down to lack of development resources. Then there's examples like Townscraper ( https://oskarstalberg.com/Townscaper/ ) which are graphically nice and already playable on the browser. There are also many games on itch.io of varying quality, but IMO Townscraper is the nicest. The pr…

Well, you don't need to download the whole world data-file to play the game. All you need is to stream whatever you can possibly interact in the next couple seconds.

You can also load low-res textures and models for users who just showed up, and then, as they have been playing for hours/days, upgrade to better higher quality models.

Re: Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

#97

Post by mschuster91 »

smcl wrote: post #95
snarfy wrote: post #94

I'm still sad Epic abandoned UT4 for Fortnite. UT is such a better game.

I had no idea about this until my friend - who's still active at the top level in UT99 in a couple of game modes - gave me the lowdown a year or so ago. For anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about - a sequel to Unreal Tournament was announced in the mid-2010s. But it was to be developed relatively openly and in collaboration with the existing UT community. There are builds available that are very playable (i…

Could that source code, in theory, be ported to UE5? So basically, it looks and feels like UT99 but maybe with upscaled assets and better rendering quality?

Re: Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

#99

Post by smcl »

mschuster91 wrote: post #97
smcl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea about this until my friend - who's still active at the top level in UT99 in a couple of game modes - gave me the lowdown a year or so ago. For anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about - a sequel to Unreal Tournament was announced in the mid-2010s. But it was to be developed relatively openly and in collaboration with the existing UT community. There are builds available that are very playable (i…

Could that source code, in theory, be ported to UE5? So basically, it looks and feels like UT99 but maybe with upscaled assets and better rendering quality?

I think that would require a pretty substantial overhaul - the models + textures for players and items are accessible and in a relatively readable format, I'm not an expert but I guess they could be ported. Maybe some conversion is possible for the UI, levels, music, sounds too. However a lot of the game logic is implemented in UnrealScript, and it'd need to be entirely rewritten in (I think) C++ for UT5. I suspect that would be a fairly in-depth task, and at the end of it all you'd have a slightly shinier version that nobody plays because they're happy enough with UT99 despite its faults.

Might be fun as a technical exercise if you're bored, though :D The UT99 UnrealScript sources are here if you ever want to play around - text editor support for UnrealScript files isn't great but if you can move past that, it's really quite moddable and extensible, I really wish I made the effort to dig into it earlier when the game was more current: https://github.com/Slipyx/UT99

Re: Unreal Tournament 99 running on WASM (2017)

#100

Post by drorco »

kevingadd wrote: post #66
vivaldidev wrote: post #48

So when are we going to see modern Unity and Unreal games running on the web? Games seems like one of the last areas that is a holdout on desktop. We've seen terminals/IDE, productivity software, and even design software like Figma run in the browser, but not 3D games which is a multi-hundred billion dollar industry in it's own right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a massive opportunity for both game engi…

This has already been possible for years - Unity and Unreal have had ports for a long time. The problem is that the web is a horrible platform to release AAA or AA games on. No way to pre-install, arbitrarily small local cache for your assets, long load times (due to slow I/O and code compiling every time), graphics API feature set from a decade ago, limited support for multithreading, SIMD not really widely usable y…

Yea I was working on a Unity game that originally had a WebGL build. At one point I implemented a 3rd party plugin that required multi-threading for real-time rope simulation (Obi Rope), and at that point WebGL basically became impossible for the game.
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