With WASM and WebGL being mature technologies, I'm not sure why there aren't more video games published this way. For really big games with lots of assets, having those assets in local storage makes sense. But I wouldn't mind if a game "installer" is just your browser asking "This game wants to use up to 20 GB of local disc space. Is that okay?"
Half-Life 2 in a Browser
131–140 of 283 posts
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#132How is it that this came to my Apple-Silicon Mac before Valve could do it natively? How could it possibly be easier to create a complete-enough virtual machine that runs in a browser and the compiler for it than it is to port the native application? I wish we could spend as much time on native application development as we do on horribly crippled and slow browser application development. Web technology is so non-sens…
> I wish we could spend as much time on native application development as we do on horribly crippled and slow browser application development.
But native to what?
Windows is no longer the commonality between all users.
The browser has that role, now.
> We want people to remain online under any circumstance
Webapps often have offline-first functionality,
which is one of the biggest strengths of a progressive web app.
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#133And Quake 3: https://thelongestyard.link/q3a-demo/ And Unreal Tournament: https://dos.zone/mp/?lobby=ut There's also https://noclip.website/ which, while not playable, has hundreds of levels from dozens of older games that you can explore freely. Including Half-Life 2, with more accurate rendering than this web port (which seems to be missing many shaders including character eyes).
And Red Alert 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45991853
I personally love openra. It’s a smooth free online implementation of red alert 2 with multiplayer
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#134The screens are missing and the lips don't move, but it's pretty close!
for me the eyes are also showing the unwrapped texture of character's own heads, which is extremely unnerving lol
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a time to be alive
What a time, but at what cost ? Interestingly, these Wasm ports are all about nostalgia games. I sort-of wish we would live in 1998 (when HL1 was released). Less social network, a more creative internet, LAN parties, IRC / ICQ, easier new connections. We now have tailwind / material UI, a locked-down Apple ecosystem, Photoshop with millions of nagging screens, centralized mega-corps like OpenAI, and the first bits of…
It is so easy to not use tailwind, apple, photoshop, or openai. It's really easy to stay off of social networks. Computers are smaller/easier to move so lan parties are easier (although as a real adult with a real job they're harder to pull off).
The world war 3 bits suck, i'll admit, but most of the "early internet" stuff that people are nostalgic about still exists, you just have to look for it.
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#136Input doesn’t work so well on my iPad (lol) but seeing that intro rendered in safari on said ipad, wild. So cool
A few years ago, before I bought a Nintendo for my kid, he was playing Minecraft on an iPad. I tried to pair a Bluetooth controller, and had no luck. I think the OS was too locked down. At the same time, I could connect a Bluetooth controller to my Android phone and play Minecraft with no problem.
In fact, I've said for a long time that I wish I had a nice Android tablet with a Tegra chip that I could both use as regular tablet and as a game system.
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#137Does anyone know some of the rebinded controls? The main menu doesn't show them and I can't figure out how to reopen the menu during gameplay or any using the bindings that are usually set to the function keys. The page doesn't seem to have any info included like that kind of thing.
Edit 1: crouch is bound to C according to the blog post, but that's the only one mentioned. Edit 2: You can use key_listboundkeys from console. Also can just open the menu with `
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#138How is it that this came to my Apple-Silicon Mac before Valve could do it natively? How could it possibly be easier to create a complete-enough virtual machine that runs in a browser and the compiler for it than it is to port the native application? I wish we could spend as much time on native application development as we do on horribly crippled and slow browser application development. Web technology is so non-sens…
> I wish we could spend as much time on native application development as we do on horribly crippled and slow browser application development. But native to what ? Windows is no longer the commonality between all users. The browser has that role, now. > We want people to remain online under any circumstance Webapps often have offline-first functionality, which is one of the biggest strengths of a progressive web app.
browsers aren't common either. Standards, formats, and interfaces are, which is exactly what WASM is and what this demonstrates. Native apps don't need a common operating system or even a common core like nix. They just need to support a common interface, like browsers do.
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#139With WASM and WebGL being mature technologies, I'm not sure why there aren't more video games published this way. For really big games with lots of assets, having those assets in local storage makes sense. But I wouldn't mind if a game "installer" is just your browser asking "This game wants to use up to 20 GB of local disc space. Is that okay?"
Because you'd be missing the market and monetization layer that Steam so conveniently provides.
Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser
#140And Quake 3: https://thelongestyard.link/q3a-demo/ And Unreal Tournament: https://dos.zone/mp/?lobby=ut There's also https://noclip.website/ which, while not playable, has hundreds of levels from dozens of older games that you can explore freely. Including Half-Life 2, with more accurate rendering than this web port (which seems to be missing many shaders including character eyes).
There's also Ultima Online in the browser (sanctioned by the official servers). I'm one of the maintainers.